Anand K. Sahay

Despite Losing the J&K Elections, BJP Holds the Key to Restoring Peace in the Region

Will the BJP permit a government led by the NC – which the saffron party has done everything to denigrate, degrade and demolish – to function smoothly?

The outcome of the recently held assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir is of historical proportions in both parts of the former state and, in the case of the Kashmir valley, a rare ideological magnificence, reflecting the focused will of the people in spite of every dangerous distraction that New Delhi could lay in their path and despite the absence, from the winning alliance, of a regional party (PDP) that is a part of the national-level INDIA bloc.

A verdict such as this can paint the sky blue if New Delhi is imaginative and constructively supports the people’s efforts and their popularly elected government, which is to be led by National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah.

On the flip side, the sky can just as easily be painted in the frightful dark colours that have marred life in Kashmir, most notably since militancy and terrorism emerged on the scene in the late 1980s, and once again in pronounced fashion since August 2019, when the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government removed J&K’s special constitutional status, severely impacting civil liberties and human rights.

A psychological sense of having been forsaken and left bereft descended upon Kashmir when the Union government downgraded the former state to a Union Territory, in violation of constitutional practice so strong, that wishing not to tread on uncertain territory, the Supreme Court avoided adjudicating on it when duly urged to do so.

It’s therefore principally up to New Delhi to determine whether conditions can be brought about for a civilised and enduring peace to descend on Kashmir under the government expected to take office shortly. The choice is not any more just Pakistan’s, which harbours terrorist bases and is in the habit of despatching desperadoes to J&K to perpetrate violence and disturb the conditions.

On account of its impressive electoral showing in the Jammu region, the BJP, which runs New Delhi, could be tempted to disrupt governance on a communal basis in an effort to discredit the NC, its leadership, the Congress party (a key NC ally and the INDIA bloc.

Electorally, by casting their lot with the NC, the people of Kashmir have delivered a strong ideological message against terrorism – foreign and home-grown – and against communal elements in New Delhi as well as their political hangers-on in Kashmir.

This can be an intimation of healing. It challenges the assiduously disseminated canard that every Kashmiri is secretly a Pakistani, and a terrorist to boot, for no reason other than having the same religion as most Pakistanis.

Underlining the pervasive nature of the swing back to NC in Kashmir’s electoral politics, the NC-led alliance won in a steady pattern across the valley, leaving only a pitiable number of seats for other parties and independents (most of whom were NC rebels and are likely to return to the party fold). Such a result ensues from the common voter’s spectacularly clear-headed voting for brand NC, without really caring for candidates and rejecting most other choices.

The Congress, as the NC’s close associates, thus managed to pick up a few seats, although showing little flair of its own other than Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in 2022-23, to uphold constitutional values, which had drawn a warm response in the valley. That’s about as far as the Congress’ contribution to the electoral effort goes, other than the fact that the national party consciously chose to stand with the NC.

If Mehbooba Mufti’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) were a part of the NC-led winning alliance, a fuller phalanx in the true spirit of the national-level INDIA bloc to challenge the BJP may have emerged. It could’ve helped to perhaps reduce BJP numbers in the Jammu division, where the saffron party has performed remarkably well.

Keeping out the PDP reflected disregard of the intra-INDIA coalition ‘dharma’ or duty, but the voter stayed on focus and went with the storied NC whose history has many strands, perhaps the most significant of which is to disregard Jinnah’s urgings to join a Muslim Pakistan and choosing instead to go with Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘secular’ India.

In Kashmir’s context, the present election result marks a pivotal moment. It has come after many trials and tribulations and hits and misses. Given the valley’s decades-long trauma, the foregrounding of the NC by voters re-tells a past tale, with shades of atonement stitched into it. At various times in Kashmir’s history, dubious diversions have beguiled the populace.

A defining aspect of the NC’s story is the path-breaking decision of its founder, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, to dissociate with the Muslim Conference and establish the National Conference in 1932, enabling Kashmiris of all faiths to join.

Thus, in October 1947, when the so-called tribal raiders from newly-created Pakistan descended on Kashmir to seize the valley, the people’s militia organised by the NC – which resisted the invaders before the Indian Army could arrive- – had among its sector commanders Syed Mir Qasim (a future chief minister) as well as Durga Prasad Dhar, an important figure of the Indira Gandhi-era, and Pran Nath Jalali, a well-known journalist who would later head the PTI’s Srinagar Bureau. Under the NC’s stewardship, the Kashmiri Pandit has never been discriminated against on grounds of faith. This deserves to be recalled.

The recent Assembly polls and the Lok Sabha election in May had one thing in common – the voter participation was impressive. Both exercises appeared free as well as fair to observers. There was an important important difference, though.

In the Lok Sabha election, NC leader Omar Abdullah was defeated by separatist leader Engineer Rashid who was jailed in Delhi under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Rashid was facilitated in fighting elections from prison by the ruling party’s allies. The NC fared below par.

The jailed man’s relatives in Kashmir played the victim card to the hilt in the campaign and, seizing widespread public alienation, trounced Abdullah and another well-known politician. Kashmir was suddenly agog with possibilities as assembly polls were round the corner.

The banned Jamaat-e-Islami, whose credo rests on the idea that Kashmir ought to be Ilaqa-e-Pakistan (a territory of Pakistan), was sufficiently emboldened by these developments to field some of its own cadres as independent candidates in the assembly polls. There were widespread rumours that the ruling BJP was pulling strings from behind in order to further its long-term plan of dismantling the NC, Kashmir’s heritage party along with the Congress and the PDP, on the grounds that they were “dynastic” and seeking to create a new breed of politicians in “New Kashmir”.

This was to be achieved by creating conditions for all kinds of candidates, including those of the banned and communal J-e-I, to enter the poll fray and divide the anti-NC vote. As Hindu and Muslim communal politics appeared to march in tandem, the big fear was: Is the BJP’s action creating the conditions for the return of pro-Pakistan extremist politics in the valley? This was the subject of public discussion for many weeks before the assembly polls. An incipient sense of panic was overtaking the Valley.

Ordinary voters have sturdily demonstrated, however, that they have a mind of their own and that they appear to have no interest in returning to the bad old days. Additionally, they voted in sufficient numbers and in a particular pattern to leave no room for doubt that they wanted a regional party to form a stable government, hoping, in the process, to negate the national BJP’s ambition to install a Hindu chief minister in a Muslim-majority Union Territory.

In Jammu –in contrast to the unfolding of events in the valley – this indeed appeared as a concrete possibility, should the BJP cross a certain threshold of support in the wider Jammu region.

The Prime Minister’s rallying call in the plains of Jammu, as the campaign closed, was to raise hopes of a Hindu chief minister. For Modi, a history-making event of unimaginable ideological value glimmered in prospect in the theatre of India’s politics – a prize that might equal, if not surpass, the making of a new Ram temple in Ayodhya, and far exceeding election successes in any other part of the country.

Jammu voters eventually chose to overlook the bubbling dissatisfaction with the BJP’s decision to dilute Article 370 of the Constitution to end J&K’s autonomous status (which brought to the local people exclusively the benefit of land rights, jobs and education) as the BJP astutely shaped communal sentiments, taking advantage of the challenger Congress’ rank inability to exploit anti-incumbency.

So, where does Jammu and Kashmir go from here? A national party in power at the Centre, widely seen as a communal entity, has beaten all comers in the Jammu region and may have knocked on the doors of the chief minister’s office if it had won some half a dozen more seats. In the valley, a regional party whose birth and history has defined the making of Jammu and Kashmir in the modern era, has stormed the citadel, defeating BJP’s carefully laid out plans, set to form government tomorrow.

