In New Delhi, on July 4, the Delhi police reinforced security outside the residence of the recently elected leader of the opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi. News reports suggested that intelligence spoke of right-wing religious groups coalescing for a confrontation.
Gandhi had made a fiery, impactful speech on July 1 on the president’s address in his first outing as LoP and the speaker and the prime minister were clearly displeased. The PM’s long, meandering, angry reply looked pedestrian – in stark contrast to Gandhi’s. It also appeared to covey a threat.
A day earlier, the news from Gujarat, Prime Minister N.D. Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah’s stomping ground, was grim. The state Congress office had been attacked in force in broad daylight.
Soon after the poll results in early June, there was also a renewed eruption of attacks on the minorities in several states, as if a point was being sought to be made about a massive electoral setback not dimming the glow of an ideology that for long had not recognised India’s republican constitution or the national flag.
Are these routine strong-arm tactics of the Modi Raj, or are they orchestrated, well-coordinated attempts by fascism-leaning entities to create conditions of large-scale disorder to intimidate political opponents within weeks of the Lok Sabha election result being announced, an election in which the BJP under Modi’s leadership was cut to size?
If so, what will this lead to if not checked with a heavy hand? The overhaul of criminal laws, passed in the last parliament when 146 MPs were suspended, has brought about a new order under which the police can still arrest people without a warrant, and incarceration for longer terms than before has been made the norm.
Are these new tactics – the attack on the opposition, singling out the Congress for special treatment, and on the minorities; as well as the dramatic changes made to the criminal law administration – going to be a prelude to a substantial system change or overhaul whose direction is not even a distant cousin of democracy.
It is ironic to see such a transition or transformation being attempted when adequate voter support was expressly denied to Modi’s BJP in the just held parliament election.
It is indeed surprising that a minority government propped up by on-off-on allies, and still in the process of finding its feet in an unsettled political environment, has opted for the path of open confrontation with its parliamentary opposition instead of discarding its past stance of wanton aggression when it had enjoyed an overwhelming parliamentary superiority over other parties.
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A modicum of humility and a certain level of respectful interaction with opposition parties, especially the Congress, which the BJP has always marked out as its principal adversary since no other party challenges the BJP-RSS constellation both politically and ideologically on a nationwide scale, would have been more in keeping with the spirit of parliamentary democracy.
Such bare-knuckle show of disdain for a democratically elected parliamentary opposition as we have lately seen amounts to disrespecting the mandate of the people in the recent polls, which went against Modi in key regions where the BJP looked well-entrenched – such as in the two largest states of UP and Maharashtra, as well as Rajasthan, a smaller state but one in which the BJP won a thumping majority in the assembly poll only recently and a state in which that party has enjoyed long-term influence.
There is no underplaying the fact that in the national election, Modi led his party to a defeat, but remains PM through stratagem and by overpowering the RSS system. This election also produced the largest opposition bloc in the Lok Sabha in the country’s history. That makes Gandhi the leader of the largest opposition on record.
This appears to irk the government and its leader. It is this Congress figure who has dared to question Modi openly on just about everything – on Adani, on minorities, on Hindutva politics, on mismanaging of the economy, on destroying employment avenues, ruining the lives of farmers and farm workers, and on fighting shy of evicting Chinese troops sitting within Indian territory for four years.
The Modi regime had tried to have him put away for six years through the defamation route.
Gandhi, most notably, also walked across the country, seeking to raise hope and, importantly, urging people to shed fear. Indeed, this was one of the forceful themes in his maiden speech as opposition leader which appeared to so irk the PM. Until the Lok Sabha result came, Modi had possibly failed to gauge the enormity of the Congress leader’s walkathon and the historical significance of this intervention on the national stage.
By the end of the year, assembly elections are to be held in three states in circumstances when a sense of the fear of government – with overweening powers now available to the police – is being sought to be spread, sometimes through cutouts such as the goon squads enjoying unhampered impunity from punitive state action, as in the case of the recent assault on the Congress premises in Gujarat.
The states going to the polls are Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand. A below par showing for the Modi BJP, as was the case in the Lok Sabha poll, has the potential to undermine the unstable equilibrium that obtains at the Centre – reinforcing doubts not only in the minds of the allies, but also among BJP MPs in the capacities of their present leader to deliver the political goods, especially in light of the Lok Sabha poll experience, when Modi couldn’t deliver even in Ayodhya.
In Maharashtra, in particular, Modi’s party is said to be on a sticky wicket.
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To forestall a likely setback, a vicious and communal campaign, accompanied by black money tactics in respect of opposition MLAs, will not be an unexpected scenario – in a replay of the Lok Sabha election, only worse. What is the role of the opposition in these circumstances?
At the Centre also the ruling dispensation could attempt to break some of the INDIA parties by seeking defection, which has become a branded BJP technique. There could be violence on display too.
Can the opposition parties remain united and well-coordinated? Can its leading personalities share the burden of the campaign in the states – not just by way of resources, but also by seen to be on the stump together – instead of leaving it to state parties where election is being held, or to the Congress alone?
Gandhi is said to be contemplating joining pilgrims in the annual Pandharpur yatra in Maharashtra, which is like a popular festival. This is an idea of the political stalwart Sharad Pawar of the NCP.
Other opposition forces too could lend heft to the event as a way to challenge a communal campaign likely to be unleashed. Much is at stake. The very idea of the politics of the future could hinge on the outcome of the three state elections.
It is well to keep in mind that, after the election defeat, the Modi BJP appears to have made up its mind to let that not come in the way and to press on with its ideological agenda, at the top of which is the suppression of democratic urges, the suppression of the minorities, and the suppression of the Congress which is the all-India political force that seeks to take on the saffronised party.
It is noteworthy that legal proceedings against eminent personalities such as Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar were instituted on cases going back well over a decade, that there was a flare-up in the attack on the minorities, and that the Congress was attacked as a party and its most forceful leader Rahul Gandhi has been brought under an arc of threat and intimidation.
The revival of the FIR against Roy in fact occurred before Gandhi’s flame-raining speech in the House, as was the case with the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s and B.R. Ambedkar’s statues in Parliament House to the back of the complex in an attempt to invisibilise them.
This was not infantilism. The exercise was a part of a just-begun wider attempt at an ideological pushback against the recently delivered verdict of the people in the national election.
Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.
