“Soft power” and “goodwill” were phrases and words which buzzed around at the recently held BJP national executive session. Prime Minister Narendra Modi underlined their significance in his concluding address, stating that the BJP should embrace a “new” style of politics to “create soft power and goodwill” among all sections and enhance its numbers in the 2024 parliamentary elections.
“Goodwill” is appropriately anodyne but “soft power” that is usually used as a characterisation in international relations merits a closer look in the background of domestic politics. Coined by US political scientist Joseph Nye in his 1990 book Bound to Lead that challenged the then conventional view of the decline of American power, Nye said, “I felt that something was still missing—the ability to affect others by attraction and persuasion rather than just coercion and payment.”
Nye elaborated on the etymology of “soft power” in a February 2017 paper titled, Soft power: the origins and political process of a concept (published by Humanities and Social Sciences Communications). He wrote, “Everything was coercion and payments, but sometimes people influence others by ideas and attraction that set the agenda for others or get them to want what you want...” He tried a variety of terms to summarise these thoughts and settled on “soft power”.
What did the term signify for Modi and the BJP in a sitting convened to essentially deliberate on the state elections in 2023 which are a mixed bag for the party? It was about reaching out to the “marginalised and minority communities”, in particular the latter because the combination of political Hindutva and welfare packages have successfully drawn vast sections of the under-empowered into the BJP’s fold. Among the minorities, the PM was quoted as singling out the Pasmanda and Bohra who represent two ends of the Muslim socio-economic spectrum: the Pasmandas form the depressed classes while the Bohras who traditionally engaged with trade and commerce in western India enjoy a degree of financial and social leverage.
The self-declared gestures do not wholly square up with ground realities, particularly in BJP-ruled provinces such as Madhya Pradesh, where the approaching elections have expectedly amped up rhetoric and action. Last week, a Muslim, identified as Shahbaz, was thrashed outside a Khandwa mall by “vigilantes” for reportedly speaking to a Hindu woman after which a complaint of sexual assault was registered against him. For a long time, such attacks were explained away as “spontaneous” outbursts from the rank and file of the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad and, therefore, presumably outside the administration’s purview although in the Khandwa episode, six attackers were arrested. But when senior ministers issued statements, amounting to dog whistles, will the foot soldiers not take the message and respond? Usha Thakur described madrassas as the “breeding grounds of terrorism” while recently, Narottam Mishra, the home minister, warned that the government would vet the study material in madrassas and expunge the “objectionable” content. How will the BJP and Centre address the gap that exists between the intent to exercise “soft power” and the existence of hard force?
The executive meet was convened before nine states vote this year, starting with Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland. BJP’s wisdom would have it that their outcome will create an ambience for the 2024 battle although it is worth stressing that each state has its own dynamics and idiosyncrasies that are out of step with those existing at the Centre and BJP-governed places. Of course the BJP side-stepped such issues by aligning and co-opting the dominant force in each northeastern region including Tripura, where it allied with the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura in the last elections and rode to victory.
Since winning elections are the sine qua non for the BJP’s existence, the executive meet made it clear that Prime Minister Narendra Modi remained its most bankable asset—his persona was unassailable and the Opposition’s endeavour to traduce him was negated by the verdicts coming from the Supreme Court. Invoking the apex court for endorsement is significant considering that the Centre and the judiciary are again on a collision course over the appointment of judges. However, Modi and Amit Shah, the home minister and the BJP’s principal political strategist, are level-headed enough to know that an individual’s charisma alone cannot combat ground realities. Their political reflexes kicked in promptly.
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Consider Tripura which the BJP is deeply invested in ever since it dislodged the Left Front in 2018. It lost its ally, the IPFT, to the new kid on the block, Pradyot Debbarma, who quit the Congress and launched his outfit TIPRA Motha that champions the need for a separate Adivasi state. Every “mainstream” party is nurtured by the vote of the dominant Bengali population and endorsing the TIPRA Motha’s demand is not only problematic but a potential call for defeat. Undaunted and at the first whiff of news that the Left and Congress were courting Debbarma, the BJP dispatched its nodal man in the northeast, Himanta Biswa Sarma, the Assam chief minister, to meet Debbarma at Delhi, setting off the speculation that a pre-poll alliance was being worked on. Reality check: the same day, a TIPRA Motha backer was murdered in Tripura’s Kamalpur sub-division amid heightened tensions between Debbarma’s supporters and those of the BJP.
It is imperative for the BJP to retain not only Tripura but expand the frontiers of growth in the east and the south, since its “politics of saturation”—a slogan that was bandied at the Delhi meet—has peaked in the north and the west, and a decline, however marginal, is inevitable. The project entails going beyond Assam to keep the handsome gains it made in West Bengal in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and looking outside of Karnataka, its only southern outpost, at Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
It’s a formidable call and the provocative statements and moves of some of the southern governors, who have arrogated to themselves the Opposition’s role, will not help. If anything, the polemic over a Unitarian versus politically independent order that was manifest in Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi’s comments accentuated the salience of regional parties even in a highly centralised regime. A lesson for the BJP.
Radhika Ramaseshan
Columnist and political commentator