Normally, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shouldn’t have any worries about election results in the western Indian state of Gujarat. It is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state and the party has been in power there for more than two decades.
Prima facie, it should be a cakewalk for the BJP, not least because its principal opponent, the Congress, has been down in the dumps all these years. Nor is there any sign of a revival of its moribund organisation.
Yet, the BJP doesn’t seem to be at ease. For one, its star — and, indeed, only effective — campaigner, the prime minister, has virtually parked himself in Gujarat, addressing a large number of meetings all over the state.
As is obvious, it is unusual for a prime minister to spend so much time in a single state before an election, especially when the opponent is supposed to be weak. If he has done so, it means that he is uncertain about the outcome.
For another, the same sense of insecurity can be discerned in the increasing bitterness of his criticism of his primary challenger, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, comparing him with Aurangzeb while referring to the tradition of dynastic succession in the Congress, while some others have gone a step further to liken him to Babar, the BJP’s bete noire from the time of the Ramjanmabhoomi (the birthplace of Hindu deity Ram) agitation, and Allauddin Khilji — the party’s latest pet hate, in the wake of the controversy over the film Padmavati.
Since linking someone with Mughals/Muslims constitutes the worst form of abuse in the Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) lexicon, it appears that for some reason, Rahul, the would-be Congress president, has got under the BJP’s skin.
The explanation for this vituperative outburst is probably that Rahul is unexpectedly turning out to be the first politician to pose a serious challenge to the BJP in its bastion. Over the last two decades, the BJP has had so much of an easy run in Gujarat and has apparently become so used to total dominance that the slightest sign of resistance tends to unnerve the party.
And that, too, from someone whom the party — and its myriad trolls on social media — have long been deriding as “Pappu”, signifying an adolescent, who was expected to fall on his face not before long. But now that Rahul is proving to be a different person altogether who can give as good as he gets, the BJP, India’s ruling party, is at a loss about how to respond.
Not unexpectedly, therefore, it is flashing its old trump card, communalism, to boost its own morale and rally its supporters. Hence the posters about the battle being between RAM — (Vijay) Rupani, Amit Shah and Modi — and HAJ — Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mewani. Rupani, as is known, is Gujarat’s somewhat unprepossessing Chief Minister.
The communal undertone of the message is as clear as the distinction that a federal minister had once made about the ongoing tussle in the country being between “Ramzadey”, or the children of Ram, and “Haramzadey” or children born out of wedlock. Targeting the Congress, Modi has delved into history to project the party as consistently anti-Gujarat, citing its “failure” to make Vallabhbhai Patel and Morarji Desai prime ministers. Modi has gone even further back to recount India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s unwillingness to allow any official role in a secular state in the renovation of the Somnath Temple to depict him as anti-Hindu.
There have been a few missteps from the Congress as well with the well-known lawyer, Kapil Sibal, urging the Supreme Court to delay the judgement on the Ayodhya case until after the next general election, and former Congress member of parliament Mani Shankar Aiyar using the word “neech”, or low-born, to describe Modi. Aiyar has since been suspended from the party, but Modi has been swift to capitalise on these bungles by urging voters to give the Congress a befitting reply in the polls. It shows that the BJP’s opponents have to be cautious in their choice of words.
Aiyar had also handed Modi the Aurangzeb jibe by reminding that there was no democracy when the Mughal dynastic successions took place.
The BJP hasn’t helped itself by prematurely boasting about winning 150-plus seats in the 182-member legislature. Now, it fears a considerable blow to its hubris and prestige if the final tally falls short of that projected figure. That would also be regarded as the first indication that Modi’s magic is not as pervasive as the BJP thinks. If the party suffers even a slight setback, the result will send an unsettling message to next year’s assembly elections in the three BJP-ruled states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where the anti-incumbency factor may undermine its prospects.
By the same token, an increase in the Congress’ tally of seats and voting percentage in Gujarat will have come at the right time for Rahul, who will be named the new party president once the results are out.
— IANS
Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst.
