What do the results of the 2024 Indian general elections portend? I am not referring to who will win but by how many seats. Let us accept, for the time being, that it is Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP, which has a clear lead after the first three phases of voting. But what is not equally certain is with what margin of victory and with how many seats. More and more, it seems that the dream of Chaarsau Paar or 400-plus will be difficult to manage. Even crossing the earlier watershed of 303 is now, according to many, uncertain.
Why? Because, as several analysts have observed, this is a much more of a waveless than wavy election. At least so far. Even the recently released working paper on “Share of Religious Minorities: A Cross-Country Analysis (1950-2015)” by the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), though timed to perfection right in the middle of the election season, many not actually have the Pulwama effect. Despite the rising shrillness of the anti-Muslim rhetoric of ruling party campaigners, including Modi himself.
“It’s the economy, stupid”—former American president Bill Clinton’s famous apothegm notwithstanding, the Muslim question will continue to be a focal point in Indian elections. It is not that Surjit Bhalla’s latest book How We Vote: The Factors That Influence Voters (2024) gets it wrong. Yes. People do vote with their pocketbooks. In India, where many have neither wallets nor pockets, they do vote for the party or the leader who directly impacts and improves their daily lives.
But other facts and factors cannot simply be written or shrugged off. Nationalism, especially national security and Hindutva do matter. And Hindutva, let us face it, does appeal to the fears and insecurities of the majority, especially middle class Hindus who feel vulnerable and insulted in the only country in the world where they ought to be safest and most respected. Getting the largest possible share of Hindu votes has therefore been the BJP’s SOP right from the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
But Indian voters, let alone easy to fool, are far from dumb. As every card sharper knows, you can’t win with the same trick over and over again. In that sense, Hindus under threat or Muslims as the internal, eternal enemy may not work for the BJP as well this time around. Certainly, it is not drawing emotionally charged voters in droves to the hustings.
Who knows what the BJP’s Chanakyas still have up their sleeves? But, at least thus far, the actual number of seats the BJP wins will determine what kind of BJP the people really prefer. BJP’s margin of victory, in other words, will be an endorsement of either the idea of the One Party-One Leader or, to push this model to its logical extreme, One Leader-One Party-One Nation.
Indeed, lower numbers for the BJP will indicate that the people of India favour, to use the title of my friend Ganesh N Devy’s book, not just a nation but a party “Of Many Heroes”. This does not mean, as several surveys including an oft-cited one by Pew point out, that Indians do not like strong, even authoritative leaders. But there is, we must never forget, a difference between strong and despotic, authoritative and authoritarian. Indian history shows the latter type are called “Tanashahs” North of the Vindhyas, though the original Tana Shah, Abul Hasan (1672-1686) of Golconda, was from the Deccan. Ironically, this eighth and last of the Qutb Shahi kings was thought to be inclusive rather than tyrannical.
I don’t know what the equivalent of the slogan, Tanashahi nahi chalegi or Down with Tyranny, is in the South. I came of age during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. That is when I first heard it, both in public rallies of leaders like Jaiprakash Narayan before he was jailed, and in much more hushed voices, in private conversations after June 25, 1975. Since then, I have heard the same slogan voiced in a variety of contexts, including student protests against university administrators who, let alone being oppressive martinets, actually have very little power. The issue is not how much power a ruler actually wields but how he is projected and perceived to exercise it.
Is this where the BJP narrative has gone wrong?
I am arguing that this is not so much a battle between the BJP and the Opposition or even a joust between two versions of the BJP itself. It is not so much a question of whether Indian voters like the BJP of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Kishan Advani versus that of Modi and Amit Shah. But even if the latter, is it the BJP of Modi-Shah plus Raj Nath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Yogi Adityanath, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, S Jaishankar, and so on? Or a BJP in which Modi dwarfs everyone else, where every minister and ministry is reduced to lifeless puppets, and every regional leader is cut to size?
Do the rank-and-file BJP itself and the vast and powerful network of its parent body, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, endorse and support the ruling regime’s near-obsession with controlling the narrative, brooking no dissent, and projecting only one leader over and above everyone and everything else? Where all glory accrues only to one individual and all blame is deflected from him? Also, jailing Opposition leaders, while welcoming the turncoats and the corrupt into the BJP? Or downgrading, if not disabling the Parliament? To the best of my knowledge and understanding, they do not favour personality cults. It is always nation first, above and beyond any individual, no matter how great he or she is.
The Modi vs Modi contest that I am referring to is thus the tussle between two versions of Modi himself. Without any prejudice and sans disrespect, let us call these two versions the Great Dictator vs the Delivery Man. The maha neta who wants to control everyone and everything versus the pradhan sevak who wants to deliver development to the last person in the nation. Who will win?
The verdict lies in the hands, or should I say fingertips, of each voter, when entirely alone in the polling, she or he determines the destiny of India.
(Views are personal)
(Tweets @MakrandParanspe)
Makarand R Paranjape | Author and commentator