Kolkata: Stop ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’, Suvendu Adhikari shouted, raising both his hands.
“I used to talk about nationalist Muslims, you all spoke of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas,” the BJP’s leader in the West Bengal Assembly told the party’s state executive committee, which was meeting on Wednesday for the first time since the Lok Sabha elections.
“Not any more. Now we will say, ‘Jo hamare saath, hum unka saath (we stand with those who support us)’.” He repeated: “Jo hamare saath, jo hamare saath, jo hamare saath, hum unka saath. Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas bandh karo. No need for the minority morcha…. Jai Shri Ram.”
The audience, licking its wounds after the BJP won just 12 seats out of 42 in the state, cheered loudly. In 2019, the BJP’s tally was 18. For it to drop by a third despite all the attention the party has focused on the state was a humiliation.
Adhikari had found the scapegoat: Muslims.
But the slogan he attacked, to cheers from colleagues, is one that the Prime Minister has chanted for the past decade. Along with Achchhe Din and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas was a commitment Narendra Modi had made at the start of his first term in 2014. To the promise of taking everyone along and ensuring development for all, he had along the way added “Sabka Vishwas (everyone’s trust)” and “Sabka Prayaas (everyone’s efforts)”.
Amid lynchings by cow vigilantes, calls to boycott Muslim vendors, bulldozer justice, the bogey of love jihad, hate speeches, atrocities on Dalits, lathi-charge on job-seekers, and the ever-widening economic inequality, the slogan of inclusive development continued to be chanted at public meetings. It was used by Modi even during the last election.
Adhikari’s aim might have been to pass the blame for the defeat on to the minority community or to pit Hindus against Muslims in the hope of future dividends, but in picking on the slogan, he has unwittingly nailed the reason the BJP was humbled – Modi’s failure to deliver on his promise of development for all.
After Modi’s 10 years in power, 80 crore out of 140 crore Indians are dependent on free ration, 21 richest Indians hold as much wealth as 70 crore poor Indians, household debts are at an all-time high, India ranks 111 out of 125 countries on the hunger index and has the highest proportion of child wasting in the world at 18.7%. Unemployment and rising prices were picked by voters as their main concerns in a Lokniti-CSDS pre-poll survey.
BJP leaders Rajnath Singh, Narendra Modi, JP Nadda and Amit Shah. Photo: X (Twitter)/@JPNadda
Dalits and the other backward classes, who have seen reservation being eroded by the farming out of government jobs on contract and by privatisation, feared that their rights under the Constitution would be robbed. Women saw the truth of the Beti Bachao slogan in Manipur, Hathras, Unnao, and in the treatment of champion wrestlers. Farmers remembered the one year on the streets outside Delhi and the government’s continued refusal to guarantee them a minimum price for their crops. Students were crushed by repeated exam leaks, scrapped entrance tests and the lack of placements.
The condition of religious minorities has attracted comment even from the US, a close partner, with secretary of state Anthony Blinken speaking last month of “a concerning increase in anti-conversion laws, hate speech, demolitions of homes and places of worship for members of minority faith communities” in India.
The pain and the anger of all of these sections together scripted the stunning result of June 4.
The BJP had thousands of crores of rupees to spend on campaigning and was supported by television channels and newspapers that 24/7 chanted ‘If not Modi, who?’ and ‘Aayega toh Modi hi’ and belittled the Opposition when they did not black it out. The Enforcement Directorate arrested key Opposition leaders on election-eve and the income tax department froze the accounts of the main Opposition party. The Election Commission did not crack down on hate speeches by BJP leaders, refused to verify EVM votes with the paper trail and tried to hide polling numbers. Yet, the BJP, which had announced it was winning 400-plus seats, was halted at 240 because the majority saw through the Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas slogan.
The BJP lost in Ayodhya, which it had put at the centre of its Hindutva campaign. It lost in Banswara, where Modi had used the word “ghuspethiye” interchangeably with “Muslims”. Its ally JDS lost in Hassan in Karnataka, where Modi had campaigned for mass rape accused Prajwal Revanna. It lost in Basirhat, the constituency that includes Sandeshkhali, where it had tried to spread hate while claiming to be a champion of women. And it lost in Lakhimpur Kheri, where four farmers and a journalist were mowed down by a minister’s car when they were returning from a protest against the minister.
