The BJP’s multiple electoral victories since 2014 across India have been credited to the dynamic interplay of PM Narendra Modi’s charisma and Amit Shah’s brilliant election management. From being the ruling party in just seven states in 2014, the BJP and its allies now govern 21 out of 29 states while the Congress, the leading opposition party, is in power in just three states and one union territory. Besides, the BJP’s spread has been both vertical and horizontal; it has formed governments even in states where the party had only a nominal presence earlier, for instance, in the Northeast.
The victory spree of the BJP since 2014 witnessed a stumbling block in Delhi (2015) and Bihar (2015), but soon the party went on to capture power in Assam by trampling the Congress, thereby establishing itself as a serious pan-India party. Thereafter, its victory march culminated in a historical mandate in Tripura, making the party an envy of others; the BJP now seemed to pose an existential threat to other parties and appeared invincible.
However, in the core state responsible for the BJP’s ascent to power, Uttar Pradesh––the stronghold of Hindutva icon and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath—the party witnessed a resounding setback in March 2018 in by-elections to two Lok Sabha seats, Gorakhpur and Phulpur, the former being the constituency of the UP chief minister since 1998.
The electoral setback was immediately attributed to the desperate alliance by the opposition parties, namely the SP and BSP. The BJP likened the unity of the opposition parties to animals coming to take shelter under a banyan tree when a flood threatens them. True! But the BJP forgot to take cognisance of two major factors.
Firstly, the coming together of the BSP and SP—after a hiatus of 23 years in the aftermath of the ugly ‘guest house incident’ on 2 June 1995 when SP goons attacked BSP supremo Mayawati after she withdrew her party’s support to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government—was in complete defiance of the social power configuration and the corresponding political dynamics of the state. The 1995 incident revealed the emerging social chasm between the dominant OBCs and aspirational, assertive Dalits, a factor Mayawati used to her advantage in 2007 to trounce the Yadav satraps. That Mayawati, whose party as a principle doesn’t contest bypolls, agreed to support the SP candidate was a complete reversal of the state’s socio-political common sense.
In the past, efforts to bring the BSP on a common anti-BJP platform by leaders like Congress President Rahul Gandhi, SP leader Akhilesh Yadav and RJD chief Lalu Yadav didn’t succeed as the taciturn Dalit leader had in mind the social power configuration and the horrible memory of the ‘guest house incident’.
The unity was achieved not merely by the BJP’s incessant victory march but also by the party’s aggressive call for an ‘Opposition-mukt Bharat’.
The BJP’s call, which started with ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ in the aftermath of its 2014 Lok Sabha victory, then took more and more targets—‘Communist-mukt Tripura and Kerala’, ‘Trinamool-mukt Bengal’, ultimately leaving no one; it turned its electoral battles into a cry for a virtual ‘Opposition-mukt Bharat’. This then created a common ground for opposition unity—a task that was not possible by the top leadership of the Congress alone.
Secondly, what the BJP in its victory spree forgot was the necessity of regional parties and alliances with them—a necessary feature of post-1989 governance given the multiplicity of social constituencies and fault lines existing across India and represented by the multiplicity of regional parties. The need to engage in the polemics of decimating the principal opposition parties like the Congress and the Left was understandable, but when regional parties started feeling the heat, the stated neutrality that they usually have towards the BJP and Congress melted. They then started veering towards the Congress, a trend the BJP leadership gifted to its prime rival.
For instance, the BJP unnecessarily antagonised its ally TDP in Andhra Pradesh by issuing provocative statements over the latter’s demand for a special package for the state. In Bengal, CM Mamata Banerjee was targeted. Even in Odisha, where the political culture is relatively decent in the absence of name-calling by political rivals, the BJP president calling CM Naveen Patnaik a ‘phata transformer’ recently has not gone down well with the majority of the electorate. Here, the BJP forgot the fact that much of its victory spree in many states in the Hindi heartland was the outcome of a meticulous alliance with regional parties.
Political genius lies not only in devising a strategy to ensure victory for one’s party, but also in preventing the possibility of a consolidation of rival parties. During the rule of NDA-1 and UPA-1&2, their respective political strategists lacked the aggression, determination and political acumen that the BJP leadership has now demonstrated.
But they made sure that their rivals remained a divided house, a task the BJP leadership has now failed to ensure. Thus, in the final analysis, the BJP’s aggressive political strategy against its rivals is creating a conducive ambience for the coming together of regional parties against the saffron party in 2019, making the electoral gains of the BJP a zero-sum game in the long-term—a trend unambiguously revealed by the electoral outcomes in by-elections, particularly in the populous states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Sajjan Kumar
has a PhD from the Centre for Political Studies, JNU. He is associated with Peoples Pulse, a Hyderabad-based research organisation
Email: sajjanjnu@gmail.com