2024 Is Far, But First Cracks in BJP’s ‘Invincibility’ Are Visible

BJP’s setback in Haryana and Maharashtra is still mild. But the party must open its eyes to reality immediately.

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(Photo: Erum Gour / The Quint)

There is a big difference between the New BJP and the Old BJP. I worked for 16 years in the Old BJP, the one that was led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani – moderate, inclusive, democratic and self-corrective. But I quit the party in 2013 because the New BJP in the making was almost unrecognisably different.

And I remember Advani ji giving one piece of sage advice to people in politics, especially those in power: “Indian people,” he would tell them, “often tolerate corruption. But they rarely tolerate arrogance.”

Not that he condoned corruption or belittled its power to decay our democracy, corrode governance and distort development. He himself had built an enviable reputation for personal incorruptibility. But, having long been a participant in India’s democratic struggles, he had seen many leaders who remained popular with the masses despite their well-known record of self-enrichment through misuse of power. He had also seen many other leaders with strong mandates who, sooner rather than later, were ousted from power, principally because they had one vice the voters disliked – arrogance.

The New BJP has oodles of that stuff – arrogance. And at all levels. Just look at how most BJP leaders and even junior-level spokespersons speak on television.

Two State Assembly Polls Proved that BJP Isn’t Invincible

Whatever may be the factors behind the far-less-than-satisfactory performance of the BJP in the just-concluded assembly elections in Haryana and Maharashtra, the one thing that has contributed to it in a big way is the sheer arrogance of their leaders and campaigners. Ever since the party won a renewed mandate with a bigger majority in the Lok Sabha elections in May, its leaders and workers started behaving as if the BJP is invincible, and is going to remain in power for decades to come. Even the succession plan seemed to have been settled!

It took just two state assembly elections, held within six months of the parliamentary polls, to let the world know that the BJP is not really as strong as its leaders’ inflated claims painted it to be.

Almost all the exit polls, except one (by India Today-Axis-My-India in the case of Haryana), forecasted that the party ruling the two states was going to romp home with bigger majorities. One opinion poll – by ABP News – even predicted 83 seats to BJP, and only 3 to the Congress in the 90-member assembly in Haryana! In reality, the BJP is unlikely to win a simple majority on its own, and the Congress might win more than 30 seats.

What’s the Source of Arrogance in the New BJP?

In Maharashtra, most exit-polls had painted a scenario that goaded BJP leaders to believe that their party might win a majority on its own in the 288-member assembly. In reality, it did not even touch its own tally of 122 in 2014. And there is a question mark over its ability to even cross the 100-mark. In contrast, the alliance between the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which was expected to win less than 50 seats, might together win more seats than the BJP.

The final tallies of various parties were not known at the time of writing this article. But it looked most likely that Haryana would have a hung assembly with no clear pointers to which combination of parties might ultimately form the government. In Maharashtra, the ruling BJP-Shiv Sena coalition might form the government again, but only with a slender majority.

One thing is clear: the voters in both states have shown the exit door to exit-pollsters who had tried to lend credibility to the BJP’s supercilious claims about its own invincibility.

What is the source of arrogance in the New BJP? To understand the answer to this question, it is necessary to first realise that the party, in its new incarnation, suffers from extreme ideological arrogance, which is different from a few leaders at the top being arrogant.

BJP’s Focus on National Issues

Ever since the party’s victory in the parliamentary polls in 2014, it has projected itself as the sole custodian of nationalism and national interests in India. By corollary, all other political parties opposed to the BJP are maligned as ‘anti-national’. And precisely because of its carefully created self-image as the only ‘nationalist’ party, it deliberately tried to keep issues related to ‘national unity’ and ‘national security’ at the centre-stage of its high-decibel election campaign in both Haryana and Maharashtra.

So much so that, both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah kept harping on the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir in all their campaign speeches, while maintaining eloquent silence on the one issue, sharp economic slowdown, that most affected the people in the two states – indeed, all over India.

Modi taunted the Opposition by asking, “Since you have complaints about my government’s decision on Jammu & Kashmir, will you declare that you will bring Article 370 back?” And when the Opposition questioned why he was making Article 370 the most important issue in the elections, the PM launched a scathing attack: “For political gains, some are openly saying that Article 370 has nothing to do with Maharashtra Assembly polls. I want to tell such people that Jammu and Kashmir and its people are also sons of Maa Bharti. The thinking of these political opportunists pains me. All I can say to them is ‘Doob maro, doob maro’ (Drown yourselves).”

That kind of language used against one’s political opponents – ‘Doob maro, doob maro’ – certainly does not befit the high office of India’s prime minister. It reeks of arrogance and profanity. Yet, Modi used it because of his party’s compulsion – and its well-entrenched culture – to paint its rivals as ‘anti-national’.

Why BJP Should Learn its Lesson Now

Where does Indian politics go from here? If the PM and his colleagues care to listen to the voice of voters in Haryana and Maharashtra, they will realise that the people are beginning to reject the binary of nationalism vs anti-nationalism. If the BJP does not learn the lessons from these elections, and continues to weaponise this binary against its opponents in the upcoming elections in Delhi, Jharkhand, Bihar and other states, it will surely find that the costs of doing so are going to be far higher.

The Congress and its allies, which are already re-energised by the encouraging news on Thursday, are not going to be quiet and meek in the coming battles – either ideological or electoral.

The setback suffered by the BJP in Haryana and Maharashtra is still mild. It is by no means lethal. Nevertheless, if its leaders do not open their eyes on the reality of what the common people are truly concerned about – serious economic slowdown, growing unemployment, agrarian distress, unresponsive governance, the widening gap between promise and performance, communal divide for political gains, and politics of vindictiveness – the voters’ verdict will be far more unforgiving.

And that will open up altogether new possibilities in 2024.

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(Kulkarni served as a close aide to India’s former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He is the author of Music of the Spinning Wheel: Mahatma Gandhi’s Manifesto for the Internet Age. He is the founder of ‘FORUM FOR A NEW SOUTH ASIA – Powered by India-Pakistan-China Cooperation’. He tweets @SudheenKulkarni and welcomes comments at sudheenkulkarni.gmail.com. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)