Will the BJP permit a government led by the NC – which the saffron party has done everything to denigrate, degrade and demolish – to function smoothly? This will be a question in people’s minds in Srinagar, Jammu and Delhi. Will Modi’s BJP return statehood to J&K when it has failed to come to power?

The rules were amended by the Centre last July. to transfer control to the Lieutenant Governor a wide array of subjects which, in the federal system, belong to the state and its chief minister. These subjects include law and order and jurisdiction over the police. The emasculation of Article 370 has already taken out land and land use from the former state’s jurisdiction. Are these potential flashpoints for J&K politics that may derail any prospect of tranquillity? And will that expand scope for Pakistan’s meddling?

In his post-election comment, Dr. Karan Singh, who would have been the hereditary ruler of J&K if the feudal order had not passed and was indeed made Sadr-e-Riasat, has urged the restoration of statehood “without delay”. It is noteworthy that he has also urged that “domiciliary provisions” be introduced in J&K as in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

This effectively means that the right to land should be with the people of J&K with exceptions made for those who qualify to become its domiciles. This may be a useful line of enquiry after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35-A. But it is important that the Centre permit the post-election authority to function without hindrance. That is the least that may be expected. Kashmir has a worldwide resonance.

Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.

Jammu and Kashmir Polls: Are Congress, NC Missing the Bigger Picture as BJP’s Ambitions Grow?

By excluding PDP from the NC-Congress alliance, the grand old party seems to have lost the lesson it learned only three months ago. The NC for its part saw just the small picture.

Are the non-saffron parties in Jammu and Kashmir missing the true significance of the assembly election commencing on September 18? Their actions so far seem to suggest they have missed the point that after Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has had the erstwhile state firmly in its sights and that the ambition of ‘ruling over it’ seems closer to realisation today than at any other time.

The Hindu-wadi would rather that the Hindu raja (king), whose kingdom sat on India’s northern border with Pakistan, was still on his throne, presiding over the fate of his Muslim ‘praja’ (subjects). But that’s another story.

As part of their strategic vision, first the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and then its successor, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), floated under RSS’s auspices and guidance to take forward the Hindutva agenda. They have longed to have their own chief minister in the Muslim-majority Kashmir which shares its border with Pakistan as well as Chinese territories across Ladakh.

They are lured by the idea of controlling such a strategic space, even if the local populace, be it Kashmir’s Muslim community or the Hindu of the Jammu region, is isolated on account of thoroughly alienating policies of the current regime which, five years ago, took away its special status that came with Articles 370 and 35-A.

Until recently, the electoral capture of Jammu and Kashmir seemed like a pipe dream. But after Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, the ruling party, while sitting for nearly 10 years with an absolute majority, plotted its moves assiduously. The first deliberate step to set up the final approach was to dispatch its own coalition government headed by the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP’s) Mehbooba Mufti in the summer of 2018. This was followed by bringing J&K under the Union government’s direct and intrusive control in August 2019 by altering and reducing the former state’s constitutional status, without reference to the state legislature, juridically an extraordinary and unprecedented decision.

The smallest shadow of subtlety in governance was gone, leave alone the notion of winning hearts and minds in a conflict-prone zone where terrorism has been a recurring motif for three decades. In Modi’s Delhi, it seems to have occurred to no one that getting the people over to your side — as former Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and A.B. Vajpayee sought to do — was good policy, solid strategy, and indeed the only way to isolate extremist forces in J&K which look across the border for succour and nurture.

Using extreme state violence to stop stone-pelting protesters, deploying the tool of indiscriminate human rights abuse, the unchecked use of mass arrests (even of children) and ‘unlawful’ laws such as Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), can only bring superficial peace. The recent resurgence of terrorism in J&K testifies to this.

Make-believe peace impresses the parliament and shapes public opinion on false grounds through an obliging media. The Indian public has largely been kept in the dark and prevented from acquiring even a rudimentary awareness of the complexities of the situation in J&K. This directly impacts national integration.

The media in J&K itself has been bludgeoned into quiet acquiescence through the spread of fear. Owners, editors, and journalists of well-known publications have been slammed into jail, roughed up, or subjected to harsh questioning. Only government propaganda is permitted. Editorial pages have turned into garden notebooks or spiritual manuals.

Everything possible is being done to cover the truth or facts on the ground. It is no wonder, then, that the country had no idea that for the past year or so, the forests and hills of the Jammu region have become a redoubt of terrorists, thought to be Pakistanis, and who knows some locals too. The scourge of terrorism is blowing up in our faces all over again after a lapse of a few decades.

Also read: How Newspaper Op-Ed Pages in Kashmir Are Engineering Pro-BJP Narratives

Effectively, there is a news blackout in J&K but the sheer magnitude of the situation, with several soldiers and police officers getting killed on a steady basis, has obliged the government to give out controlled information. There can be no doubt that serious efforts will be made to diddle public opinion with the aid of communal twists as voting day approaches.

But the recent visits of the Army chief and other top security officials to the troubled area blows the lid off the story. The moral is clear: repression and extreme military measures — the both eyes for an eye approach — are not the answer. Better sense has to prevail in Delhi. You need to have the people on your side if the Kashmir policy is to make any sense.

The state, especially under the authoritarians now, takes no pains to give the public any understanding of what’s at stake, or it wouldn’t be doing what it is doing. An egregious example is the exemption from entertainment tax of a communal film on Kashmir, made by the regime’s fellow-traveller, whose purpose is to spread social poison across India. The idea is to disseminate the falsehood that the Kashmiri Muslims helped inflict violence to drive out Kashmiri Pandits.

The simple explanation was not forthcoming from the state that in the years when terrorists were ascendant (the period the film deals with), it was only a section of communally-consumed Muslims who took to violence and forced Hindus out in droves. The terrorists, in that era of upheaval when the Indian state seemed to totter, killed thousands of Muslims who tried to resist or did not assist the communal-terrorist venture.

At the civilian level, Muslims died in thousands, the Hindus in dozens. The Jamaatis in that period, whose star rose, strung up National Conference (NC) supporters from the nearest tree. The inside story of Kashmir politics of the time has not been written.

From the beginning, the Hindutva forces have spread propaganda that Muslim-majority Kashmir valley has been ‘given’ more seats in the J&K assembly than Hindu-majority Jammu, conveniently disregarding the fact that the Valley has a larger population.

As a result, the gerrymandering of constituencies has followed with the idea of increasing seats in Hindu majority areas. The hill tracts of Jammu have been artificially joined with southern Kashmir to alter constituency boundaries and profiles as part of the overall Hindutva design for eventual domination.

In post-Article 370 Kashmir, when Hindu Jammu, Muslim Kashmir and Buddhist Ladakh, are all disgruntled, and protest regularly, the BJP may have been expected to be on the back foot, but it is clearly not. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, it did well to win both seats in the Jammu division. To what degree the ruling party’s reduced showing in the national election, and Modi’s compulsion to form a coalition government, will impact the J&K assembly poll, if at all, is to be seen.

Also read: Five Years After Article 370 Move, the Simmering Cauldron of J&K Remains Highly Flammable

Nevertheless, it’s clear the BJP has enormous fire power. It sits on unmatchable financial resources and is adept at buying legislators and toppling governments when it loses. It can push large sums to win votes, setting up dummy candidates to act as vote sinks against competing parties, and spread money around to attract legislators in the post-election scenario, if required.

By now it’s also a well-merited principle that the saffron party in Modi’s India will stop at nothing to win even a village panchayat election. That’s the only way to have legitimate constitutional power to dictate new laws, rules and policy, have the executive authority do as it pleases in violation of laws and traditions.

