N. Chandrababu Naidu should be in no doubt that the big hug he received from Narendra Modi during his swearing in ceremony as the Andhra Pradesh chief minister was a purely transactional gesture and not indicative of the prime minister turning over a new leaf even after having been downsized by the Indian voter.
No one knows this better than Naidu, that the Enforcement Directorate played a vital role in prompting the state police to build a criminal case against him which led to his incarceration for several months last year. However, the unexpected surge in Naidu’s popularity after being jailed made Modi and Amit Shah dump the incumbent chief minister Jagan Mohan Reddy, who had remained a virtual ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party for five years, supporting every controversial legislation brought by the government in Parliament. I travelled through Andhra Pradesh during the Lok Sabha campaign and during his public meetings, Modi was quite muted in his criticism of Jagan. He was clearly seen as hedging his bets. After his initial public meetings, local newspapers noted how Modi was not attacking Jagan because there was an impression that latter was putting up a good fight.
Until the poll results were out, Modi was mentally prepared to do business with both Naidu and Jagan. Now, with Naidu having swept both the Lok Sabha and assembly polls, Modi finds it convenient to offer Naidu the big hug. This will surely be followed by a series of criminal cases against Jagan Reddy. While Naidu may be tempted to seek revenge against his predecessor who sent him to jail, he must not forget that he is merely playing a pawn’s role in Modi-Shah’s playbook of divide and rule politics.
Naidu must keep reminding himself what he had tweeted in 2019 about Modi’s politics – which has not changed even after the electorate telling him to change his ways.
Naidu had then said, “Modi has systematically destroyed prestigious institutions of India. In BJP government’s rule institutional autonomy and democracy have been under attack.” Naidu must remember this every day, every moment, as he strikes tactical deals with Modi on various issues. By now he would have figured out that even after receiving a setback in the Lok Sabha elections, Modi and Shah are pretending as though nothing adverse has happened and have chosen to continue with their past policies. The mandate is not for this, and it is the responsibility of allies like Naidu and Nitish Kumar to remind the prime minister of this.
It is early days yet and one is quite sure Naidu will soon realise that a leopard cannot and will not change its spots. Modi and Shah are biding for time and will soon deploy their dirty tricks department to break up the Telugu Desam Party. Naidu is well aware of this. He told author Kapil Komireddy a few years ago that his biggest fear was that Modi and Shah would not let his party survive. They would devour it. Naidu just needs to study what has happened with the Shiv Sena in Maharshtra, Biju Janata Dal in Odisha, Janata Dal (United) in Bihar and AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. There is a standard operating procedure in place which seems to work on auto-pilot.
When Naidu was incarcerated last September, Pawan Kalyan of the Jan Sena felt outraged at the manner of Naidu’s arrest and immediately visited him in jail. He came out after the meeting and gave a public speech on how constitutional procedures were being violated in every way by the investigative agencies. Though he was a BJP ally then, he chose to openly condemn the manner in which arrests were being made by central agencies, whether it was Shahrukh Khan’s son or some Aam Aadmi Party leaders. Pawan Kalyan followed this speech by making a formal alliance with Naidu’s party without informing the BJP. The BJP, however, continued to hedge its bets and said it had not decided whether to formally ally with Naidu or Jagan. Shah refrained from commenting on Pawan Kalyan’s move to ally with TDP.
So Pawan Kalyan should now remind Naidu of his fiery speech on adhering to constitutional norms and reining in investigation agencies like the ED and CBI.
Pawan Kalyan himself claims to have been a close disciple of Gummadi Vittal Rao, popularly known as Gaddar, a renowned poet, revolutionary and rights activist of undivided Andhra Pradesh, who passed away last year.
As an important ally of Naidu’s, Pawan Kalyan must take some inspiration from Gaddar and ensure that the politics of Andhra Pradesh is not reduced to some transactional deal with Modi, with no broader vision about preserving constitutional values and democratic norms. Parliament is starting next week and the occasion is right for TDP leaders to make their position amply clear on this. After all, this was a key message coming out from the Lok Sabha polls.
