THE HINDU EDITORIAL- MARCH 11, 2022

THE HINDU EDITORIAL- MARCH 11, 2022 

The winning formula Mobilization on caste and regional identities was no match for the communal polarization politics of the BJP The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has retained power in all the four States it held, of the five that went to the polls between February 10 and March 7, while the Congress lost the only one it had, Punjab, to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The BJP overcame the fatigue and popular disenchantment it had accumulated over five years in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, and Manipur, while the congress collapsed in Punjab. The popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who remained the central figure of the BJP campaign, contributed significantly to the party’s victory; for the Congress, the leadership of the Gandhi family has become more of a burden going by its moves ahead of the elections that contributed directly to the party’s Punjab debacle. The resounding victory of AAP in Punjab opens new possibilities for the emergence of a national alternative to the BJP, but, at the moment, the latter’s electoral appeal appears unassailable. A combination of identity appeals, welfare promises, and strongman rhetoric helped the winners – the BJP in four States, and AAP in Punjab. The potency of a caste-oriented social justice plank as a mobilization strategy is at a low ebb as the collapse of its Samajwadi Party (SP) version in U.P. and the Congress version in Punjab shows. Dynastic politics can be taken as having received a definitive drubbing – the leadership of many of the parties on the losing side is controlled by families over generations – the Congress, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). Mr. Modi and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal were quite possibly seen by their supporters as subaltern raiders of elite citadels. The U.P. Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, has risen as a formidable vote catcher for BJP in the Hindi heartland. His brushes with controversies only add to his popularity, the results suggest, and a new Modi-Yogi iteration of Hindutva politics has reinforced the BJP in U.P. The voters had appeared anguished with inflation, stray cattle menace, poor COVID-19 management, and unemployment, but not enough to vote out the BJP government. A protracted agitation of farmers had minimal impact on the polls, as the BJP won many seats in its epicenter of west U.P. It appears that the non-Jat and non-Muslim votes considerably consolidated behind the BJP in the face of the aggressive campaign of the SP-RLD alliance. Several backward caste leaders switched from the BJP tent to the SP camp, but ordinary voters did not follow them to an extent that could have threatened the BJP. The SP more than doubled its tally of 2017 but it still fell short. It could not wash off its image of being a party that provides protection to criminals and favours Yadavs and Muslims. The election saw a decimation of the Bahujan Samaj Party, helping the BJP more than the SP. The Congress only helped in creating an atmosphere for the SP alliance, and barely opened its account. Punjab’s voters have given a decisive mandate for an ‘alternative politics’ promised by the AAP, which won 92 out of 117 seats. AAP, which has been in power in Delhi for seven years, has built a reputation for its welfare schemes, particularly in health and education – two sectors that voters care a lot about. That reputation stood AAP in good stead in Punjab, while the Congress and SAD were done in by the burden of their past sins. The projection of Bhagwant Mann as Chief Minister helped AAP, while the Congress seemed to have gained little by advertising the Dalit identity of Charanjit Singh Channi, who was appointed Chief just five months ahead of the elections. The decimation of SAD signals the diminishing appeal of ‘Panthic’ or Sikh religious politics. The Sanyukt Samaj Morcha (SSM) – an amalgamation of 22 Punjab-based farmer outfits that spearheaded the agitation that forced the Centre to withdraw three controversial farm laws that it had enacted – failed to make any political impact. In Goa, the BJP retained power, though the Congress put up a spirited fight. Goans can breathe easy, now that the State is not heading to yet another round of skullduggery to form a government. The BJP was also helped by the division of votes by players such as the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), the Trinamool Congress, and AAP. The BJP’s strategy of selecting candidates on the basis of ‘maximum win ability’ yielded rich dividends for the party. Manipur did not escape the general trend in the northeast, where people tend to vote for the party or coalition in power at the Centre since the States are dependent on Delhi for funds. The BJP emerged on top and the Congress cut a sorry figure, behind smaller parties such as the Naga people’s Front. The election was bereft of emotional issues, and the BJP gained from its development rhetoric. The demand for Scheduled Tribe status for the Meitei’s, the community that dominates the Imphal and Jiribam valleys comprising 40 of the State’s 60 seats, failed to get traction. Neither did a controversial demand for greater autonomy to the tribal councils straddling the 20 constituencies in the hills. In Uttarakhand, the BJP retained power despite setbacks it had to deal with, while the Congress squandered its chances, getting bogged down in internal power tussles. But the defeat of its Chief Minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, is a serious embarrassment for the BJP. A fresh face would mean a fourth person as Chief Minister in a little over a year. The BJP and AAP have gained huge momentum ahead of 2024. AAP’s durability as a viable national alternative will be put to the test. So far, it has not shown either the organizational strength or the political vision to be a national level player. Indeed, there is no one party that can challenge the BJP. A loose coalition of regional and Left parties, with or without the Congress at the head, might not inspire confidence among voters.

