Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rabidly Islamophobic remarks in recent election speeches betrays a degree of nervousness in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s ranks. A low turnout in the first phase of the Lok Sabha polls, lack of enthusiasm among party workers and an evident sense of resentment against BJP parliamentarians on the ground may have forced Modi to go full tilt communal once again. Religious polarisation as a diversionary electoral tactic has been employed by the BJP every time it has felt anxious about its prospects. However, it appears that Modi is trying out something new this time around.
Describing Muslims as those who procreate more than any other community has been a lie that the Sangh parivar has historically perpetuated among the Hindus. Modi, however, chose to propagate the notion in the Adivasi-dominated Banswara in Rajasthan. The Bhil community forms nearly 70% of the population in the Banswara-Dungarpur Lok Sabha constituency.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Here, Rajkumar Roat, the leader of the Bharatiya Adivasi Party (BAP) and a popular MLA, has been leading a spirited campaign to secure the Adivasi’s right to the region’s resources. The Bhils have organised themselves over the years in the largely feudal Rajasthan to raise concerns around what they call are issues of their jal, jangal and zameen (water, forests and land). The community’s militant assertion has upset the status quo and existing electoral equations. Roat is contesting the Lok Sabha elections for the first time in 2024. The Congress had announced its own candidate earlier but has now unofficially entered into an alliance with BAP. It is asking its supporters to vote for Roat, even as its own candidate refused to withdraw his nomination.
Modi’s hateful speech against Muslims was made against such a backdrop, where he incited fear in his Adivasi audience about the Congress’s alleged plans to “distribute their wealth” among Muslims. Such a claim is, of course, false. But that is not the point.
The biggest long term threat for the two-term prime minister is one where he may be seen as aiding concentration of wealth in a few hands. Indeed, the perception has slowly been gaining ground, given that almost all opposition parties have been talking about growing inequality under his regime.
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Some of his welfare measures are directed at mitigating the threat, even as his government has gone the whole hog in privatising nearly everything.
The Congress has backed its campaign on the rising gap between the rich and the poor with data, and attributed this trend to the Modi government’s cronyism and its evident policy tilt towards privatising mining and other industrial activities, public services, jobs, education and institutions.
Rajkumar Roat. Photo: Facebook/Rajkumar Roat
The Congress manifesto is anchored to the principle of socio-economic justice for the poor, and promises a range of welfare measures for them. The BAP, and other emerging Adivasi forces across India, have also raised such criticisms of the Modi government. Any advocacy by the Adivasis on equitable distribution of country’s resources directly serves as a roadblock to the Modi government’s pro-corporate predisposition and Hindu nationalist ideology.
The prime minister’s speech is polarising in more ways than one. His remarks didn’t merely demonise the Muslims but also sought to pit the poor against each other.
The Sachar committee reported that Indian Muslims are one of the most disadvantaged groups in India, with poor levels in nearly all parameters of socio-economic development. Precisely for this reason, former Congress Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 had clubbed Muslims with Dalits and Adivasis as the ‘first claimants’ on the country’s resources. The BJP has since then mischievously spun his statement to propagate the lie that the Congress believes Muslims should be the first rightful owner of India’s resources.
The BJP has been fairly successful in bringing a large section of Dalits into the Hindutva fold in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It has been able to convince these communities that the emphasis of secular parties on securing Muslim votes in successive elections has led to their socio-economic and political marginalisation. At the same time, the BJP gave representation to many non-dominant and under-represented Dalit groups to lure them, even as other parties struggled to do that. The BJP, of course, could accommodate them better as its policy to block out Muslim representation in its party opens up space for under-represented communities from amongst Hindus.
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Now, Modi appears to be implementing a similar strategy to entice Adivasis into the BJP’s social coalition under the Hindutva umbrella, while also burying the Adivasi groups’ issues of socio-economic justice.
The BJP has earlier shown in Uttar Pradesh how it could sideline the socio-economic concerns of non-Jatav Dalits and foreground the question of their political representation while integrating them into the Hindutva fold. In fact, soon after Banswara, Modi pitched Dalits against Muslims in a similar fashion in Rajasthan’s Tonk-Sawai Madhopur where he accused the Congress of trying to reduce the SC/ST quota to give reservation to Muslims – again, a half-truth, but then that’s not the point.
In Banswara, Modi challenged the very idea of equitable distribution of wealth in India that the Adivasi groups have been vigorously raising across the country. Until now, the BJP had mostly used its anti-conversion campaign against evangelist Christians in tribal-dominated pockets. The Prime Minister’s speech in Banswara marked a new chapter in his outreach towards the Adivasis.
While he demonised Muslims as “infiltrators” and the Congress as a party with an “urban Naxal” and “Maoist” mindset, he effectively laid the ground for marginalised groups like Dalits and Adivasis to set aside their rights to jal, jangal, and zameen, surrender their advocacy of fair distribution of wealth and instead fight another disenfranchised group – all in the aid of the Sangh parivar’s vision of a Hindu rashtra.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
