Religious polarisation may grow sharply in the run-up to the 2024 polls It is a proven strategy that has already paid the BJP rich dividends. The BJP has completely rewritten the rules of the game in the last eight years so now it cannot afford to sit in Opposition and get paid back in the same coin. From 2014, as the party started revising its political vocabulary, it altered the meaning of the word “Opposition” to mean “enemy”. Its whole strategy has been to vanquish the enemy by any means necessary. At present, the Opposition is far from being a united house. Narrow outlooks and individual egos are too prominent to miss. The BJP’s path to 2024 may not be quite so straightforward, given the anti-incumbency sentiment of ten years in power, economic distress caused to ordinary people by high inflation and growing unemployment.
It’s not just the rumblings within the party: Modi is being seen as a liability by a section of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. If Gujarat slips out of the BJP’s hands, it would have far-reaching implications for the 2024 elections. Its only trump card then would be religious polarisation – a strategy that has been very rewarding so far. BJP’s top leaders have already given an indication of the possibility of the party going ahead with its religious campaign, Narendra Modi is weaving religion, nationalism and welfarism to create winning formula for BJP in 2024 . By participating in the Deepotsav, in Ayodhya on October 23 preceded by a series of similar events, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shown that governing the largest democracy can happen by mixing religious fervour with development, which also constitutes inclusiveness.
Leader like Modi who wears his religion on his sleeve need not mean he is non-secular, because along with delivering pucca homes to the marginalised alongside rebuilding places of worship, it drives home a holistic and multifaceted model of development. The BJP’s electoral plank for the upcoming state as also for Lok Sabha elections led strategically by the Modi-Shah duo is becoming increasingly clear.
It is a heady mix of four distinct verticals that will converge by 2024, the year of elections. The four separate verticals that will see convergence are a dovetailing of Ayodhya mandir being completed by early 2024, the targeted saturation of achieving nearly 80 per cent of delivery in social welfare schemes, and the completion of infrastructure projects in the pipeline. Modi paves the way for cementing his place as the country’s most powerful ruler post-independence. Modi the man and his ideological leanings reflect the confluence of sentiments of the majority community, which is 80 per cent of 134 crore population. Assuming that the entire 80 per cent may not be pro-BJP, at heart, they are still Hindus who cannot remain untouched by resounding religious sentiments. Moditva + Hindutva+ precision targeting of social welfare schemes is now a force multiplier and an irresistibly potent and winning formula for the BJP to expand its dominance, aided by digital tools to form new caste alliances in order to expand its social base, primarily to reach out to newer voters. The ‘newer voters’ footprint comprises OBCs, Scheduled Castes, and rural women, who are the ‘labharthees’, or the beneficiaries of the government’s welfare schemes. Add to the newer voter syndrome is the already strong bedrock and base of the Hindi heartland states, which constitutes BJP’s political dominance, accounting for 60 per cent of its 303-seat majority in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The resplendent display of Deepotsav in Ayodhya or the completion of the Ujjain corridor are reflective of Hindu-garv and a renaissance of our socio-religious and cultural heritage, long suppressed in the psyche of Hindus, that has come to the fore since the age of Modi. Seldom does the head of state chant shlokas as effortlessly as delivering sermons on how Indians should emulate the ideals of Ram Bhagwan, or delivering homilies like “Mother and Motherland are superior to even heaven,”
There is a slow change in perceptions about the prime minister, yHindu identity, attempts to polarize and the opposition. In a democracy, narratives that work for one party at a given point in time can go to their heads, especially during elections. change perception This looks like a possibility with general elections scheduled for 2024. Much of the hype about the popularity of the Bharatiya Janata Party has centered around the personality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This government looks decisive and authoritative as Mr. Modi presents a larger than life image. When he was elected, he looked like a leader who could think out of the box and deliver concrete results. Mr. Modi’s impressive personality was appreciated by the expectation of quick and dramatic results from him and his government. But now, closer to 2024, we would be delusional to think that we are doing well. There has been no dramatic result; Opportunities have not grown as promised; And wishes remain unfulfilled.
People’s image of the prime minister being authoritarian can turn into a perception that he is authoritarian. Judgment sometimes comes across as arrogance; Inability to take people along. This is reflected in the failure of cooperative federalism and the inability to achieve a policy consensus by taking non-BJP chief ministers along. People always look for justifications as to why they thought the way they did in the past. Some may feel that they have gone wrong in their assessment of Mr. Modi and start comparing him with all other politicians. But the majority may say that he is a well thought leader, he is not as capable as they believed, or that he still intends to do well, but the circle around him does not allow him and so we have to take the entire establishment. Punish the people around Mr Modi, not Mr Modi himself.
