Stoking JNU Fire: BJP’s Bid To Earn Electoral Capital Before Polls

For the BJP to raise fraught issues just before assembly elections -- in the past and now -- falls into a pattern.

BJP activists carrying an effigy at a protest rally against the Congress and the CPI(M) over the JNU imbroglio in Kolkata, February 17, 2016. (Photo: PTI)

It’s no coincidence that the assault on a Left citadel like Jawaharlal Nehru University has come just before assembly polls in two states – Kerala and West Bengal -- where the left parties are still players. Like love jihad, ghar wapsi and the beef row earlier, this time the RSS has pulled out nationalism from its Hindutva armoury as part of a cynical ploy to whip up an emotive fervour with an eye on the forthcoming elections.

The pattern is too obvious to miss. Love jihad erupted suddenly as the main talking point in the month preceding the 11 assembly byelections in UP in September 2014. After the BJP got a hammering in those polls, losing seven of its sitting seats to Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party, the issue magically disappeared from the party’s discourse.

Love jihad? “What is that? I need to understand its definition,” declared Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh while BJP spokespersons washed their hands off the campaign even though it was spearheaded by one of its Lok Sabha MPs, Yogi Adityanath. 

BJP activists clash with students agitating for the release of JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar in Patna, February 18, 2016. (Photo: PTI)

‘Homecoming’ Campaign

Then came ghar wapsi and the demand for a ban on conversions. The issue dominated the headlines through the winter of 2014-15. The discourse was accompanied by a rash of attacks on churches. Delhi, which was heading for an election in February 2015, saw at least four churches vandalised in the ghar wapsi season.

No less a person than RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat jumped into the debate to declare, “Mein apna maal wapas laoonga. Yeh kaunsi badi baat hai” (I will bring back my belongings). As BJP leaders picked up the refrain and raised the demand for an anti-conversion law, the issue reverberated in the Rajya Sabha in the 2014 winter session with opposition leaders stalling the Upper House to demand a statement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi finally broke his silence only after the BJP was reduced to three seats in Delhi’s assembly of 70 as an AAP juggernaut swept through the capital. Like BJP leaders did with love jihad, Modi dumped the ghar wapsi project like a hot potato. “My government will ensure that there is complete freedom of faith. India will remain secular,’’ he told a gathering of Christian religious leaders in Vigyan Bhavan a week after the Delhi results. It is worthwhile to note that a fortnight before this, US President Barack Obama had delivered a parting shot on religious freedom as he wound up his Republic Day visit to India.

BJP activists burn Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi in effigy in front of Vidhan Bhawan in Lucknow, February 18, 2016. (Photo: PTI)

BJP’s Maximisation Strategy

• No coincidence that the JNU controversy comes ahead of assembly polls in Kerala and West Bengal where the left is a decisive factor.
  
• Even as the ghar wapsi issue gathered steam ahead of Delhi assembly polls, Modi broke his silence only after BJP was reduced to three seats.
  
• Party strategists think the decline in left’s popularity can be turned around to their advantage.
  
• BJP has paid a political price in the past for escalating certain issues, while it is uncertain whether issue of nationalism will work in its favour.
  

Beef Barrage

Similarly, the beef row escalated as the 2015 Bihar assembly election neared, peaking in the horrific lynching and death of elderly Mohammad Akhlaq in a village in UP’s Dadri on September 28. The mob accused him of stocking beef in his refrigerator. Akhlaq was not the only victim. In the weeks that followed, truck drivers suspected of transporting cattle were beaten to death by mobs in sundry villages across north India even as BJP governments in Maharashtra and Haryana banned the sale and consumption of beef.

After the pasting in Bihar, the BJP stopped talking about beef and the issue has hardly figured in public imagination since.

Union Minister of State Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and other workers staging a protest against anti-national activities, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, February 17, 2016. (Photo: PTI)

Targeting Left in Kerala, Bengal

Of course, JNU was always on the radar of the BJP, whose student wing, ABVP, has been struggling, but failing, to break into this left bastion for over three decades. Students and professors were bracing themselves for an attack once it became clear that the Modi government had outsourced its education policy to the RSS. But no one expected that it would take the turn it has with JNU being branded a ``hub of treason’’ and by implication, the left (and the Congress) stigmatised as “anti-national’’.

The timing is hardly a mystery. Kerala and West Bengal go to polls in less than two months. The BJP believes that the left is on the wane in both states and consequently sees opportunities for itself in areas which have been off-limits for the past six decades. Even if it can’t win this time, the BJP hopes to replace the left as the other pole of state politics.

Delhi’s BJP MLA OP Sharma thrashing a JNU student protesting against the arrest of JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar outside the Patiala House Courts in New Delhi, February 15, 2016. (Photo: PTI)

Campaigns Have Backfired

The irony is that every campaign the Hindutva forces and their affiliates have launched on the eve of a state election has boomeranged on the BJP. Not only has the party seen a debacle, it has lost badly with Modi taking a personal hit in both Delhi and Bihar.

While the impact in West Bengal and Kerala will only be evident when poll results are out in April/May, the battle over JNU has served to bring the left and Congress closer. The two are in the process of sealing a poll pact in West Bengal, thus narrowing the state election field possibly to the detriment of the BJP.

The RSS works in mysterious ways, often perplexing the BJP too. If the idea is to introduce terms like love jihad, ghar wapsi and anti-national into the popular lexicon, the campaigns could perhaps be deemed successful. But the BJP pays the political price each time.

(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist)

Also read:

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Indian Left in an Identity Crisis