People's Democracy

 The Meaning Of BJP’s Victory In The Recent Elections

Nalini Taneja

WHY have people voted these barbarians to power? This is a question that haunts and torments all democratic people today. The election results have brought with them a sense of despair and demoralisation, coming as they did on the eve of the eleventh ‘anniversary’ of the destruction of Babri Masjid, which ushered in and continues to signify what the Sangh Parivar stands for.

Newspapers and the visual media are keen on showing that the recent assembly elections were fought on the plank of ‘development’ and that the BJP victory in the three states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, somehow symbolises a popular concern with ‘development.’ Needless to say, the media says what it wants to see rather than what is there to see.

There are stories of how even Narendra Modi, the architect of the Gujarat pogrom, in deference to this popular concern with development, tailored his election campaign around issues of development, and of how the moderate Ms Vasundhara Raje criticised the Congress government on what it did not do for the people. Uma Bharti had a lot to say on power and roads and the functioning of Digvijay Singh, and that Ajit Jogi lost because he is as corrupt as Judeo, the chief campaigner for the BJP in Chhattisgarh.

NUANCES OF THE CAMPAIGN

The media however forgot, some important nuances of the campaign. One, when the BJP offers ‘development’, it translates this offer in a way as to exclude the minorities, and to favour its own upper caste-Hindu base, and to extend the favour to the OBCs, the dalits and tribals, only if they fall in line and are prepared to be incorporated in the larger “Hindu unity”. This was a message that people could read, which the media did not, and this crude message played its role as much in the Gujarat victory as it did in these three states.

Secondly, it is not abstract development but jobs and livelihood concerns that guided the votes, and in the states where the Congress was ruling, it is the Congress which implemented and was the architect of liberalisation policies in the last few years, and was perceived as such. People in fact voted against the ‘development’ and ‘economic reforms’ which the BJP economic policies signify.

The corporate sector on its part, and the media, controlled and owned overwhelmingly by big industrialists, have put their weight behind the political forces which have carried through disinvestment, privatisation, erosion of all guarantees and welfare for the working class and even middle class employees, including attacks on the right to strike. A detailed study and investigation into election financing is bound to bring out this factor. It is one big explanation for the BJP victory, which is not being talked about in the media.

Thirdly the media created an unnatural and theoretical disjunction between the BJP and the storm troopers of the Parivar. Contrary to all past experience, and all evidence staring it in the face, the media continued to see the BJP as a party in government, moderate, respectable, responsible and committed to ‘governance’, as just another party, preferable in many ways. Not once during the campaign was it recalled that Uma Bharti is no other than the individual facing charges for the destruction of the Babri masjid. That she actually rejoiced and celebrated as the domes fell, or that she partnered Sadhvi Rithambhara in ushering in a new era of political campaign where hatred and abuse against the Muslims became routine and public, and a new right wing activist woman opposed to women’s emancipation came into her own, seems to have skipped the notice of the media.

It was BJP leaders like her who brought the rhetoric of the shakhas into mainstream politics; they changed the tone, tenor and pitch of political debate, the very discourse and agenda of modern day politics in India. They are storm troopers themselves, those who have led mobs crying for blood, and are not likely to stop having tasted it having tasted political power as well, one may say, with all its attendant financial resources and administrative machinery at their command, they have created the BJP; that, presided over unprecedented attacks on the minorities and the working class. The BJP is the parliamentary and resourceful arm of the Sangh Parivar, a keen and active facilitator of all the agendas of the RSS through its position as party of ‘governance’ and as leading partner in the government at the centre.

PROPAGANDA OF STORM TROOPERS

The ruling classes in this country can very well live with pogroms, as long as these do not affect their profits. The BJP government in power has ensured that they do not. Throughout the election campaign, while the candidates themselves talked one language --- the language addressing ‘development’ requirements of the ruling classes --- the storm troopers preceding and following them in the campaign sought to tell people that their livelihoods are being eroded by the ‘internal enemies’, the ‘outsiders’ who claim their jobs and livelihoods. In an era of shrinking jobs that can be made to sound common sense, as we have seen in Assam and Mumbai recently, when poor Biharis were targeted. At stake are low-grade jobs, while the ruling classes remain smug that the privileged positions remain their preserve.

Sectarian nationalism has been successfully woven by the Parivar into issues of class struggle, and perceived grievances rather than real grievances are being made to occupy the political centre-stage. Struggles over livelihood are being continuously complicated through a dominant political vocabulary becoming increasingly characterised by divisive communal, caste and ethnic strife, and class unities are being continuously sabotaged by forces that have a stake in these conflicts.

More than the ‘Muslim vote’, it is now the ‘Hindu’ vote’ that needs be calculated. That is how most bourgeois parties see the matter, and one must understand that this is one major achievement of the Sangh Parivar. It means secular unity can only be built through struggles on livelihood issues.

No doubt there would be serious brain storming sessions by all political parties opposed to the Sangh Parivar, and we will arrive at the conclusion that there is a need for a broader based secular unity as well as principled opposition to the tendencies of parties like the Congress and others who represent political opposition to the BJP but are champions of its economic policies. There lies the crux of the problem no doubt, and it will have to be grappled with time and again with every election, at every major juncture in political life. The breakthrough can come only when we find a solution to this.