Just as the narrative around the leader may change, so may the story of mobilization around the Hindu identity. Being Hindu in many ways, under the BJP, being aggressive against “unfairly pampered minorities”. Many people consider themselves victims in their own land. The regime has done well in terms of psychologically empowering the community by mobilizing caste and legalizing inequality through anti-elitist rhetoric. Now Hindus cannot claim to be “weak, powerless and helpless” because “they” have been in power for almost 10 years. However, the Modi regime continues to oscillate between portraying Hindus as insecure (by creating a deep sense of insecurity among them) and being victorious (by urging them to fight against an ‘adverse’). The BJP advocated “return of Kashmiri Pandits to the land of their ancestors with full dignity, security and assured livelihood” in its 2014 election manifesto and “safe return of Kashmiri Pandits” as a part of its 2019 election manifesto. But after the failure of demonetisation and the dilution of Article 370 in defeating terrorism, we are seeing a rise in militancy, and Kashmiri Pandits feeling more vulnerable than before.
The regime may have succeeded in marginalizing the Muslims, but it has not succeeded in making the majority of Hindus feel financially and physically secure and socially dynamic. In such a situation, calling Hindus arrogant or aggressive does not work. Issues like Ram Mandir can arouse emotion but not passion. The BJP’s campaign works when emotions bordering on frenzy are turned into aggressive passion. The response to the Balakot incident in 2019 and the party’s subsequent victory in the elections was an example of this. To capture collective passion, people need a deep sense of hope ( good dayBut despite the politicians’ best efforts and supposedly clear intentions, trying to create such passion is not working. We saw this during the Delhi Assembly elections. The final phase of the election campaign turned particularly outrageous with BJP leaders calling anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protesters “traitors” and demanding to shoot them, and the party’s call to turn the election into another Hindu-Muslim battle. was trying , No amount of frenzy and fear helped. In fact, as Home Minister Amit Shah said after the election, going crazy can backfire for the BJP. Something similar happened during the assembly elections in West Bengal. The BJP had an advantage as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was trying her best to beat the anti-incumbency wave.
In the end, opposition parties remain clueless, without a narrative, but are being framed, implicated in cases and humiliated in Parliament. When trust in the government is high, it seems that these actions are being done with the right purpose, even if they seem harsh. People enjoy laughter even at the expense of the leaders of the opposition – this is their way of ridiculing the “social elite”. But when people begin to feel a sort of existential crisis, and questions of falling standard of living arise, they unnecessarily target the opposition. They feel that a weak opposition weakens democracy. This feeling is starting to emerge. Many were happy and the opposition was happy that JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar had rocked the NDA boat in Bihar. People are still grappling with the reality that those they trusted have failed and those they don’t trust are promising something better. Promises are being kept to an extent by parties like Aam Aadmi Party. The results of the upcoming assembly elections will give an indication in the time to come.
India’s highest court in 2017 has banned political candidates from seeking election on the basis of religion, caste or language, in a landmark ruling that has unclear but potentially far-reaching consequences for the way Indian politics is practised. In a split decision, the supreme court ruled on Monday that India’s constitution allowed for the free practice of faith but could “forbid interference of religions and religious beliefs with secular activity such as elections”. The use of religion for political purposes was almost nonexistent at the time of independence. It is curious to note that communal politics gained strength after about 40 years of national government. From the early ’80s, Hindu communal organisations increased the scale, aggressiveness and violence of their operations under the general direction of the militant Hindu right-wing party RSS and its mass fronts: the VHP, which coordinates religious bodies, and the BJP, its electoral wing. practices and festivals have started making serious inroads into public life. As a result, a sea change has occurred both in Hindu religious community and in its relations with others.
There are two variants of this expression of Indianness. One is the overt religious concept of Hindutva; and the other is the “secular” expression of Indianness as based on ancient Indian culture. The first is a religious concept, the second a cultural one; but both together relate Indianness to the tradition of what is now identified as Hindu civilisation. According to the lines drawn above, the political parties of India may be grouped as religion-leaning and secularism-leaning. The Indian state was characterised as a “soft state” by Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal in his book Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations. The Indian state remained not only soft towards communalism but it also encouraged it, if it paid political dividends. Louis Dumont, one of the most influential writers on Indian religion and society, viewed sadhus as the agent of development in Indian religion and speculation, “the creator of values” responsible for “founding of sects and their maintenance”, and for the major ideas and social innovations. Under these changed circumstances, this consensus on the role of religious figures began to transform during the time of Indira Gandhi who relied on populist measures and appeal when it came to specific categories of voters. She drew Hindu religious figures into the limelight through her patronage of religious institutions and played the “Hindu card” against the minorities. Secularism in India began to face turbulent weather with the revival and strengthening of religion-leaning political parties in the country.
An analysis of post-electoral surveys for national and state elections from 1962–2014 concludes that the main driver of voter choice during this period was caste and religious identification. Since the first term of the Modi government, while older “core Hindutva” issues, including the banning of cow slaughter and religious conversion, forcefully integrating Kashmir with the mainland through the scrapping of Article 370, and building a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya have been revived, the BJP has also come up with newer core Hindutva 2.0 issues.