Five State polls, their messages and implications Countering the idea of Hindu nationalism will require much more than smart electioneering or tactical plays SEEMA CHISHTI State elections should never be confused with sporting nomenclature of ‘semi-final’, but in all significant State elections, it is imperative that we draw clear lessons. What must leave the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chuffed is that the elections from disparate States around India have resulted in its bettering its performance – and by a significant margin. The BJP era appears to be in top gear and cruising. The BJP gains In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party (SP), up from its meager seats in 2017, led a robust campaign and enthused those who saw the election to believe that it had the momentum. But the message was clear when the votes were counted. Any spring in its feet from the boost it secured from emerging as the sole Opposition pole was no match for the BJP that kept its enormous advantage in the urban and semi-urban seats. Even more, the BJP has gained in vote share from 2017. The decimation of the informal economy in U.P. has consequences that hurt the poorest. Youth unemployment is among the highest in the country and has grown in the past five years, with 16lakh fewer people employed in the State in 2022than they were in 2017. The much lower growth in the State’s GDP, when compared to the 2012-17 phase, and the meteoric price rise, impacting the food basket, are all matters of statistical record. NITI Aayog ranked U.P. at the bottom of the multi-dimension poverty index. But the incumbent Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, was returned to power, in a first since 1985. So, in the face of deep economic distress, the Centre and State taken together with a nearly eight-year incumbency at the Centre and a full majority in Lucknow, one must look at the implications of when the voter does not factor her/his own well-being when making electoral choices. The ‘something else’ that has driven Mr. Adityanath back to Mukhya Mantri niwas must concern us. Campaign’s focus Mr. Adityanath was careful to pursue his campaign with a single-minded focus on Hindutva. From the ‘separateness’ argument of preferential treatment of ‘Kabrastan’ versus ‘Shamshaan’ under the then Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, made prominently by the Prime Minister in 2017, Mr. Adityanath and the new 2022 campaign took things to another level throughout his tenure. The treatment meted out to anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) protesters (mostly Muslim) was unprecedented, and a key legislation enacted in the middle of the novel coronavirus pandemic was the anti-conversion law known to provide legal cover for mobs wishing to attack inter-faith couples, mostly where the man was Muslim. The shutting down of abattoirs and tanneries had a communal slant as it attacked the economic backbone of several Muslims. And then during the campaign, an analysis of 34 publicly available speeches over three months (between the first week of November and the first week of February), found “100+ Instances of Hate Speech, Religious Polarization, Hindutva Supremacy”. There were bulldozers as campaign pieces placed outside rallies of the incumbent Chief Minister and the anti-Muslim stance of several MLAs, some of whom even went as far to speak of “tearing beards off faces of Muslims”. A Chief Minister, also a head priest in Gorakhpur, in India’s most populous State, who made no bones about standing for what he did, gets back with a comfortable majority. This has national implications as it suggests that a significant section of the people here have bought into a sharply divisive idea of a Hindu Rashtra. The BJP’s confidence in pushing for similar actions, making States theatres of a show of aggressive Hindutva – like Karnataka, Assam and Madhya Pradesh – would get a fillip. It had been believed after the elections in the Hindi heartland in the winter of 2017 that Narendra Modi could sway voters nationally, but the BJP was consistently losing States. That ‘jinx’ on the BJP has gone away with this round, as these elections were in States all around India, and with varying social complexions and political cultures. The BJP has managed to retain power across the board. If the BJP finds no electoral pushback to its economic policies, of simultaneously keeping big business (via privatization) as well as the extremely poor (in its labaarthi, or beneficiary logic) on its side, there would be no problems with raising the price of petrol even further, or re-introducing farm laws. Watch in economic policies unfold, in the face of mounting challenges in the next two years, would be a fascinating exercise. AAP’s gains The remaking of the Opposition space is a key message in these elections. The only Opposition party that has succeeded is the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab. The losers would include, other than the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Akali Dal. The full kaleidoscopes of parties with connections with old India, who thought of themselves as progressive or linked to social justice in some way, have been turned out. AAP, a party which came into its own in the post-2014 world, after the Congress-era had waned