In 2014, the BJP was elected with an unprecedented mandate for ‘development’ as Prime Minister designate Narendra Modi successfully weaved his election campaign around this narrative. He has, since pushed some reform agenda. Nonetheless, the development paradigm is being subsumed increasingly by communal and polarizing discourse. Worse still, it appears, there is a deliberate attempt to divert issues of bread and butter to a divisive ecosystem for supposed electoral gains. Uttar Pradesh, going to polls early next year, is a text book case where developmental agenda has gone for a toss while sectarian and identity politics have taken centre stage.
The Aam Admi Party won the Delhi polls in 2015 February, nine months after Modi government assumed power at the Centre. The BJP lost mainly because an overwhelming section of Left, liberal and progressive sections ganged up against its divisive agenda and the AAP became the sole beneficiary of this anger. Again, nine months later, the BJP lost Bihar. Here too, ‘development’ was not an election issue. While the Grand Alliance of Nitish Kumar, Laloo Prasad Yadav and Rahul Gandhi played caste politics, the BJP pinned its hopes on communal polarization. However, caste calculus favoured the Grand Alliance. After a long spell of electoral drought, the BJP wrested Assam from the Congress in May last. Here again, the discourse was not development.
Back to Uttar Pradesh. With less than five months to go before the election, nobody is talking about development in the heartland state; rather insular and communal issues have gained momentum. While BJP is brewing a matrix of nationalism and communalism, other players are working on social and caste engineering. The conversation today is: “Brahmins, Muslims, Dalits, OBCs, Surgical Strike, Ram Mandir, Uniform Civil Code, cow politics” and so on. It appears the Opposition has been caught unawares as the “surgical strike” added swagger to the BJP. A divided Opposition and the absence of a Bihar type Grand Alliance is also advantageous to the saffron party.
The BJP was in a Catch 22 situation with regard to projecting a CM candidate as it did not have political war horses like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati or a comparative young face like Akhilesh Yadav. For some reason it was loath to project young and articulate Varun Gandhi as its chief ministerial candidate. The BJP had earlier thought of projecting home minister and former UP chief minister Rajnath Singh as its CM face, but chickened out fearing backlash among 14 per cent Brahmins. However, the situation changed after the September 29 surgical strike across the border and displaying a measure of bolstered confidence the party is now even thinking of making Modi its campaign face in UP and project Rajnath as CM candidate.
After the electoral drubbings in Delhi and Bihar (where Modi and Amit Shah had campaigned vigorously) the party had consciously desisted from making the Assam poll campaign PM-centric. Unlike Bihar, Delhi and Assam, populous UP is crucial for BJP’s bid to reclaim power in 2019. The party had bagged a historic 71 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2014. Its ally Apna Dal, which has since split vertically, won two. A substantial dent in its UP tally in 2019 could rob the party of a simple majority in the lower House. And hence winning UP assembly election is critical for Modi and BJP.
Even as “surgical strike” and the ultra nationalistic halo built around the Army operation has unnerved the Opposition that even questioning the claims of BJP and the government could prove to be tricky, there is also apparently a rethink in the saffron party about the shelf life of the surgical strike. What if there is retaliation from across the border during the polls? So, it is not wise to keep all BJP eggs in the surgical strike basket?
And that is why the party is strategising to boost its campaign with a dash of communalism by raking up Ayodhya temple as well as Uniform Civil Code issues. A few months back BJP MP Subramanian Swamy had suggested that the party make Ram Mandir its campaign plank in UP. But senior leaders, unsure of its electoral potential, turned it down. Even as the party is officially shying away from making it a campaign issue, seniors such as Uma Bharti, Mahesh Sharma, Vinay Katiyar and a few others have upped the ante to milk the Ayodhya temple issue ahead of the polls while pariwar foot soldiers are busy themselves with cow politics.
Though there is no political consensus or a judicial verdict yet on these polarising issues, they surface with monotonous regularity on the eve of each election. Though the UCC is back in the news as the Supreme Court is hearing petitions on triple talaq and the Centre has filed an affidavit against the practice while the Law Commission is seeking public opinion on the single code, the matter should have been left to the competent courts to decide. In any case, the UCC cannot be imposed without a Constitutional amendment and as such polarizing debate on it on the eve of election is apparently calculated to consolidate BJP’s Hindu base.
According to pollsters Dalits have consolidated behind Mayawati-led BSP against BJP after several incidents involving cow vigilantes. The poll outcome, however, will depend much on the voting behaviour of the 19 per cent Muslims and 14 per cent Brahmins. For the BSP and the Congress respectively, this 33 per cent segment is crucial to their electoral calculation, while for the SP en bloc Muslim and Yadav support is a must to be in the reckoning while the saffron party is expecting support from across the spectrum sans Muslims. Will the BJP be able to counterbalance casteism with communalism?
