Political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta has been prophetic in his observation that the events at Ayodhya on January 22 marked the consecration of Hinduism as a political religion, a moment where Hinduism ceased to be merely religious, with Narendra Modi assuming the mantle of Hindu kingship.
Look at the blurring line of state and religion and the wanton misuse of the official machinery for Ayodhya mobilisation. The Indian Air Force was used to shower flower petals while Modi was consecrating the Ram Lalla idol. The railways and airport authority provided all the support by way of massive infrastructural expansion.
President Droupadi Murmu predicted it as the ‘beginning of a new cycle of resurgence of the nation.’ The Union cabinet hailed it as a development of the ‘millennium.’
In tune with the new narrative, the Archaeological Survey of India, in its report, revealed that a Hindu temple existed prior to the construction of the Gyanvapi mosque. Following that, the Varanasi district court judge, a day before retiring, allowed Hindus to perform puja at the disputed mosque. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court declined to intervene in the matter.
The Ayodhya Trust has been officially recognised for tax exceptions. As per tax consultants, the deductions will be available under chapter VI(A) of the Income Tax Act.
Like all good spin dictators, Narendra Modi has a core religious support base: the Hindutva crowd. He has emerged as its messiah.
However, his strategy is to short-circuit the middlemen and don himself as the Hindu Hriday Samrat.
He acted as the chief priest and performed the pran pratishta at the Ayodhya temple. He is quietly wresting the leadership from Nagpur.
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The scenario unfolding looks really scary. Both for its speed and the threat it poses to the country’s democratic fabric. Everything is moving as per the script towards the heralding of a Hindu Samrat under a theocratic construct.
The dangerous drift is all too evident. The Election Commission has already been turned into another government department. Former President Ram Nath Kovind panel’s elaborate blueprint for simultaneous polls is a done thing. This will enable the Modi-Shah combine to pour out its massive funding power and carpet bomb the entire India, thus declaring himself as the prime minister for five years.
With his tight grip on the media, the all-out two-month push is also bound to influence the voting pattern in all the 543 Lok Sabha and 4,123 assembly constituencies as well as 4,852 urban local bodies and 2.4 lakh village panchayats.
Trusted loyalist Bibek Debroy has already floated the idea of a new constitution. This will provide the necessary constitutional validation to the Samrat.
The kind of statute changes will depend on the election results.
Veteran leader Sharad Pawar has condemned the emerging ‘Hindutva fascism.’
Moreover, look at the speed with which the latest amendments have empowered Modi to appoint his own man as the chief election commissioner. For this, the Chief Justice of India has been removed from the selection panel. A Union cabinet minister will be the new member.
Sam Pitroda and other domain experts have raised serious issues about the present electronic voting machines (EVMs). With the present EVMs in use, they say, the ruling party could easily win 400 seats. When the Opposition leaders raised the issue with the Election Commission, these were met with the same tired set of explanations.
To allay concerns, the opposition Congress proposed a workable solution: conducting a physical counting of the VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail) slips to verify what the EVMs recorded.
This might cause some delay in counting, but it will remove all misgivings about the EVM.
However, for reasons best known to the Commission, the opposition’s request for a meeting with the chief election commissioner has been met with stoic silence. The Congress repeated the same request on the National Voters’ day.
This repeated silence, in turn, has added to the opposition’s apprehension.
And now comes another revelation. At least four Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders have their say in running Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), as they are its independent directors. BEL supplies the EVMs to the Election Commission.
Former bureaucrat E.A.S. Sharma raised the issue with the Election Commission quite some time back. But nothing has happened so far.
If true, it is a serious allegation.
Also read: The Case for Bringing Paper Ballots Back
Why has the mainstream media, which remained so alert and active during the Manmohan Singh days, silently stayed clear of this ethical excess? Are Mansukhbhai Khachariya and others mentioned by the former secretary to the Government of India really BEL board members? Why does no one want to respond to such queries?
Furthermore, the recent amendments made to the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act raise concerns whether the incumbent CEC Rajiv Kumar can become a trusted ally to the ruling party if a Bangladesh-like situation emerges. Consider what happened during last month’s Bangladesh elections when Sheikh Hasina won with a three-fourth majority.
With thousands facing charges over fabricated cases, the opposition in Bangladesh had boycotted the elections where the voting percentage was barely 40%.
With this, Hasina became Prime Minister in her fifth term.
Her long tenure as prime minister is comparable to that of the elected dictators of the 21st century like Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin.
The Hasina government came under pressure from the United States and the European Union ahead of polling, as they demanded a transparent process. For obvious reasons, the Modi government has, however, maintained a stony silence over the transgressions.
When Ram Nath Kovind was called back from retirement – rather unprecedentedly – to head the panel for simultaneous polls, it surprised many. It has been a hatchet man’s job with a predictable outcome.
‘One country, one election’ has been Modi-Shah’s masterstroke, borrowed from some of the 21st century’s elected dictators. It was aimed at empowering the ruling party to pour out huge funds, resort to massive mobilisation with full force, and conduct a Modi-centered campaign supported by unparalleled publicity, something which the smaller parties could not even dream of.
But the real takeaway from the Kovind panel will be the presidentialisation of the system without constitutional amendments. More importantly, Modi hopes to use this superior electoral might, backed by the Ayodhya storm, to greatly influence the assembly elections in the opposition-ruled states. This is the real significance of the Kovind panel.
Apart from the Kovind panel, the government has also sought the views of the Law Commission on the legalities of simultaneous polls. Since then, Ram Nath Kovind has been pretty busy with his job.
All the major opposition parties have fiercely opposed the simultaneous polls. The Congress has said the Kovind panel should be dissolved and the very idea should be dropped. Trinamool Congress’s Mamata Banerjee described it as a plan to ‘subvert’ the basic structure of the constitution and impose Presidential system. “I am against any kind of autocracy,” she said.
In contrast, as earlier mentioned, pro-Modi intellectuals like Bibek Debroy have already mooted the need to ‘embrace’ a new constitution.
Also read: It Turns Out Modi’s ‘Amrit Kaal’ Is Also a Ruthless Kaal
In 2017, Erdogan changed the country’s constitution, and expanded presidential powers. In India, what kind of a system Modi will introduce will depend on the number of seats his party gets in the Lok Sabha election.
The BJP leaders are already discussing the possibility of securing over 400 seats.
The reasoning behind the emphasis on surpassing the 400-mark, along with recent initiatives like the ‘ghar wapsi’ drive and the new ‘Operation Lotus’, targeting AAP MLAs, such as Jagadish Shettar and Nitish Kumar, revolves around the belief that such a commanding majority would grant Prime Minister Modi the freedom to potentially modify the current constitutional framework as desired.
Academics have safely settled abroad anticipating the formal heralding of a Hindu state any time.
Political scientist Ashutosh Varshney has predicted that Modi will go in for the Jim Crow model of keeping minorities suppressed rather than eliminating them.
P. Raman is a veteran journalist.