fully, is the only one tasting success. AAP having as many Chief Ministers as the Grand Old Party, and parties such as the SP and others unable to mount an electoral challenge to the BJP, signals a blow to the whole universe of how politics was done before 2014, at least for the moment. When this winter, the absence of case census was a serious issue with smaller Other Backward Classes and several prominent leaders leaving the BJP and joining the SP, there was hope that there could be burgeoning social justice and welfare model akin to the Dravidian model. A BSP unwilling to fight appeared to be a positive. But as results have come in, it is clear that merely trying to use another social fault line as a counter to the Hindutva fault line will not work at a time when so much political, institutional and monetary power is concentrated in Hindutva. It would need much more in the mix to mount the challenge. To think of a resurgent ‘post-Mandal’ to take on Hindutva would be foolhardy. U.P. is miles away from a Dravidian model. Mounting a challenge It is not clear if the challenge to the dominant narrative can be met with just electoral tactics. If anything, these elections have proved that to counter the idea of Hindu nationalism or ensure that voters are enthused by harmon, or even a 21st century version of Indian nationalism, would need much more than smart electioneering or tactical plays. For the moment, these verdicts have provided the justification of the ‘popular will’ that the ruling party in Delhi needs to implement policies which it may have hesitated to until now – for example, to bring back the farm laws or push more aggressively towards a Hindu Rashtra, by law.     A demonstration of a durable political phenomenon U.P., much like Gujarat, is now a State where Hindu majoritarianism is deeply embedded in the political common sense ASIM ALI Uttar Pradesh has entered a new political era. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has romped back with a two-thirds majority: the first incumbent to return to power in over three decades. The project of the Samajwadi Party (SP) to transcend its Muslim-Yadav social base has come a cropper. The Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress have been virtually annihilated. Mandate as a meta narrative The triumph of the BJP is not surprising, even if its scale was largely unanticipated. A common theme of the reportage from Uttar Pradesh has been the existence of a wave-less election. The antennae of journalists neither caught strong sentiments of pro-incumbency nor a widespread sentiment of anti-incumbency. What then explains the decisive mandate given to the BJP? Decoding a political mandate is a complicated affair. There are several components that go into the making of a political majority. Some pundits have read into the mandate a validation of the governance achievements of the Yogi Raj, particularly welfare provisioning and tough law and order: a ‘rashan’ and ‘shasan’ mandate. Others maintain that the BJP was saved from a sticky wicket by its structural advantages: organizational machinery and media management. There is some truth in both the explanations, yet, they both miss what is essentially the ideological driving force behind the mandate, which is Hindu majoritarianism. This was the meta narrative of the BJP campaign, in reference to which all the smaller narratives were stitched together. The principal challenge facing the BJP in these elections was keeping together the sprawling social coalition of Hindu voters it had assemble over the last decade: the upper castes, non-Yadav backward castes, and non-Jatav Dalits. This task was made even more daunting by the prevalence of multiple sources of discontent, which had also hurt the BJP in previous State elections. These include the usual litany of unemployment, price rise, stagnant incomes and rural distress, coupled with a particularly disastrous impact that the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown had wrought in the State. To say that an expanded provisioning of rations outweighed the combined effects of all these governance deficits stretches credulity. It is hard to think of an Indian electorate in the third decade of the 21st century being swept off its feet with bags of food grains – something they have come to expect from the government for at least half a century. More than just welfare      Cash transfers for a variety of welfare schemes – farmer income support, toilets, houses, schools bags, etc. – present a stronger case. Though, here too, analysts reading an election-swaying effect need to tread with caution, for two reasons. One, welfare transfers on their own did not save the BJP from a voter backlash in recent State elections in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand. And two, neither survey data nor journalistic accounts indicated a whirlwind of public enthusiasm that could explain such a huge mandate. In fact, two months before the election, a survey finding highlighted the ambiguous nature of the public mood: while more than two-thirds of respondents claimed to be broadly dissatisfied with the State government, a slim majority still wanted it back in power. Clearly, something else was also in play. And that decisive factor is Hindu majoritarianism, which has forged an emotional bond between