Given this backdrop, the NC and the Congress have conducted themselves as babes in the woods. They have wholly disregarded the notion of the INDIA bloc, which Congress leader Rahul Gandhi worked so hard to establish. There are three INDIA parties in J&K, but for narrow partisan reasons, Gandhi and NC leader Omar Abdullah have behaved as though the third did not exist.

The younger Abdullah lost sight of the fact that he was defeated in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election because a separatist politician was sprung from jail and facilitated in filing his nomination papers in time to be a candidate from prison. He trounced Abdullah and the other contenders. A by-product, intended or otherwise, has been the emergence of a large battalion of youngsters rooting and mobilising votes for the separatist candidate. This helped bring alive the Jamaat-e-Islami (J-e-I) cadre which had been lying low for five years. Some of them plan to fight the assembly election as independents, although the J-e-I is evidently divided on such a course.

It is plain that J&K is no longer just a NC, Congress state. The PDP emerged as a regional force about two decades ago, though it is enfeebled today. Moreover, the electoral arena is now chock-a-block with the BJP proxies created to cut the main regional parties, NC and PDP, to size — a strategic move by the BJP to establish its long-term political dominance in J&K. In this game, the doors have been opened even for the Jamaat to emerge to take in some fresh air.

The exclusion of the PDP from the alliance created by the Congress and the NC throws the party to the wolves, but more pertinently places it among those whose electoral effort will take away alliance votes and help boost the BJP in the post-poll scenario.

In the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress practised self-abnegation for once, supported regional allies and reaped great dividends. For the upcoming J&K poll, it has lost the lesson learned only three months ago. The NC for its part saw just the small picture.

Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.

Commandeering of Government: Strongman Has Had His Way

When arbitrariness triumphs over settled principles of parliamentary democracy, the signal is that every institution is a plaything of the strongman.

It’s a sign of the times. Witness the silence of the Election Commission (EC) towards a demand of a civil society organisation, Vote for Democracy, to investigate why the difference between the ‘approximate votes polled’ data shared by the EC on polling days at around 8 pm and the final voter turnout is 4.65 crore. These votes are estimated to have made the difference in BJP’s favour in as many as 79 parliament seats decided on low margins, principally in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.

The VfD claims this surge in votes upped vote numbers significantly – by more than 12%, 11% and 8%, respectively in these states, raising questions in their wake about whether the recent Lok Sabha election was commandeered in strongman style.

Suspicions are strengthened by the way events have unfolded since the results came in, leading to the formation of a government whose intrinsic character leaves room for questioning.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the single largest party, but under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi it lost the big majority it had held. It is to be underlined that the newly elected BJP MPs were afforded no opportunity to elect their leader afresh after the election since a meeting of the BJP parliamentary party was not called, expressly denying them their privilege to formally elect their leader. Convention and parliamentary practice mandated such a meeting.

If the BJP parliamentary party was permitted to meet, questions may well have arisen about Modi’s misguided leadership that had led to a rout in the largest two states – UP and Maharashtra. It is possible that a leader other than Modi may have emerged at the meeting of the parliamentary party had it been held. Speculation is rife about possible names.

A claim to form government cannot be entertained if the elected MPs of the largest party or combine have not formally elected a leader, for it needs to be demonstrated that the individual staking claim can command a majority in the House. In the absence of the leader’s election, the president has no basis on which to assess the claim and then accept or reject it. But Modi and his cohorts did away with established parliamentary norms.

They marched to Rashtrapati Bhavan after presuming to have support and the president proceeded to appoint him as prime minister. Significantly, she omitted to direct him to test his strength on the floor of the Lok Sabha by a given date, thus giving him a carte blanche.

This is where we are today. The budget currently under discussion in both Houses has been presented by a dispensation that has officially not tested its strength on the floor of Lok Sabha, which is a time-honoured convention, and no less than a requirement in a coalition situation as no single party claims to command majority support in the House.

It is suggested by some that the ruling bloc was able to get its Speaker elected by a voice vote, and this is indication that it has a majority. This is a superficial justification for the ‘takeover’ which was in violation of settled convention and practice. In a parliamentary democracy, conventions have constitutional force. What this so-called mode of proving a majority in lieu of holding a meeting of the parliamentary party does is to deny equal opportunity to all in the governing bloc to take a shot at the top job.

But it does infinitely more. It leads the president into the blind alley of making an arbitrary choice of prime minister. When arbitrariness triumphs over settled principles of parliamentary democracy, the signal is that every institution is a plaything of the strongman. In that case elections become meaningless.

The EC stands compromised already by virtue of the nominated status of its commissioners. It is not an independent body, as the Constitution requires.

And now it would appear that the presidency too has been overawed. This begs the question of whether the president now is in a position to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution and the law of India. This is the oath she takes upon assuming office.

Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.

Despite the People’s Verdict, the Government Opts For Open Confrontation With the Opposition

To forestall a likely setback, a vicious and communal campaign, accompanied by black money tactics in respect of opposition MLAs, will not be unexpected ahead of assembly polls later this year. Can the opposition remain united and well-coordinated?

In New Delhi, on July 4, the Delhi police reinforced security outside the residence of the recently elected leader of the opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi. News reports suggested that intelligence spoke of right-wing religious groups coalescing for a confrontation.

Gandhi had made a fiery, impactful speech on July 1 on the president’s address in his first outing as LoP and the speaker and the prime minister were clearly displeased. The PM’s long, meandering, angry reply looked pedestrian – in stark contrast to Gandhi’s. It also appeared to covey a threat.

A day earlier, the news from Gujarat, Prime Minister N.D. Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah’s stomping ground, was grim. The state Congress office had been attacked in force in broad daylight.

Soon after the poll results in early June, there was also a renewed eruption of attacks on the minorities in several states, as if a point was being sought to be made about a massive electoral setback not dimming the glow of an ideology that for long had not recognised India’s republican constitution or the national flag.

Are these routine strong-arm tactics of the Modi Raj, or are they orchestrated, well-coordinated attempts by fascism-leaning entities to create conditions of large-scale disorder to intimidate political opponents within weeks of the Lok Sabha election result being announced, an election in which the BJP under Modi’s leadership was cut to size?

If so, what will this lead to if not checked with a heavy hand? The overhaul of criminal laws, passed in the last parliament when 146 MPs were suspended, has brought about a new order under which the police can still arrest people without a warrant, and incarceration for longer terms than before has been made the norm.

Are these new tactics – the attack on the opposition, singling out the Congress for special treatment, and on the minorities; as well as the dramatic changes made to the criminal law administration – going to be a prelude to a substantial system change or overhaul whose direction is not even a distant cousin of democracy.

It is ironic to see such a transition or transformation being attempted when adequate voter support was expressly denied to Modi’s BJP in the just held parliament election.

It is indeed surprising that a minority government propped up by on-off-on allies, and still in the process of finding its feet in an unsettled political environment, has opted for the path of open confrontation with its parliamentary opposition instead of discarding its past stance of wanton aggression when it had enjoyed an overwhelming parliamentary superiority over other parties.

Also read: Modi Stands Defeated But He’s Not Giving Up His Destructive Plan for a 1000-Year-Reich

A modicum of humility and a certain level of respectful interaction with opposition parties, especially the Congress, which the BJP has always marked out as its principal adversary since no other party challenges the BJP-RSS constellation both politically and ideologically on a nationwide scale, would have been more in keeping with the spirit of parliamentary democracy.

Such bare-knuckle show of disdain for a democratically elected parliamentary opposition as we have lately seen amounts to disrespecting the mandate of the people in the recent polls, which went against Modi in key regions where the BJP looked well-entrenched – such as in the two largest states of UP and Maharashtra, as well as Rajasthan, a smaller state but one in which the BJP won a thumping majority in the assembly poll only recently and a state in which that party has enjoyed long-term influence.

