The two-week old alliance between the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), consecrated in the blissful presence of Narendra Modi and Naveen Patnaik collapsed dramatically on Friday, March 22. This breakdown has implications way beyond Bhubaneswar. The message is clear: an electoral alliance or any political arrangement with the BJP is a kiss of death for every regional outfit.
As the national replacement of the Indian National Congress, the BJP as a pan-India political formation is obliged to seek maximum room and presence for itself in each and every corner of India. That is a normal and legitimate inclination. In its heyday the Congress would resort to constitutional underhandedness to get rid of the non-Congress regimes (beginning with dismissal of the E.M.S. Namboodiripad ministry in Kerala in 1959); as part of its own innovation, the BJP finessed the money-game known as “Operation Lotus,” buying the loyalties of the non-BJP MLAs.
Under Modi’s boisterous leadership, the BJP leaders in the states across the country have come to internalise an arrogant attitude that all non-BJP political formations or individuals are unholy and it is perfectly legitimate to use every ruse or trick in the book (including the masterly misuse of the Raj Bhavans) to scupper regional and sub-reginal parties.
It is this maximalist attitude that has led to the collapse of the Patnaik-Modi alliance. The sheer ungratefulness of it will be noted by the BJP’s present and potential political partners. Here was Naveen babu, the enigma of modern Indian politics, extending the support of his very substantive Lok Sabha members to the Modi government in its each and every dubious legislative move. Naveen babu, understandably, has good reason to remain indifferent, even hostile, to the Congress party. The Odisha chief minister was extraordinarily kind to the BJP, helping it elect its candidates win the Rajya Sabha seats with the BJD MLAs.
And, now that Naveen babu’s health and strength are fading, an ungrateful BJP smells blood in the water. So far a junior partner, the BJP now presumptuously wants to have a say in the post-Naveen babu leadership landscape. The Odisha BJP leaders would want the electorate to believe that they are uncomfortable with the larger-than-life presence in the BJD affairs of V.K.Pandian, a Tamilian; but, they believe that the Oriya voter will be comfortable with the suzerainty of the the Modi-Amit Shah jodi, who flaunt their Gujarati connections day in and day out.
This Pandian-the-bogeyman is just an eyewash. At the core of the BJD-BJP alliance breakdown is the basic incompatibility between the all-embracing, all-encompassing Hindutava project and the Patnaik political model of regional pride, regional identity and regional solutions to issues of development and nation-building. The BJD ideologues lay a claim to the Kalinga legacy, as the guiding spirit of the Patnaik regime. Lord Jagannath is there to help BJD to halt the Modi juggernaut.
If Modi can stage a grand spectacle at Ayodhya, Naveen babu has done his own show in the service of Lord Jagnnath at Puri. If Modi’s cheer-leaders believe that the prime minister has cornered the affections of the women voters across the country, Naveen babu’s drum-beaters insist that the women voters are at the core of the Odisha chief minister’s political longevity. If Modi has painted himself as the have-nots’ messiah, Naveen babu has perfected the welfare state model. The bottom-line is that Naveen babu has made Odisha impervious to Modi’s presumed all-India charm.
This subtle confrontation and accommodation between regional pride and space, on one hand, and national imperative and overlordship, on the other, has been the stuff of statesmanship and political wisdom since Sardar Patel wrote the original blue-book of centre-state axis. The ideal way is a reasonable equilibrium, where the regional satraps do not feel totally smothered down yet national imperatives are not denied. When a national party, the Congress and now the BJP, fails to summon the constitutional imagination and political magnanimity, the polity experiments with a United Front type of arrangements.
The Odisha imbroglio can be understood only in terms of the BJP’s political greed and Prime Minister Modi’s extraordinary megalomania. The BJD crowd in Bhubaneswar would have been perfectly happy to continue to the current arrangement of mutual accommodation; but the BJP’s electoral covetousness has made the saffron outfit overreach itself.
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Since the BJP has chosen to show its hand in this election season, this saffron officiousness is bound to have repercussion in Bihar. It is no secret that the BJP had cleverly used Chirag Paswan to cut Nitish Kumar to size; and, the ubiquitous psephologist-at-the-village-dhaba knows that the BJP’s primary target is not the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led alliance but Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United). The BJP-led electoral gathbandhan (alliance) is the opening move in the hostile take-over of Bihar.
And, the message from Bhubaneswar will also be dissected by consequential regional partners like Ajit Pawar, Chandrababu Naidu and Eknath Shinde. The BJP’s natural inclination will be to engineer splits and then cannibalise smaller units; whereas the likes of Naidu or H.D. Deve Gowda would want to limit the BJP’s capacity to hurt them.
If Modi’s rhetoric and pretensions of the last ten years are to be believed, no non-BJP political formation deserves any space. For all the lip-service to the idea of “cooperative federalism” the BJP’s record is one of overlordship. In next few months, the BJP’s cunning and cleverness will be pitted against authentic regional sensitivities and sensibilities. This confrontation shall subtly define the voting behaviour in different regions in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