the BJP and Hindu voters, barring the Yadavs and the Jatavs. The political activist, Yogesndra Yadav, reported from his travels in Uttar Pradesh the existence of a political and moral ‘common-sense’ shared by Hindu voters of the State. This ‘common-sense’, borne out of what he calls the ‘Hindu-Muslim divide’, led them to excuse material suffering and misgovernance because they wished to stay on their ‘own’ side. BJP versus SP Make no mistake, this was primarily and ideological clash between the BJP and SP, waged mainly over non-Yadav backward caste voters. With the rest of the voters – upper castes, Muslims, Yadavs and Jatav Dalits – firmly in different camps, backward castes (and to a lesser extent, the non Jatav Dalits) were supposed to decide the fate of the election. They were the fulcrum of Akhilesh Yadav’s campaign, who leaned heavily on the Mandal lexicon of ‘haq’ (due rights) and ‘hissedari’ (equal representation), promising a ‘revolution of the backwards’. How did the BJP then manage to keep its backward caste voters from falling under the sway of the SP’s Mandal politics? Or in other words, how did Hindu majoritarianism reinforce the Hindu political identity of the backward castes that made them indifferent to Mandal politics? There are two aspects to this. The first aspect is providing the backward castes with a sense of physical security – the law-and-order pitch of the Yogi government, symbolized by bulldozers and encounters. Under the Hindu umbrella, they are safe from the depredations of the Yadav and (even more so) Muslim criminals. The securitization of communal prejudice has reached its highest form in Uttar Pradesh. There was an explicit conflation of ‘mafias’ with Muslim strongmen such as Mukhtar Ansari and Atiq Ahmad; rioters with Muslim anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protesters; and anti-social elements with Muslim cow smugglers and love jihad conspirators. For instance, more than a third of all National Security Act (NSA) detentions by the U.P. government (2018-20) have been against cow smugglers. Thus, the law-and-order pitch of the BJP largely comprised converting Muslims into a security threat and then making high-pitched demonstrations of taming that threat. Many journalists who reported the absence of overt Hindu-Muslim tensions on the ground missed the potency of the communal assumptions that have become normalized among wide swathes of the electorate. Economic security The second aspect is providing the backward castes with a sense of economic security – without reference to their caste identity. The latter part (mechanism) here is as politically crucial as the former part (delivery). As I have argued in a previous article in The Hindu, “In Uttar Pradesh the crux of welfare politics”, historically, Mandal and Dalit politics had gained ground in Uttar Pradesh by turning caste mobilization into a pathway for greater access to public goods. The welfare regime instituted by the BJP, where provisions are made in a universal and programmatic manner, cutting out the middlemen particularly through cash transfers, dilutes the political salience of caste identity. Thus, this type of welfare politics works in tandem with a Hindu majoritarian discourse towards the political transformation of Dalits and backward castes into Hindus. We must also consider why the Mandal strategy of the SP party failed in disturbing this Hindu political majority. In another article in The Hindu, “Re-establishing ownership of the Mandal space”, my argument was that it was an enormous challenge to resurrect Mandal politics in the space of an election campaign. On the eve of the election, the SP engineered defections from the ranks of the BJP of prominent backward caste leaders such as Swami Prasad Maurya and Dara Singh Chauhan. This was meant to underline the dissatisfaction of backward castes under the Yogi regime, and make backward caste assertion a central theme of the election. As it turned out, most of these leaders did not have a hold on their own caste beyond their constituencies, and their record of opportunistic and transactional politics did not fit well with their pious ideological refrains. These efforts of the SP were, in short, too little too late. Formulating an alternative As this writer had mentioned previously, to make a serious effort to revitalize the Mandal space would require a longer term organizational and ideological revamp, and to contend with a new, flexible form of Hindutva. The BJP’s Hindu majoritarian campaign is carried out through the year, every year, through an active organization and friendly media channels. It cannot be effectively challenged through an alternative ideological gambit that barely lasts more than three months. Mr. Adityanath had framed this election as an 80 versus 20 elections: an ill-concealed reference to a Hindu versus Muslim electoral competition. In hindsight, this framing did carry more than a grain of truth. Muslims duly consolidated behind the SP, while the BJP carried along with it the majority of the Hindus. The Hindu political majority that the BJP had constructed over the last three elections has now been demonstrated to be a durable phenomenon. Uttar Pradesh, much like Gujarat, is now a BJP-dominant state where Hindu majoritarianism is deeply embedded in the political common sense.