There is no underplaying the fact that in the national election, Modi led his party to a defeat, but remains PM through stratagem and by overpowering the RSS system. This election also produced the largest opposition bloc in the Lok Sabha in the country’s history. That makes Gandhi the leader of the largest opposition on record.

This appears to irk the government and its leader. It is this Congress figure who has dared to question Modi openly on just about everything – on Adani, on minorities, on Hindutva politics, on mismanaging of the economy, on destroying employment avenues, ruining the lives of farmers and farm workers, and on fighting shy of evicting Chinese troops sitting within Indian territory for four years.

The Modi regime had tried to have him put away for six years through the defamation route.

Gandhi, most notably, also walked across the country, seeking to raise hope and, importantly, urging people to shed fear. Indeed, this was one of the forceful themes in his maiden speech as opposition leader which appeared to so irk the PM. Until the Lok Sabha result came, Modi had possibly failed to gauge the enormity of the Congress leader’s walkathon and the historical significance of this intervention on the national stage.

By the end of the year, assembly elections are to be held in three states in circumstances when a sense of the fear of government – with overweening powers now available to the police – is being sought to be spread, sometimes through cutouts such as the goon squads enjoying unhampered impunity from punitive state action, as in the case of the recent assault on the Congress premises in Gujarat.

The states going to the polls are Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand. A below par showing for the Modi BJP, as was the case in the Lok Sabha poll, has the potential to undermine the unstable equilibrium that obtains at the Centre – reinforcing doubts not only in the minds of the allies, but also among BJP MPs in the capacities of their present leader to deliver the political goods, especially in light of the Lok Sabha poll experience, when Modi couldn’t deliver even in Ayodhya.

In Maharashtra, in particular, Modi’s party is said to be on a sticky wicket.

Also read | The Strangling Grip of UAPA: Silencing Arundhati Roy and the Voices of Dissent

To forestall a likely setback, a vicious and communal campaign, accompanied by black money tactics in respect of opposition MLAs, will not be an unexpected scenario – in a replay of the Lok Sabha election, only worse. What is the role of the opposition in these circumstances?

At the Centre also the ruling dispensation could attempt to break some of the INDIA parties by seeking defection, which has become a branded BJP technique. There could be violence on display too.

Can the opposition parties remain united and well-coordinated? Can its leading personalities share the burden of the campaign in the states – not just by way of resources, but also by seen to be on the stump together – instead of leaving it to state parties where election is being held, or to the Congress alone?

Gandhi is said to be contemplating joining pilgrims in the annual Pandharpur yatra in Maharashtra, which is like a popular festival. This is an idea of the political stalwart Sharad Pawar of the NCP.

Other opposition forces too could lend heft to the event as a way to challenge a communal campaign likely to be unleashed. Much is at stake. The very idea of the politics of the future could hinge on the outcome of the three state elections.

It is well to keep in mind that, after the election defeat, the Modi BJP appears to have made up its mind to let that not come in the way and to press on with its ideological agenda, at the top of which is the suppression of democratic urges, the suppression of the minorities, and the suppression of the Congress which is the all-India political force that seeks to take on the saffronised party.

It is noteworthy that legal proceedings against eminent personalities such as Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar were instituted on cases going back well over a decade, that there was a flare-up in the attack on the minorities, and that the Congress was attacked as a party and its most forceful leader Rahul Gandhi has been brought under an arc of threat and intimidation.

The revival of the FIR against Roy in fact occurred before Gandhi’s flame-raining speech in the House, as was the case with the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s and B.R. Ambedkar’s statues in Parliament House to the back of the complex in an attempt to invisibilise them.

This was not infantilism. The exercise was a part of a just-begun wider attempt at an ideological pushback against the recently delivered verdict of the people in the national election.

Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.

The Possibilities That Make Today’s Lok Sabha Speaker Election Interesting

In the ordinary course an upset would not be foreseeable. By definition the governing side has more MPs than its opponents. Nevertheless, there is room for much to happen.

Unless Prime Minister Narendra Modi shows appropriate accommodation to his political opponents who laid low his hopes and ego in the recent Lok Sabha poll, there will be a contest for the Lok Sabha speaker’s position today, on June 26, when the speaker’s election is due.

In the ordinary course an upset would not be foreseeable. By definition the governing side has more MPs than its opponents. Nevertheless, there is room for much to happen.

Under the provisions, in terms of chronological time, the motion for the speaker’s election that has been received first shall be moved first by the speaker pro tem. In the event that it is the government’s motion and it is carried (the likely scenario), the contending motion automatically becomes infructuous.

On the other hand, if it is the motion of the contender (in the present instance the lone contender) that was first received by the speaker pro tem, that motion shall be put to vote first. Given the state of politics today – not only as between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its opponents and the BJP and its allies, but also within the saffron party itself – there are probabilities that can cause the government embarrassment, impacting the prime minister’s authority and standing, although the opposition bid does not meet with success.

Theoretically, a well-advertised political battle has already been set up with the filing of nomination by BJP’s Om Birla on the government side and INDIA alliance-backed Kodikunnil Suresh of the Congress, a Kerala MP and a Dalit who happens to be the most senior Lok Sabha MP to have been wilfully denied the position of speaker pro tem by the Modi cabal. Similarly well-mobilised elections for speaker were held in 1976, 1991 and 1998.

In the event that Suresh’s nomination was received before Birla’s, and there has been no duly acknowledged serving of the whip, voting patterns can be well worth watching. Birla can hardly be called a well-liked former speaker, given his record of suspending more than 100 opposition MPs for asking meaningful questions of the Modi government earlier this year. The National Democratic Alliance bloc, including its BJP component, can be in a state of flux in the event of a free vote.

In the saffron party, there is a perception that the BJP Parliamentary Party was not given due recognition by the party bosses and its meeting has not been called to elect its new leader after the Lok Sabha poll. This detracts from the legitimacy and moral authority of Modi who was hurriedly administered oath of office by Rashtrapati Bhavan. That action was at odds with the existing norms and convention and could be open to judicial adjudication.

A general melee of the members of the NDA, which included even chief ministers, wholly lacked any legal standing to nominate a leader and on that basis stake a claim to form government. In such a situation the authority of the BJP to expect wholesale compliance in the House from those elected on its ticket invites questions.

In the final analysis, any attempt to set up a structure of authority of a constitutional nature on that basis is ridden with doubtful propositions and incongruities. Modi, for all his self-propagation and flagrant self-promotion and unending arrogance who disdains consensual working, is the leader who propelled his party to defeat and himself got through at Varanasi in circumstances that have set tongues wagging.

In this situation, there is little surprise in the BJP shedding its customary cohesiveness. To what extent can the party place its fortunes in the hands of the figure who took it downhill in the parliament election? What will be the party’s likely fate in the assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand in a few months? A below par showing could well cause a run on the political bank.

It is possible that the government motion on electing Birla as speaker is taken up first and is carried. Sensing the potential fragility of the moment, NDA MPs can stick together to ward off dreaded possibilities and loss of power, whatever may happen to the BJP’s internal dynamics in the medium term.

Many uncertainties may have been avoided or postponed if Modi had agreed to willingly give the post of the deputy speaker – as much a constitutional position as that of speaker – to the opposition benches. Instead, he chose to be more like he was in 2019 when he commanded an overwhelming majority in the Lok Sabha. Then he had not permitted the election of the deputy speaker, although holding that election is technically the domain of the speaker. If political voices are to be believed, one of the parties supporting the Modi bid to stay in power may be handed the position of deputy speaker as part of a bargain.

Whatever transpires in the speaker’s election, the moment is pregnant with likelihoods.

Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.

