A few days ago, a Rajasthan businessman who had just returned from a very gratifying darshan (viewing) at the new Ram temple in Ayodhya could be heard complaining that even after ten years of Modi, the administrative and financial ecosystem remained unhelpful to “small business people” like him. For good measure, he chose to add that corruption, at all levels, remained as rampant “as before.” It is easy to dismiss the businessman’s sour assessment as unrepresentative and extremely personal; but, it is fair to assume that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his political strategists will not question the thumbs down either.
What makes the Modi cabal different from others in the political arena is its uncanny ability to keep its ears tuned in to rumblings on the bleachers. Unlike the hired guns in the godi media and paid mouse-pushers in the chambers of commerce, this regime does not allow itself to be taken in by its own spiel. Massive disinformation, fake news and extravagant propaganda do play their role in shaping the voters’ thought processes, but Modi knows the extent of bogusness of the claims of vikas (development) being dished out for public consumption. He and his advisors know that the lives of the vast majority of Indians is defined by misery and hopelessness.
Yet, elections need to be won, political power needs to be retained and augmented and the Leader’s quest for personal glory has to be satisfied. For the time being, there is something called the Constitution of India which insists on a protocol of fairness and transparency. Every five years, the Leader, however popular and divinely blessed they believes themselves to be, must submit to the simple test of voters’ approval/disapproval.
There are three elements – two invisible and one quite visible – to this process.
First, the formal institutional framework, presided over by the Election Commission of India. It is the basic expectation in our constitutional democracy that the Election Commission of India (ECI) will act as a fair, neutral and firm umpire, without allowing the ruling party to abuse its position of incumbency nor discriminate against challengers. This is mostly an invisible process but no one would dispute the fact that the EC’Is functioning today is far from reassuring. Which is why the Opposition needs to exert itself to ensure a level playing field.
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The second element, also invisible, is dhandlebazzi, (organieds underhandedness) i.e. the unseen rigging at different stages – in the preparation of voters’ lists, the use of police force to keep minorities from voting, intimidation in the pooling booth, and the extensive use of money and liquor to influence voters. The richer a political party, the better equipped it is to use underhand methods. To the extent that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is by far the richest political party, it enjoys a deadly advantage over its rivals. Nor is it averse to using its influence over Nirvachan Sadan to see to it that its rivals, which retain pockets of strength, remain handicapped even in these tactics.
The third element, the most visible, is the sales pitch a political party chooses to make openly for winning the electorate’s affection. The Modi government’s decision to notify the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, four years after parliament passed it, is to be seen and applauded as the BJP leadership’s undiminished capacity for cynicism and realism.
The BJP crowd deserves credit for prescience in recognising that despite all the crowing about “Viksit Bharat” and “the third largest economy,” the voter is skeptical; the daily life of the average citizen remains untouched. Administrative incompetence, political corruption and crony capitalist excesses curdle up the ordinary Indian’s existence on a daily basis. BJP strategists and RSS commissars know that the voter is unimpressed with the “Modi Sarkar” – notwithstanding the crores of tax-payers’ money that has been spent on building a cult figure out of a very ordinary man.
So, the BJP, the RSS, Modi, Amit Shah and the rest of the gang are now doing what they have always done well – working the Hindu-Muslim divide. Slogans like “saab ka saath, saab ka vikas” sounded good to the Hindu middle classes who are reluctant to subscribe to the basic catechism of bigotry; the so-called outreach to the “Pasmandas” was heady stuff and conflicted all the “moderate” Muslims and confused many a psephologist. But the good doctor always knew he was administering a placebo – just as the Delhi police sub-inspector knew that he had a license to kick namazis in broad day-light.
To the extent that the CAA was designed and marketed as a blatantly anti-Muslim measure, its “operationalisation” just a few days before the announcement of the Lok Sabha poll is a massive acknowledgement of inner doubts at the core of the inner court. But being the most practiced and most adroit bluff-masters in the public square, the Shahenshah and Shah duo can be expected to crank up visceral anti-Muslim fears while they tickle the collective Hindu bone.
One way or the other, we are in for a season of Hindu-Muslim polarisation. While the UP chief minister and other lower order functionaries can be expected to be less restrained in their anti-Muslim rhetoric, the prime minister will use every single ruse in his voluminous book of tricks to foreground his Hindu-ness. As the latest Government of India advertisement (in Times of India, March 12, 2024) reminds the voter, “Prime Minister celebrates every Diwali with soldiers.” Nothing is uncalculated; nothing is ever done without a long-term partisan cause in mind. The colours of the Parivar and contours of Bharat in his “Mera Bharat, Mera Parivar” call are unmistakably tainted by the communal divide. Jai Siya Ram.
Harish Khare is a former editor-in-chief of The Tribune.
