We are in a time of momentous transition. Recent events suggest that as a nation we could be headed for life-altering turbulence. Separately, each episode is of high impact, and together they have the potential to accelerate a process in the direction of an open autocracy that could betoken, for all practical purposes, a one-party state apparatus – bidding adieu to the constitution we have nurtured for 75 years – if circumstances remain supportive.
Predictably enough, in the short run, the most critical of these would be the return of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to office in the next Lok Sabha election, five months away. Whether as a propaganda trick or not, Modi has recently declared that a third straight win for him was a foregone conclusion.
Looking at the country’s political map, it is a no-brainer that an effective coming together of the significant sections of the opposition in the major states will block Modi’s further advance, and that may result in his relegation to the background. He appears to have way too many adversaries within the saffron universe who could turn vengeful if power slips from his grasp.
The top shots in Lucknow, and not a few in Nagpur, the city of the RSS headquarters, or in Delhi, Bhopal and Jaipur, to say nothing of the second or third string players in elsewhere, who now pretend to be obsequious or dutiful, are likely to lose little time in getting even for real or perceived slights.
On the other hand, A failure on the part of the INDIA alliance parties to recognise the magnitude of the historical moment they are navigating is poised to leave each of them isolated. Unity is, therefore, an existential imperative. Are they aware of this reality?
If anything, the recent assembly polls in the northern states, which the BJP won decisively, showed that the local Congress satraps were blissfully unaware of the great political significance of these particular elections and carried on as though it was business as usual. So was the Congress leadership, else it would have rapped the three erring chieftains on their knuckles for their tunnel vision when there was still time.
Rahul Gandhi was candid enough to bring up the subject in the December 21 meeting of the Congress Working Committee but, with the Congress, there is no knowing that the party won’t fluff its lines again when it deals with partners and allies to prepare for the parliament election.
After being displaced from its high perch 30-odd years ago – when the party was indeed a gargantuan enterprise – it has not quite figured out how to operate the philosophy of working in tandem with entities some of whom may well have a chip on their shoulder, being state parties that have made space for themselves by edging out the Congress over time. Working in genuine partnership with the Congress is a lesson that the state parties of the INDIA alliance also need to learn – and in quick time. There is not much time left.
Comparisons of the present situation with the Janata experiment do not hold water. The entity that regional parties of the day (including the BJP’s precursor, Jana Sangh, was also just that at the time) were called upon to ally with was not the Congress but a disgruntled Congress rump.
Modi played a high-stakes game in the recent elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. He would have been acutely conscious that in the event of a serious setback in this battle, the wolves within the BJP would be out, baying for his blood. They would question his ability – or even credentials – to lead the party in the forthcoming Lok Sabha election. These polls were close to being a point of reckoning, if not a make or break moment, for the prime minister, although this was not apparent. Inherent in them was the potential to bring the 10-year Modi rule to a turning point, whether history marked a turn or not.
It is not clear the prime minister’s Congress opponents figured any of this. They did not discern the sensitivity of the moment. They went about as though this was just another poll battle. They didn’t understand that a positive result would give Modi the leap and momentum in advance of the key election in 2024 and help him set the field for the main battle ahead.
Though Modi was taking his chances, he was not playing blind when he forced the BJP’s key state leaders – the architects of its past wins in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – out of the reckoning, appealing to the electorate to cast their vote in his name. He was aware that the wind of communalism was in his sails. Two important considerations would have weighed as inordinately powerful factors – Ayodhya and Kashmir.
Also read: BJP’s Leadership Shuffle: Generational Change or Modi’s Strategy for a Return to Power?
After a long four-year wait, the Supreme Court decided to take up the Kashmir case – the challenge to the Union government jettisoning the constitutional autonomy of J&K. The arguments being reported in the press gave ample indication which way things were going. To many it seemed that the timing of an event of such magnitude may not be unrelated to the electoral timetable. The judgment came on December 11, 2023, after the recent assembly election results were announced, but forms a prelude to the parliament election due early next year.
Arguably the most crucial event in setting the narrative of the new nationalism espoused by Modi and his party was the November 2019 Ayodhya judgment of the Supreme Court, which called the destruction of the Babri Masjid a “criminal act” but also, defying logic and common sense, handed over possession of the site on which it had stood to the so-called Hindu parties, meaning a clutch of Hindutva outfits.
PM Narendra Modi takes part in the bhoomi pujan for the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, August 5, 2020. Photo: PIB
Since then, activities associated with the construction of the new temple to Lord Rama have been flooding the newspapers and social media. They have also found a regular mention in the BJP’s speeches during the assembly elections. The inauguration of the temple scheduled for January 22, 2024, is the primary news in the Modi calendar, and is dutifully reflected in the mainstream media.
This background became the setting for the win in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which has unbound the Prometheus of Hindutva, who is portrayed as a heroic figure – greater than anything that has happened to the Hindu supremacist ideology since its inception. To add more grist to the mill, the temple disputes of Varanasi and Mathura appear to be continually stoked in the direction desired by the new nationalists by various levels of our judicial system, not excluding the Supreme Court.
Senior BJP leaders now routinely refer to Modi as the ‘best’ prime minister India has ever had, clearly surpassing Vajpayee and not to mention the great leaders of the freedom movement, such as Nehru, who is just about recognized as a former prime minister – and sought to be made less than significant. The already-established Modi cult owes not a little to its forceful promotion by Modi himself, who seeks to portray himself as larger than life and all-conquering. The G20 meet in Delhi this year was an illustration.
It is in the reign of this cult figure that a senior functionary of the Ayodhya temple administration has declared the upcoming inaugural of the temple on January 22 as an event of history on par with the independence of India from British rule in 1947. The new chief minister of Madhya Pradesh has said that the prime meridian, the internationally recognised zero degree longitude line, will now be made to pass through Ujjain in his state, which is the seat of the Lord Shiva as Mahakaal (the Great Time). The currently recognised marker is Greenwich near London, and the international time zones are calculated in relation to Greenwich to arrive at Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Modi is the “strong leader”, the Hindutva forces hanker for, veritably the current avatar of the “Chakravarti samrat” of ancient India, a mighty, conquering ruler who cannot be accountable to his subjects, and who is beyond questioning or reproach.
Then it is no surprise that the prime minister declared to a newspaper in an interview, ignoring the parliament which was in session, that the December 13 incident, which saw the breach of the security system in the new parliament building and the entry in utterly dumbfounding circumstances of some youths, shouting slogans and letting off smoke-filled canisters, into the Lok Sabha chamber, was “serious”, but “there shall be no debate.”
Also read: Modi Govt’s Priority: An MP’s Act of Mimicry, Caste Politics, Not Parliament Security Breach
What followed was predictable enough as the presiding officers of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, in a space of three days suspended nearly 150 opposition MPs because they made a ruckus and showed protest placards when their demand for a statement by the Union home minister was ignored by the Chair.
For all practical purposes, the prime minister’s statement about not encountering a debate became a diktat for those who run the chambers of parliament.
It is plain that while Prometheus may have now broken free, thanks to multi-sided institutional capitulation, the institutions of modern India are themselves now in chains, waiting upon the will of the master. After this, if the next engagement is in the bag for the ruler, we may only anticipate a turn of enormous magnitude in our constitutional and political history.
This is the inverted reality the INDIA opposition alliance can overlook at its own peril as it goes about in its inscrutable meandering fashion to chart out an electoral battle plan. Grand upsets are a part of history, including our own not so distant electoral past. But it is not chance that brings it about.
Anand K. Sahay is a political commentator based in New Delhi.
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