Modi Has Been Announced the PM Without BJP Leaders Formally Electing Him

If fundamental practices and conventions are permitted to be given the go-by so casually, nothing prevents a future usurper from seizing power without emerging as the proven leader of the largest party.

Is a smoothly functioning party system crucial to government formation in a democracy? Can India run her representative democracy if a significant party overlooks the basics, and proceeds with the nod of the head of state to form government in which elected MPs have been given no formal opportunity to express their preference for their choice of leader?

In contrast with secret confabulations or confidential exchanges, a formal event has the virtue of placing a matter on record.

In Pakistan next door, in the absence of a worthwhile party system, reasons for which have been elaborated by the historian Ayesha Jalal, there was confused politics after the death of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Some years later Ayub Khan mounted a military coup and subsequently floated the idea of a “party-less” democracy – in the Pakistan context, another name for a military dictatorship rather than rule by an individual or a single party. The country would pay a heavy price and is yet to recover.

After the Election Commission issued certificates on June 5 to the winning candidates of the just ended Lok Sabha election, the party with the highest number of seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party, did not call a meeting of its newly elected MPs to elect their leader in the House. To this day that meeting has not been called. Yet, Rashtrapati Bhavan swore in former Prime Minister Narendra Modi, making him PM-elect.

This amounts to an egregious deviation from the convention established after India’s first general election. Doubtless, following the British practice, from which many Indian parliamentary norms emanate, the president is at liberty to appoint the person most likely to command a majority in the Lok Sabha.

There is an element of permissible latitude here in the event there is more than one likely claimant for leadership of the parliamentary party or bloc which has been elected with the highest number of seats, or there are contending blocs. However, the number of likely contenders in a party can only be revealed in a formal meeting of the MPs of the party with the highest number of seats.

If there is consensus on a single contender in the largest party, that may become clear through informal caucuses or informal consultations prior to the holding of the meeting of the MPs of the leading party, but that consensus needs to be brought out into the open in a formal setting at a duly called meeting of the parliamentary party – in this case the BJP Parliamentary Party.

This is the convention in India, i.e. a settled norm based on prevalent values. Conventions may evolve if values underlying them change. Such is the gravity of conventions that there is no written British constitution, for instance. A body of conventions is treated as its constitution. The constitutional law in the world’s first modern democracy is founded entirely on its conventions and much of the world has found it useful or necessary to take a cue from there.

In Britain, the leadership contest for government formation can frequently be sharp, even brutal. In India, brutal instances are not common. Nevertheless, one case stands out: the election of the leader – the future prime minister – of the Janata Dal (JD) government when the stalwart Chandra Shekhar, who felt he had been betrayed by colleagues who went back on informal assurances, stormed out of the Parliamentary Party meeting called to elect the leader, and the way was cleared for V.P. Singh to become prime minister.

In a formal meeting, a name is proposed and seconded to complete the process of electing the leader before it is taken to the president to stake a claim to form government.

Singh, who had led his newly formed party’s election campaign, would not have got the chance to be prime minister if the Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi had staked his claim. The Congress was far ahead of the JD in parliamentary numbers but Gandhi was mindful of propriety. He declined to stake claim since he was the prime minister before the election but under his leadership the Congress could not win back the required number to make government, i.e. half the seats in the House. It was upon his refusal that the JD found its opportunity.

The JD did not have the numbers and would have to find support from other parties. Even so, it was obliged to call a meeting of its Parliamentary Party to elect its own leader first. There was no question. Such support may or may not have been forthcoming if there was another leader. The formal support from other parties – the Left parties and BJP – was a subsequent matter.

In the present scenario, under Modi’s leadership, the BJP could not win enough seats to reach the halfway mark. His situation is analogous to that of Rajiv Gandhi in 1989-90. Yet, unlike Gandhi, Modi rushed to claim a victory though the people of India had withdrawn their pleasure, denying him a win. He did this on the evening of June 5 at a gathering at his party’s office before a smallish and far from enthusiastic crowd.

More, he dubiously claimed at the gathering to have created a record of a third consecutive win, the first time since the 1960s.

Without referring to Jawaharlal Nehru by name, he was claiming to have equalled the record of the country’s first prime minister in the Lok Sabha election of 1962. Modi has repeated this false claim many times over since then, including at the recent G-7 outreach meeting in Italy.

Since Modi, in reality, had led his party to a defeat while claiming to be an all-conquering messiah at the start of the election process, with most of the country swallowing his propaganda, the rising political pressure upon him from within was all the greater when the shock results began to come in.

In fact BJP’s performance under Modi and his arch collaborator Amit Shah turned out to be the worst in Uttar Pradesh, electorally the most significant state. In the PM’s own seat of Varanasi in the state, the nature of his win remains controversial. Modi’s margin of victory was humdrum. Worse for the so-called party of Hindus and of Hindutva, the BJP lost the Faizabad (Ayodhya) seat around which Modi and his acolytes had hoped to concentrate their Ram temple-centred campaign.

Would there have been a challenge to Modi’s leadership, or a questioning, if the BJP Parliamentary Party had been formally called to elect its leader? We shall never know but such a meeting was crucial since it was evident that before the BJP went to the president to stake a claim to form government, it would have to gather firm commitments of support from other parties in parliament.

Regrettably, Rashrapati Bhavan failed to put its foot down in ensuring that an important convention of the party system and government formation was being upheld. Will the president’s conduct of swearing in the prime minister-elect without ensuring that the largest party has duly elected its leader, stand constitutional or judicial scrutiny? The answer cannot be unknown unless there is a challenge before the Supreme Court.

However, if fundamental practices and conventions are permitted to be given the go-by so casually, nothing prevents a future usurper from seizing power without emerging as the proven leader of the largest party. If the cabinet system is deemed the arch-stone of the Westminster model of democratic governance, then a functioning party system can be said to be its lifeblood. Without it, elected legislators will be an undistinguishable mass of independents that can be overrun by a warlord. They might as well not exist.

Compare the unseemly events surrounding Modi’s elevation as PM-elect by a lax President’s House with 1962 when Nehru won his third consecutive election. Under Nehru’s leadership the Congress won 361 seats out of a total of 508 Lok Sabha seats at the time, well over 100 more than the halfway mark of 254. Modi in contrast could only return with 240 on 543. Is that equalling the record set in 1962?

It is evident that the tawdry display we have seen – Modi muscling his way to Rashtrapati Bhavan to be officially named Prime Minister-elect when he didn’t have the verifiable numbers, in the process overturning a key convention – became necessary because he was nowhere near the mark recorded in 1962.

Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.

Naidu, Nitish Back Modi Ignoring the Pain of All Those Who Have Suffered During His 10-Year Tenure

It’s all the more striking that Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar have run to be alongside Narendra Modi as he prepares once again to step into the role of the prime minister after describing the country’s largest minority group as “infiltrators”.

It is noteworthy that two leading political figures — the resurrected Andhra Pradesh chief minister-designate N. Chandrababu Naidu and Bihar’s political acrobat Nitish Kumar who finds it difficult to rid himself of the shackles of the chief minister’s office — had to rescue a beleaguered prime ministerial aspirant after he lost the mandate of the people.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

In effect, the two leaders are covering for the handicap imposed on Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi by the people of the country for his ten-year run that may be aptly described as a period of misdeeds and a time of terror when Gestapo methods were not deemed unthinkable if you came from the lower rungs of society, or were a member of the largest religious minority, or were a dissident or sat in the Opposition.

It’s all the more striking that Naidu and Kumar have run to be alongside Modi as he prepares once again to step into the role of the prime minister after describing the country’s largest minority group as “infiltrators”.