The party appears to be struggling to grasp the verdict. It tried to present a business-as-usual front, but the reaction to Rahul Gandhi’s speech in Parliament, when Modi, Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh were on their feet to contest him, was a giveaway that the BJP knows the mandate has brought change. As was the Prime Minister’s low-key visit to the Ambani wedding. For someone who was followed by television cameras everywhere, even while meditating in a cave or visiting his mother, it is remarkable that photographs of Modi blessing Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant were not splashed across all newspaper front pages.
But while the situation Modi now faces is new for him, his response and that of the BJP has remained the same. In Parliament, when Rahul Gandhi accused the RSS-BJP of violence, the Prime Minister stood up to say the Opposition leader was accusing all Hindus of violence. In doing so, he signalled that the “Hindu khatre mein hain” narrative would continue despite its rejection by voters. In Bengal, Adhikari has been following his leader’s example. The day before he addressed the executive committee, he had alleged that Hindus had not been allowed to vote in Bengal. In his address on Wednesday, he said: “We will fight together, we will win, we will save Hindus, save the Constitution.”
No senior BJP leader has publicly pulled up Adhikari for singling out one community and telling them the party would not stand with it. Former Haryana chief minister M.L. Khattar, who was on the dais, merely signalled he did not agree with Adhikari when he said “a society cannot be divided on mandate”. The state BJP chief, Sukanta Majumdar, said Adhikari was expressing his own views.
After his comments raised a small media storm, centred on whether he was trashing the Prime Minister’s slogan, Adhikari claimed his words were taken out of context.
In a clarification, he said: “It’s my personal thinking and opinion. It’s not the line of the central government or the BJP. We should stand with the workers who are fighting for the BJP. That (Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas) is the government’s slogan, PM’s slogan. The slogan stands. We are all with the slogan. But as a BJP functionary, with my heavy pain, I placed this view before the executive committee. That the West Bengal unit of the BJP should stand with the worker who is with the BJP and is fighting for it. We should not stand with those who are not with the BJP. This is a political line. It has nothing to do with the slogan of the honourable Prime Minister and the NDA government.”
Adhikari continued: “Our agenda was Sabka Saath. We were trying. Will continue to try. When I go to my constituency, the fruits of development are enjoyed by all, Hindus and Muslims. Despite that, they say, ‘You are a party for Hindus’. Mamata says this, her people say this, the minorities too. When you go to the village, stones are thrown, black flags are shown. ‘Modiji murdabad’ slogans are raised. Our vehicles are pelted with stones. They say, ‘Hindu party has come’. Why Hindu party? We have been working for all. My leader, my Prime Minister, our government has brought schemes for all countrymen. What I said is personal and political. It has nothing to do with the government’s slogan.”
Adhikari was in effect saying that the BJP should dump the practice of “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas” while the government could continue to mouth the slogan. The aim of the clarification appeared to be limited to dismissing the suggestion that he had opposed the Prime Minister.
The irony of his objection to people describing the BJP as “a Hindu party” when he himself had said the party would fight to “save Hindus” was perhaps lost on Adhikari.
On X (Twitter), he put out a separate clarification, where he said he was clear that the BJP should stand with those who are nationalists and that “I embody in letter and spirit, Prime Minister’s call for Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, Sabka Prayaas.”
On camera, the Nandigram MLA said: “In my constituency, there was a minority morcha. We had a Milan Utsav for Id. I offered everyone sweets and greeted them. Seven hundred people came. And then our candidate Abhijit Ganguly did not get a single vote. This dual yardstick will not work, we will have to think. This time the communal voting that took place, from Congress (votes shifted) to Mamata, the communal voting affected us….”
In Bengal, the BJP won 38.7% of the votes – in other words, it did not have the support of more than 60% of the voters. Muslims form around 27% of the state’s population, according to the 2011 census. Even if all the Muslims voted against the BJP, they would make up less than half of the people who rejected the party in Bengal. The proportion of Muslims in India’s population is 14.2%, and that of Hindus is 79.8%. The BJP won 36.6% of the total votes cast across the country. If Adhikari is genuinely thinking about how to help improve his party’s prospects in the next election, he will clearly need to do better than to blame Muslims or threaten them.
Early in Modi’s first term, the word jumla had stuck on the government thanks to a statement Amit Shah made on television. Asked about the manner in which the Prime Minister had created the impression that Rs 15 lakh could be deposited in the bank accounts of every Indian, Shah had said: “See, this is a jumla. Nobody gets Rs 15 lakh in their accounts. Everyone knows this.” Now, Adhikari has done a Shah and bared the truth of another Modi promise. By failing to reprimand him or condemn his stand, the BJP has sent the message that Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas was no more than a catchy slogan, a jumla.
Harshita Kalyan is a Calcutta-based journalist.
