For the RSS, whose cadres have helped propel the BJP’s growth in the region, these election victories will serve as a major morale booster.
File photo of Ram Madhav and BJP president Amit Shah, who have overseen the party’s growth in the north-east.
The assembly election results in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya may be the product of local, state-level factors but the story they tell together is also a national story.
The defeat of the Left in Tripura at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party is easily the biggest headline to come out of Saturday’s results. Of course, the state was ripe for change after more than two decades of CPI(M) rule but the fact that the BJP became the beneficiary of anti-incumbency is a reflection of the political polarisation evident in other Left-influenced states too, especially West Bengal, where there is little room for centrism. Most astonishing of all, however, was the inability of the CPI(M) leadership to read the writing on the wall. The Wire‘s correspondents spent a week in the state during the campaign and came away with the distinct impression that the BJP was trumping the Communist Party of India (Marxist). In terms of vote share, the Left saw a negative swing of 6% in its vote share, down from around 50% to 44%, while the BJP and its ally, the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura hit 50% this time.
The political centre in Tripura – represented by the Congress – has completely collapsed and the mantle of opposition to the Left has been taken over by the BJP. The Congress vote share in the 2013 assembly election was 36.53%. It has now fallen to under 2%. In West Bengal, Mamta Banerjee’s decision to take over the political space normally occupied by the Left has robbed the CPI(M) of its ability to oppose her effectively. There too, the mantle of opposition is moving, ineluctably, to the BJP. For the moment, Kerala looks like an exception to this but there are straws in the wind indicating the BJP and RSS are gaining traction at the expense of the Congress, setting the stage for Left-Right contestation over the long-run. The peculiar demographic composition of the state provides the Sangh happy hunting ground for its brand of polarisation.
Ironically, this sharpening right-left polarity at the state level in Tripura, West Bengal and perhaps Kerala too could make it easier for the CPI(M) and the Congress to come closer together nationally in the hope of preventing the BJP from winning the Lok Sabha elections again in 2019. However, the Tripura election result is a reminder of the limits of alliance building. A coalition can only be strong if its constituents have strengths they can draw upon. With the CPI(M) weakening, it is the Congress which is likely to ask what it will gain by tying up with the Left rather than the other way around.
A dangerous embrace for allies
In Nagaland, the BJP’s gamble in switching allies in the run-up to the election may finally pay off. At the time of publication, trends showed the Naga Peoples’ Front neck-and-neck with the Nationalist Democratic Peoples’ Party (NDPP, with which the BJP is now allied. Even if the NPF eventually wins, BJP president Amit Shah knows the dictates of realpolitik will likely drive it back into the BJP’s arms again. Given the collapse of the Congress in the state and the cards the BJP had in its hands because of the yet-to-unfold peace accord with the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), this was an election that was always likely to bring the NDA to power in Dimapur any which way.
The rise of the NDPP with BJP backing after a split was engineered in the NPF is a message to the BJP’s partners in the NDA, especially in Punjab, Maharashtra, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. The message is that the saffron party will never be happy with allies that have a support base and standing of their own. The BJP believes not just in a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ and even an opposition-free country but also an India in which it rules by itself nationally and in every state. The Shiv Sena recognises this reality, as does Chandra Babu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party. The fact that the BJP has grown its vote share from 1.8% in 2013 to 14.5% now is not without significance.
The Congress appears to be holding on to pole position in Meghalaya but the fact that it will not reach the half-way mark in the assembly means all bets are off about what happens eventually. The Congress had emerged as the single largest party in the assembly elections to Manipur and Goa last year but the BJP proved to be more “effective” in attracting allies.Early indications are that it will succeed in doing the same in Meghalaya. Its own vote share of 10%, up from 1.27% in 2013, suggests the party is capable of making inroads of its own, though reports on the ground suggest its national-level Hindutva baggage might have hurt its prospects.
What this means nationally
The BJP is now in power or a major player, via allies, in all the northeastern states barring Mizoram, which will go to the polls in December 2018 and where the Congress still appears strong.
Any which way, the party’s emergence and growth (or influence via allies) in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura is nothing short of spectacular given the linguistic and cultural distance between Nagpur – where the RSS is headquartered – and the northeast.
As we move towards 2019, the BJP’s presence in the northeast assumes great political significance. The total number of Lok Sabha seats in the region is 25, including Sikkim, and of these, the BJP won just eight in 2014 – seven from Assam and one from Arunachal Pradesh. The party would be looking to double that number.
But more than numbers, it is the broader political message this presence sends that the BJP will particularly value. The Left may not be numerically significant but as Ajoy Ashirwad notes, it is a significant part of the ideological opposition that the BJP and RSS face nationally. For the BJP to defeat the Left in its bastion – the first time the party has ever done this in any state – thus has enormous political significance.
Second, winning and spreading in the north-east helps the BJP sell the idea that its ideology is capable of being embraced beyond the ‘Hindi, Hindu’ belt. To be sure, the BJP has been careful to moderate parts of its Hindutva agenda – especially its view that Christianity is an alien religion, and on beef – but other elements of its programme (against migrants from Bangladesh, for instance) find a sympathetic echo here. However, even this is of marginal importance since it is the promise the BJP holds out of employment and development that has made the party an attractive choice, especially for younger voters.
The irony is that even as voters in the ‘mainland’ are realising there is a huge gap between what Narendra Modi promises and what he delivers, the northeastern region is saying it wants to try its luck with the BJP. The fact that the north-east is turning right with barely a year to go for the general election offers the party a propaganda point to help staunch the losses it expects to experience in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere.
For the RSS, whose cadres have helped propel the BJP’s growth in Assam and other states of the region, these election victories will serve as a major morale booster. If the Sangh’s ideology can find takers and allies in the ‘Christian’ and tribal north-east, it is likely to pursue its Hindutva agenda with even greater vigour in the rest of the country.