Modi had not become the prime minister after discharging a fusillade of vile rhetoric in 2014 and 2019 — in fact the opposite. It is not surprising that he was demonstrably defeated in 2024 when he spewed communal poison right through the campaign trail. And yet Naidu and Kumar believe they are serving the ends of democracy by lining up with him.

This is truly an extraordinary event in the phase of our political journey when people, parties and social organisations of various shades, overcoming their ideological differences and overlooking even mutual political discomfiture, gathered under the umbrella of the INDIA grouping to challenge the country’s slide toward dictatorship, if not outright fascism overseen by big capital and single-religion nationalism.

For some time now, Kumar has shown himself to be a defeated leader with a giant-sized ego, burning ambition, limited political capital confined to specific constituencies, and next to no chance of leaving his impress unaided. He has been holding on to his crutches for a considerable time. For the past six months, he has been with Modi, swallowing past insults. Therefore, it was not a surprise to see him cry out the virtues of the pretender to the throne.

Kumar said Modi had run the country wonderfully well for ten years and ought to be supported in all that he is planning. The Janata Dal(United) (JD(U)) leader forgot about the pain of Manipur in Modi raj, the Chinese occupation of Indian territory, the mounting distress of workers and farmers, the collapse of every index of welfare captured even in cooked up government statistics, the indignities heaped on the country’s women perhaps best flagged by the case of India’s medal-winning women wrestlers, the miseries of crores of our youth for whom there are no jobs even after they gather shining degrees, and the dismantling of this country’s democratic institutions built brick-by-brick after Independence, with periods of advance and retardation.

He even chose to seek to traduce the opposition parties who gave Modi a fright in the recent parliament election. He said they had done nothing (for the country) and had nothing to offer, parroting Modi’s language of the past ten years. Modi smirked his appreciation but was he impressed?

Also read: Elections Results Show that ‘Modi Fatigue’ Has Replaced the ‘Modi Bump’

It was a demeaning spectacle before a gathering of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) MPs at the old parliament building on Friday in which Modi was unanimously elected as the leader of NDA, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha, and the leader of the BJP parliamentary party board. All of Bihar would have squirmed even if their chief minister was not mindful that he was surrendering his dignity syllable by syllable as he pattered on.

Such is the Bihar chief minister’s tenuous political position in the state that his MLAs can be snapped up any time Amit Shah sees fit. Modi won’t need to move a muscle. For that matter, Kumar’s recently elected MPs may also suffer the same fate. At any rate, his desperation in spilling his affection all over Modi is understandable, even if regrettable.

But, what about the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Naidu, once a formidable political player who had lost his salience but has come roaring back?

Naidu is in no need of proving his loyalty to Modi. He has gained by tying up with the BJP leader in the assembly election in Andhra Pradesh and also the Lok Sabha polls. But Modi too benefited from the association. There it could have ended, but Naidu has chosen to go along.

Of course, he has made a balanced speech before the NDA MPs on June 7, did not drool over Modi. Perhaps he is aware that Modi is an irregular customer. May be he will also note that particular sections who voted in determined fashion against Modi’s depredations may not take kindly to his overtures when he might need them.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters in Nagpur has apparently played a more deft hand. The BJP’s ideological mother chose not to nourish it during the election campaign, as was widely reported. For three days, it is said its leading lights gave serious thought to the question whether a defeated BJP leader deserved the support of its members, a large number of whom are again MPs on the BJP ticket. And finally, it seems the ayatollahs of Hindutva have chosen to lie low. Perhaps they would prefer that Modi came to be entangled in his own contradictions.

Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.

Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.

Results That Give Hindutva a Jolt

It does seem that Modi, like Trump in US before him, is finding it hard to accept that he has fallen from the perch.

It’s clear now that the Hindutva project that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had pursued with uncommon vigour in the past ten years has been buried fathoms deep.

Technically, the outgoing government was a Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance enterprise, but in reality it was a full-fledged Modi-BJP show; the NDA parties, barring sundry minor ones, had left Modi years ago. Modi ran the government as a one-man show, whimsically and brutally, looking only at big business interests and the country’s comfortable classes. The headline news is that his party has lost power. It has fallen way short of the halfway mark.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

If Modi believed in democratic decorum even half way, he should have resigned and urged President Droupadi Murmu to invite the next party or pre-election coalition to take a shot at forming a stable government. Outgoing Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had done precisely that after the 1989 election. His party had won close to 200 seats in the House but he felt he had lost power since his Congress party did not have half the seats in the Lok Sabha. He could have easily formed a coalition government, but declined to do so, rejecting all pressures.

But Modi is a very different political animal. He has roped in lapsed NDA partners like N. Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), seeking accommodation at the local level in their respective states, and with the help of this last minute-NDA, he plans to return to the seat of office as prime minister. Together these NDA parties clear the halfway mark.

Modi has waved away constitutional ethics and political morality. He organised himself a victory oration at the BJP national headquarters when the counting was still on, thumping himself on the back for his third ‘win’ on the trot. For all the contrived enthusiasm, it was a lacklustre event. This was written on everyone’s face, including Modi’s. But the ashen visage of defence minister Rajnath Singh, seated next to Modi, said it all.

It looked as though the Rajput from UP, among the more honourable ones to win his (Lucknow) seat, was kicked in the stomach but just held on for dear life and agreed to take the stage. The outgoing home minister, Amit Shah, flanked Modi on the other side but appeared decidedly subdued. Modi’s other erstwhile cabinet colleagues were either not invited or stayed away. Party president J.P. Nadda, who is clearly Modi’s own marionette, made a falsely rousing speech but no one looked interested.

It was evident that a defeated Modi-BJP was trying to put up a giant-sized pretence.

Also read: 9.23 Things to Think About as We Look at the 2024 Election Results

The trouble with the whole thing is that Modi’s NDA allies, especially Naidu and Nitish, have been contacted by leading figures on the INDIA grouping which, in number terms, is snapping at Modi-BJP’s heels. If these parties switch for their own political reasons in the event that they negotiate with INDIA and get a deal that interests them, the INDIA alliance would be ahead of the NDA.

It does seem that Modi, like Trump in US before him, is finding it hard to accept that he has fallen from the perch. More, he is trying to brazen it out although he knows that he scraped through his own seat in Varanasi by a margin much smaller than before and that Uttar Pradesh, the land of the Ayodhya temple, until recently thought to be Modi’s ready-made tramping ground, now represents a wasteland for Modi-BJP. On leads, the INDIA grouping is ahead of Modi’s party.

It is hard to get away from the feeling that the entire charade of celebrating Modi’s victory was conducted to bring pressure on Rashtrapati Bhavan to do Modi’s bidding and invite him to be sworn in as prime minister even before the results were officially declared. There can be little doubt that the supposed celebration is simultaneously a tactic to pressure and threaten other senior BJP leaders – as well as the RSS headquarters in Nagpur – not to challenge or even obliquely seek to question Modi’s leadership credentials.

Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.

Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.

A Win by Handsome Margin in Varanasi is Must for Modi to Keep Intra-Party Feud Under Check

The growing unease in the BJP over the functioning of the Modi-Shah duo and their fraught relationship with the RSS could well go against Modi if he were to fall short of numbers and register a poor win in his own constituency.

Just before the seventh and last round of balloting on June 1 in the ongoing national election, estimates of the likely result and the politics that may ensue – the permitting of the Modi era to stretch, or the signalling of its reversal – remain as varied as when the process began on May 7.

Leaving aside extreme predictions on either side – by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s partisans or opponents – it looks probable that in the event the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) can muster the numbers to form the government, the PM must win his own Varanasi seat impressively in order that he is permitted by his party to re-assert his authority as before.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

Anything described as a sketchy win is likely to ruffle the intra-BJP dynamics to Modi’s disadvantage. In 2019, the PM had won by a massive 4.79 lakh votes in the wake of a nationalist frenzy following India’s air attack on Balakot inside Pakistan after a massive terrorist strike in Pulwama in Kashmir valley (in circumstances later seen to be controversial in light of the then J&K governor Satyapal Malik’s explosive media revelations which the government has not challenged).

