There are all the reasons for the exit poll results to be correct.
There are many conditions for them to be proved wrong, too. However, the fulfilment of these conditions is extremely difficult, if not impossible, in today’s India.
The first reason why the exit polls could be right is the Election Commission itself has started feeling proud of working like a wing of the BJP.
The second reason is the big media, which decided long ago that it would work as a propaganda department for the BJP.
The third is the judiciary, which has done amazing acrobatics to remain favourable to the ruling party and to appear balanced.
The fourth reason is India’s bureaucracy and police, which have accepted the ideology of the BJP or of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as their guiding star instead of the constitution.
The fifth and perhaps the most important reason is India’s big capitalist class, which has adopted the Narendra Modi-led BJP as the most suitable means to grab all of India’s resources.
Before writing all this I must say that these results, if true, have proven the predictions of my friends and students wrong. My young friends – whether from Purvanchal or western Uttar Pradesh, or Rajasthan or Bihar – all felt there was a groundswell against the BJP. What to say about Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala! Even in Delhi, they saw and felt something else during the election campaign.
Were all of them misjudging the people – to be precise, the Hindu voters? Did everyone’s hard work go in vain?
Do we now accept that the youth have been defeated by the old? My young friends are still confident that a majority of those under 35 have voted against the BJP. But did the older ones, not caring for the present of the youth, decide to invest in the utopia of the Hindu rashtra?
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The Election Commission did not even raise a finger against the anti-Muslim propaganda carried out by BJP leaders, led by Narendra Modi, from the first to the last phase of the election.
If the speeches of all BJP leaders and the party’s election campaign materials are analysed, one can see clearly that this time, the BJP has sought an anti-Muslim mandate from its voters. A mandate to put Muslims in their place.
Till date, one section of voters was never pitted against the other with such brazenness and shamelessness. Under the leadership of Narendra Modi, all BJP leaders made it clear that they were addressing only Hindu voters. Their election plank was nothing but Hindutva!
When the Election Commission does not reprimand the communal BJP, the people also think it is legitimate.
This is very dangerous. What the BJP has said through this propaganda is that though Hindus and Muslims live together in the same geographical area, they are completely separate communities whose interests are antagonistic to each other. According to the BJP, any move to improve the economic or social conditions of Muslims necessarily usurps the interests of Hindus.
After the creation of Pakistan by carving off parts of India, the people who came to India from there were divided by the RSS into two groups: infiltrators and refugees. Those Muslims who came to India from Pakistan were infiltrators and perpetual suspects, but Hindus were refugees.
And those who never left India are the descendants of invaders. BJP slogans like ‘Babar ki aulaad’ or ‘Aurangzeb ki santaan’ make it amply clear.
Hindus were repeatedly reminded during the elections that the Muslims who are in India are cornering the share of Hindus and that Muslims have a lot of the resources that should have been entirely with Hindus.
The use of the code word ‘infiltrator’ for Muslims was a convenient excuse for the media to peddle and legitimise the BJP’s hate campaign.
Hindus and Muslims are not just separated by their religion, their worldly interests are also opposed to each other. The rise of Muslims necessarily means the decline of Hindus: this was the essence of BJP’s message in this election campaign.
Not only this, BJP leaders also tried their best to pit Sikhs and Christians against Muslims. Sikhs were repeatedly reminded that their Gurus had fought against the atrocities of Muslims, so both of them cannot sit in the same row.
The BJP is trying to form a temporary anti-Muslim alliance by taking advantage of the anti-Muslim hatred within Christians. An attempt is being made to isolate Muslims by portraying them as everyone’s enemy. Christians are attacked on a daily basis in India, but that becomes a non-issue when the figure of the dreaded Muslim is made visible.
This is not a geographical division, but a political one. Would this not have had any effect on the mind of the Hindu voters?
It is not that only BJP leaders are doing this. Even before this election campaign, for the last ten years, day and night, through anti-Muslim programs on TV and articles in newspapers, Hindus have been turned into a population which, if not anti-Muslim, is at least permanently suspicious of Muslims.
Every new born Muslim has come to occupy the place of Hindus, every Muslim is taking a job that should belong to Hindus, every Muslim youth is involved in the conspiracy of luring Hindu girls. If he is uneducated, then he is a conservative and a burden on the country; if he is educated, then there must be some conspiracy in his education and his silence as well, as a court opined about Umar Khalid.
Muslims are not allowed to be stupid or intelligent. Both ways, they are dangerous for India.
Creating a Muslim scare this way, the BJP presented itself as an army of Hindus. The media did not question this propaganda of the BJP. After turning up its nose once or twice, the media not only got used to this stench but started enjoying and spreading it.
The BJP repeatedly brought Muslims to the forefront during its campaign. The opposition tried its best to use this word as little as possible. It tried to cover the discussion on Muslims with topics like inflation, unemployment and the violence in Manipur.
But it is not so easy to remove the image of Muslims as enemies that the BJP created in the eyes of Hindus.
Universities also took part in the BJP’s election campaign. Delhi University itself organised several programmes in the name of ‘Viksit Bharat’ (Hindi for ‘developed India’).
Efforts to unite Hinduism and Hindutva have been going on day and night and have succeeded to a great extent.
Around January 22, I saw that saffron flags with ‘Jai Shri Ram’ written on them hung everywhere. By April, they were in bad shape. Faded and in tatters. But during the elections, I saw that in their place, similar flags, bigger and brighter, had been hung on rickshaws and electricity poles.
This is not happening on its own. And this was not happening in just one city. There is a machine that is working day and night to convert Hindus from Hinduism to Hindutva all over India. Would it not have had any effect? And would they not have voted for Hindutva?
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It also has to be considered that, if the violence in Manipur did not affect north India, why did it not stir the states of the northeast, like Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura? Is it because they themselves are so fragmented and divided into self-centred communities that sympathy with anyone else is now an impossible emotion?
Apart from this, as we have seen in Tripura, no one has any problem in compromising with the BJP in the name of their community interests. Everyone has seen the result of Gangadatta the frog inviting the snake in the Panchatantra, yet every Gangadatta even today keeps inviting the snake.
Only naive people believe that Hindutva will not spread in south India. It is foolish to believe that the strength and energy that the RSS and BJP have put in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala will go to waste.
Venkatachelapati, a friend of mine, rightly said that it would not be right to think that the legacy of the social and caste reform movements alone would define Tamil Nadu. It is also not correct to think that the campaign that the BJP has launched linking Kashi with Tamil Nadu will be futile.
It was not long ago that we thought it impossible that the BJP could emerge as a crucial political factor in West Bengal. Now it is a powerful political force. Bengal has heard and accepted the slogans of ‘No Durga, No Kali, Only Ram and Bajrangbali’. It is not necessary that Bengali nationalism should be opposed to Hindu nationalism.
In Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, etc., caste politics was considered a solution to the BJP’s politics. Now the BJP itself is doing its own caste politics and does not see it contradicting its Hindutva. In fact, it is aiding Hindutva.
If the results on June 4 prove to be different from the predictions of June 1, even then, all these reasons for the growth of Hindutva mentioned above will remain relevant.
But for now, let us hope that on June 4, we will see the victory of reality and the defeat of ideology.
Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University.
