While the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made a comeback with much reduced majority in India, the right-to-centre Conservative was shown the door after 14 years in Britain and in France the ultra-rightist National Rally was checkmated just on the gate to power.
Meanwhile, Iran too elected 69-year-old Masoud Pezeshkian, heart surgeon and former health minister as its president after the second round of election on July 5. According to the Western media, he is seen as a reformist compared to his hardline opponent Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator.
Four election results in five weeks prompt one to analyse the response of the intellectuals, public opinion-makers and mainstream media in all these countries. A
closer look at these elections would reveal how different India is from others. Here the less educated and weaker section of the society showed more maturity in exercising their adult franchise than the educated ones who largely remained hostage to the rhetoric of majoritarian politics.
If in France the academics, scientific community, mediapersons, the working class as well as sporting icons, especially footballers, rose to the occasion to prevent the rightists, National Rally, from getting majority in the National Assembly, in Britain the Conservatives were voted out after financial mess said to be caused by Brexit. However, Britain is somewhat different. Here the left-to-centre Labour Party under Keir Starmer behaved like the right-to-centre while Conservative tilted further right. The latter was in the race with Nigel Farage’s Reform Party.
French surprise
But the most astonishing result came from France where the ultra-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen was pushed to third place in the National Assembly election held on July 7, though it walked away with the highest percentage of votes in the first round of election held on June 30.
The non-rightist French parties minimised their differences and joined hands to stall the rightists from coming to power. The leftist and centrists parties withdrew over 200 of their candidates from the fray to check the division of votes, as they were aware of the past of the rightists. Notably, the rightist Vichy government of 1940 worked as collaborators to the invading German army and helped it rule the country for four years before the Nazis were ousted by the Allied Army in August 1944.
France’s National Assembly, composed of 577 seats, saw a left-wing alliance of approximately six parties secure 182 seats, followed closely by President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition with 168 seats. The National Rally trailed behind, winning 143 seats.
A majority of the people formed an alliance against the National Rally notwithstanding the fact that France has a presidential form of government where Macron is still powerful and can announce another election for the National Assembly after one year. His own term is going to expire in 2027.
Also read: Did Anyone Really Win the French Election?
It would be an interesting development if the New Popular Front — a left-green alliance, comprising of France Unbowed (LFI), the Socialist party (PS), French Green Party (LE-EELV) and French Communist Party (PCF) — forms a government backed by Macron’s centrist party. The France Unbowed, formed in 2016, is an ultra-left party and like the 104-year-old French Communist Party, which has grown weak, wants France to withdraw from NATO. It is opposed to the country’s involvement in the Ukraine war, and its president Jean-Luc Mélenchon strongly supports the cause of Palestine. It is said that Mélenchon has not yet condemned Hamas for the October 7 attack on Israel. With 74 seats, France Unbowed is the largest party of the New Popular Front to be followed by 59 by Socialist.
The policy of France Unbowed resembles that of communists in the heydays which opposed French colonialism be it in Algeria or Vietnam. It is interesting to note that the father of the nation of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, was among the founders of the French Communist Party in 1920. He was then living in France, whose colony was Vietnam.
Change in Britain
The Labour Party secured 412 out of 650 seats in the British House of Commons. Despite current leader Starmer facing criticism from supporters, particularly Muslims, for his pro-Israel stance during the Gaza conflict, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, now an Independent, has consistently shown strong support for the Palestinian cause.
Starmer, however, during the election campaign said that his government would recognise Palestine, though not unconditionally.
In Spain, the Left retained power in the last year’s election and is among the three European countries which recently recognised Palestine.
The Indian scenario
In contrast, the BJP managed to return to power in India with the help of allies largely because of the role played by the urban and rural elite, mostly hailing from the educated upper castes. The mainstream media in general blindly toed the government line so did many columnists and other opinion writers. The doctors, engineers, academics, scientists, market professionals, film and sport personalities, etc turned a blind eye to what was happening in the country. Barring a few bloggers, YouTubers and independent writers all remained mute spectators when houses were bulldozed and even when women wrestlers of international repute were beaten on the streets of Delhi when they protested against sexual harassment by a BJP MP.
If in France the ultra left and centrists, otherwise bitter critics of each other, buried their ideological differences to fight the ultra-rightist fascist, in India the Janata
Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar ditched the secular Opposition alliance just on the eve of the parliamentary election. All this had happened when the Indian National
Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc gave so much importance to the Bihar chief minister. In fact, its first meeting was held in Patna a year ago.
Similarly, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader N. Chandrababu Naidu joined hands with the BJP in his own state of Andhra Pradesh, where the saffron party has hardly any following. Though the BJP managed to win four Lok Sabha seats, it could not have been possible without the help of TDP which won 16 and Jana Sena which bagged three.
This is the same Naidu who on April 3, 2019, that is at the height of the last election campaign publicly called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “dreaded terrorist”. Naidu was then the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh.
Also read: Ebbing Public Trust in Election Process Can and Must Be Reversed
The irony is that many independent-minded and secular upper caste elites are not prepared to accept the fact that if the BJP is in power it is just because of the votes of this section of the society. They would hold the Dalits and backward castes responsible for the comeback of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on the plea that they voted overwhelmingly for it.
The truth is otherwise. The CSDS-Lokniti data suggests that only 31% of the Scheduled Castes voted for the BJP in 2024, down from 34% in 2019. The share of NDA constituents came down from seven to five per cent. The fact is that the SC votes were never so high for the saffron party as is being made out. In comparison, 60% upper castes voted for the BJP this time (in some states it maybe even higher).
Furthermore, the narrative in favour of the BJP is largely shaped by the upper caste-dominated elite in the fields of intelligence and media. As the Dalits and backward castes make a big chunk of the total votes, it appears that the NDA came to power only on the basis of their votes, which is a wrong perception.
The BJP swept the election in upper castes-dominated states like Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, while it lost all the five Scheduled Tribes reserved seats in Jharkhand. In Rajasthan, the STs and even the SCs rejected the BJP. In Uttar Pradesh, if the NDA managed to win 36 seats it was largely on the basis of upper castes who form about one-fifth of population. Had they too voted for INDIA candidates like Dalits and backward castes the BJP would have been wiped out. In cities with high levels of education such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Bhopal, etc the saffron party did very well in comparison to the backward regions of the country.
In contrast to Europe, it is the top echelon of the society which strongly rooted for the rightist forces in India. Or they have no courage to stand up and be counted.
Soroor Ahmed is a Patna-based freelance journalist.