That comfortable margin of heightened patriotic fervour is not available in 2024 as Modi’s governance record faces wide and deep-going criticism even from sections of society that had earlier rooted for him.

Ruling BJP circles, top leaders of the government, and leading lights of the BJP organisation, as well as big business circles and the stock market indicators, in addition to the traditional media which has been dutifully pliant for the past decade, appear buoyant about Modi returning as PM with ease, and his party notching up parliamentary numbers nearly as good as in 2019.

To numerous independent observers and journalists, however, such a rosy prospect appears illusory, in light of the evidence that is hard to ignore in parts of the country from where the BJP had marked its best wins in 2019. Besides, in contrast to the last Lok Sabha election, this time around the opposition front forged by the Congress looks focused, well-coordinated, and combative. Modi’s opponents are drawing massive doses of attention in the constituencies, including Varanasi, where the PM is defending his seat – although the show of partisanship by the Election Commission, whose conduct so far has drawn widespread condemnation, as a force multiplier is widely feared. In Varanasi, there are signs that the fury of the opposition challenge appears to have stunned the BJP and its supporters.

Deep-going discontent among the electorate on account of daily worsening economic woes is palpable across the vast Ganga-Yamuna Indian heartland, which hosts the holiest Hindu pilgrimages as well as sites of the most rapid recent growth of Modi’s stepped-up Hindutva polity.

RSS is the mother-ship of BJP and its predecessor party, the Bhartiya Jana Sangh, which was germinated by the RSS in 1951 to be its political and electoral face, as the RSS is obliged by historical circumstances to present itself as a cultural and social service organisation that promotes nationalism and Hindu cultural consciousness, and stays out of politics.

Indeed, it is the Sangh, as the RSS is known, that provides the BJP its cadre on a 24×7 basis, including at election time. The BJP has no real cadre of its own. To underline the integral unity of RSS and the BJP, Modi – who rose up the RSS ranks before catapulting himself into the BJP – has also fulfilled RSS’ key elements of the long-term strategic agenda for India.

BJP-RSS fraught relationship

And yet, RSS’ relationship with the BJP controlled by the Modi-Amit Shah duo has been fraught at the leadership level for some time. Incompatibility and misalignment between Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat have been written about without contradiction from either side. It has been speculated that in more recent times the dissonance appears to have spilled over to a section of the cadre as well. This was on plain view in Varanasi when this writer visited Modi’s constituency for an election-time appraisal.

Indeed, the widely observed coolness of the RSS cadre toward Modi’s election campaign throughout the BJP’s catchment areas, including in key states such as UP, Maharashtra, and Bihar, has been commented upon extensively. Video news and current affairs platforms, which are thought to have taken away nearly half of the established television viewership, have busily taken note of this new element in RSS-BJP ties.

It is also widely thought that the RSS, keen to propagate its cultivated self-image as a non-political entity, prefers to dissociate itself from the perceived growing unpopularity of the Modi regime, which many have increasingly begun to describe as a “dictatorship”.

In this background has lately come a much-noted interview of BJP president J.P.Nadda to the Indian Express newspaper. Nadda has stated unequivocally that while the RSS cadre provided support to the BJP in the past, the party had now come to stand on its own feet and did not need the RSS largesse. This has stunned BJP ranks and left the RSS feeling humiliated, possibly raising bitterness at top levels in both organisations.

In telephonic conversations, BJP circles find it hard to overcome their surprise, especially since Nadda’s observations have come in the middle of a bitter and crucial election campaign in which BJP – in the eyes of many observers – appears to be in trouble in many parts of the country.

Observers of the BJP and RSS fold also point out that Nadda is unduly keen to show his loyalty to Modi and Shah. In a video in circulation, the BJP chief can be seen proclaiming that Modi is not only the leader or king of men (“Narendra”– the PM’s given name) but also “Surendra”, the leader or the king of the gods. This is an overstatement of divine proportions even by the prevailing standards of dripping sycophancy in Modi’s court.

To what extent such a scenario might impact intra-BJP politics – and the wider political arena – if the BJP does not romp home an automatic winner in the polls under Modi and Shah’s command and control, is a matter of fair speculation, considering that unease with the leadership ways of the Modi-Shah combine and even the state of the polity they have given rise to, has been widespread at senior levels in the BJP and the Union cabinet.

Rumblings in the BJP

Even in key BJP-influenced states such as UP, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhatisgarh and Haryana, whispers against Modi and Shah have persisted for some years, leaving the impression that dissent has not burst into the open only on account of fear of reprisal. The masters of the present-day BJP are frequently spoken of as “ruthless” men who would go to any extent to keep power.

Not long after Nadda’s controversial interview appeared last week, a video surfaced showing the RSS chief Bhagwat praising the role of the Congress party – Modi’s bitter political and ideological antagonist – and its many leaders in the freedom movement, and their contribution to nation-building.

A PTI fact-check has evidently shown this to be a video from 2018. That does not quite make it out of context, of course. Nevertheless, the timing of its re-appearance can be said to be a comment on the state of the deteriorating relations between RSS and BJP in the Modi era. Who may have injected the video back into the political play-stream at a sensitive moment is a question that may also be of considerable political interest. Among the leading lights of the freedom movement was Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister, against whom Modi has railed practically every day of his ten years as PM.

Lately, whispers are also heard in the wider BJP constellation of a lack of chemistry between President Droupadi Murmu and the PM, with the president evidently feeling slighted by Modi’s disregard of protocol in relation to her, amounting to a lack of institutional respect, leave alone personal propriety.

In a widely circulated video not long ago, when out of deference for his age and state of health, the president called upon former BJP stalwart L.K.Advani at his residence to confer the Bharat Ratna on him, she was seen standing and bending, and he sitting in a chair, as she gave him the nation’s highest award. But the PM was also seen in the sequence, sitting cosily with Advani even as the president stood, an example of sheer poor grace.

As further example of open disregard of the president by the PM is cited in her absence from the inauguration of the new parliament building by Modi on account of non-invitation. This was blatant as the president, and not the prime minister, traditionally and ceremonially opens every session of parliament. It is also being said that this prime minister thinks nothing of walking ahead of the First Citizen in protocol situations.

While such issues are being spoken of in BJP and government circles, it is not unlikely that other infractions of the PM are also being totted up by those dissatisfied with him in the regime set-up, to be brought into play at the appropriate hour if the chips are down for Modi. The shadows are indeed moving. Perhaps only an assertive margin of victory in Varanasi can resurrect his leadership in case the BJP manages to take a lead over the opposition, as an individual party and as a part of the NDA coalition.

Much has been said about the leader of the first party being called by the president to be sworn in as the next prime minister, as per convention. But it cannot be overlooked that the BJP is in the election as part of the NDA coalition, a pre-poll partnership which constituted the previous government led by Modi. This coalition is in direct competition against the pre-poll INDIA grouping. Individual party strength is a secondary consideration in the circumstances.

Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.

Ground Report: In UP, Narendra Modi’s Name No Longer Ignites the Enthusiasm it Once Did

The inauguration of the half-built Ram Temple in Ayodhya this January by Modi may not bring the electoral rewards the prime minister is expecting.

Varanasi/Rae Bareli/Amethi: Varanasi, Rae Baraeli and Amethi in Uttar Pradesh are among the country’s more iconic electoral constituencies for reasons of history and politics. When politics carries forebodings of a possible descent into full-blown one-man rule if the government were to return with full force, these become the most watched seats in the parliament election under way.

If you are in a big city, avidly read the papers and closely follow television news, the election campaign playing out in the countryside in Uttar Pradesh can be the bigger surprise. Varanasi in this state of large size and considerable diversity illustrates this perfectly.

Hinduism’s holiest city by the Ganga – the holiest river for Hindus which cascades down from the dreadlocks of the master of the universe, Lord Shiva himself – was especially chosen by Narendra Modi to be his launchpad for a career in parliament in preference to his native Gujarat. Nothing else might better underline his cause and ambition of being the undisputed numero uno of politicised Hinduism, although that’s a little bit of a dodgy proposition considering Hinduism’s amorphous nature as a creed without a book of rules.

And it’s from here that the prime minister seeks to renew his mandate to lead the country for a straight third term to equal the win record of the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, for whom Modi shows a pathological distaste while nursing the ambition, it is said, to be seen to be as overwhelmingly popular as the “gentle colossus” he dislikes.

If Varanasi weren’t the prime minister’s constituency in the Modi era, in which no tactics to win can be deemed underhand, an observer may well be led to think that there is a fight on. This owes to the sharply dropping graph of the leader of government in New Delhi, not particularly to any stalwart nature of the challenge he faces from the Congress party’s Ajay Rai, although the Congress is in a firm alliance with UP’s influential Samajwadi Party which is holding up very well – a sharp contrast from the time of the UP state poll of 2017.

Ram Temple not an election issue

Driving around some 1,000 km in UP just before the fifth phase of the seven-phase election was drawing up, two stunning features of this election came into view: One, the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya this January by Modi, preening before a goodly crowd of India’s wealthiest drawn from the world of business, cinema and sports, was not an election issue at all.

This meant that the prime minister had wasted his time rushing the inauguration of a half-built temple (which religious precepts forbid) with a view to consolidating Hindu votes in his party’s favour just two months before the election process was formally inaugurated.

And the upshot of this goes to the heart of the Modi catechism: The communal divide trick to polarise votes on the lines of religion has been of little avail in this election, although the harbouring of communal sentiments amongst many persists as a part of the baggage of the past which remains quiescent for the most part but acts up in sections of society when the tendency is inflamed by political monsters.

The failure of the temple issue to ignite the dynamite of communalism, or to raise the pitch of the “consciousness of the nation” where the word Hindu is left unstated, just the bait that Modi threw to his audience of the mega-rich while inaugurating the temple in Ayodhya on January 22, is a setback of ironic proportions.

The poor man was desperately banking on it since he can easily be said to hold a remarkable record of indifferent performance on most counts that matter to ordinary Indians, although his real ‘home’ constituency of the super rich and the complacent upper classes are thrilled by every move he makes.

Narendra Modi with BJP and NDA leaders in Varanasi on Tuesday. Photo: X/@narendramodi

A noteworthy corollary of the failure of the communal trick is that the political effort of the Muslim community in UP pitched alongside those of large sections of other communities registers as a perfectly normal event – something which ought to be the norm but alas is not, thanks to the communal virus and the massive moves made to politically “isolate” and socially ostracise Muslims by coordinated scheming minds.

In this special sense, Lok Sabha election 2024 is a throwback to a long-forgotten past. For this reason, mercifully, the mercenary Muslim communal outfits too have found themselves on the sidelines, quite simply unable to intervene in any noticeable manner.

A failing cult of personality

The second important aspect of this election, as perceived from UP, is that the prime minister’s name brings up indifference or even annoyance, no matter where one travels in the state. Right up until now, Modi’s campaign pitch was to urge voters to cast their ballots in his name. The candidate didn’t matter. This was an essential part of the panoply of the building of the cult of personality. Not any more. The trick has collapsed completely.

The round-the-clock propaganda build-up of Modi by the so-called national television stations, and the efforts of their counterparts in print pursuing a spot of dishonourable journalism, seem to have been of little avail. The small folk in distant parts of India’s largest state are not impressed. The silly ‘tube’ and the dubious elements of the press – which happen to be the majority of their tribe – have just made a fast buck, and the dupe is the all-knowing one who resides in splendour in Delhi.

Now, in absentia, Modi is being grilled for his failed policies leading to the most dismal employment data in 45 years and the widespread collapse of the small businesses since demonetisation from which most are yet to fully recover – and with that has gone gainful employment of every conceivable variety in rural and semi-urban India. Losses in agriculture, UP’s unprecedented cattle menace for farmers which leads to stray cattle entering fields to, are points of hot discussion. The regularly rising prices offer no respite.

These are the very issues that Modi ducks and resorts instead to low grade communal propaganda, gimmicky slogans and sings paeans of praise to himself, while launching into diatribes against Rahul Gandhi all the time. The prime minister is being widely seen as not being able to defend his policies and blaming everyone else for the failures of his government. Gandhi, on the other hand, hammers home just the points that the great leader shirks. A well-known RSS figure in Varanasi says that the only leader in the country raising the right questions is Rahul Gandhi.

Also read: A Dull Election in Rae Bareli and an Intense Fight in Amethi

Does he propagate this? The affable young proprietor of provincial upper crust background is happy to declare that he would be voting NOTA (no, he can’t bring himself to vote Congress or Samajawadi!), and so would many others, he adds. Many among the savarna (the Hindu upper castes) too would press the NOTA button, he insists, although the bulk of the savarna vote would go to “Modi ji”.

So, the savarna vote is not Modi’s near monopoly now? No, it isn’t, but “some of us still thank him for raising the temple”, he says wistfully, “But then, what? How do people live?” Here is the cracking of a fundamental conundrum that has teased observers since the rise of Modi in 2014: is there a point where bread and butter once again matters, overtaking contrived religious commotion.

‘How do people live?’

In fact, from what one hears, the questions being raised in the RSS circles are not imaginary – and they are the same questions that the others are asking, including the subaltern sections. “How do people live?” is a nasty question indeed.

This is thought to be the reason for a widely noted phenomenon in UP – exertions of the RSS camp on behalf of BJP candidates are more ritualistic, less energetic this time, quite unlike the past. The bustling “pracharak” or RSS propagator-volunteer, buzzing from door to door like a bee, seems to have gone missing. He hasn’t lost his faith in “Modi ji”, one hears, but he no longer knows how to answer the stinging questions that come his way.

The SC or Dalits have lately been a key element of Modi’s political empire. In 2019, Modi pocketed nearly half the votes of this constituency. In Lok Sabha 2024, this seems an unlikely ask. The message propagated by the Congress and the INDIA alliance, that a third term for Modi “with 400 seats” (quoting back to Modi his own vainglorious boast) will be their ruin, seems to have truly hit home.

The fear is widespread that a rebounding Modi will scrap the Constitution, drafted by their truest icon Dr B.R. Ambedkar, which gave them rights, dignity and reservation. In truth, the fire was lit when half a dozen BJP MPs and other leaders urged voters to give them the strength in parliament so that they may change the Constitution.

It is evident on the campaign trail that no other point being made by the opposition camp has been delivered so deep. This can be seen across the state among the poorest people – not just the Dalit communities but also OBCs of every stripe.

The distrust

In Varanasi, a semi-literate Dalit young man, Ramkumar (name altered to protect identity), who does a lowly job but is clearly emerging as an organic intellectual of his class and community in the Gramscian sense, delivers to some of us a fluent lecture on political economy and the state of social realities under Modi, but also declares as a true conscientious objector that he shall not be voting.

“Why?” I ask in amazement. His answer flattens me: “EVM hai to Modi hai!”

This indeed is the nub of what one hears everywhere one goes – the fear that the whole electoral system is easy to manipulate, that it can be manipulated, and that the Election Commission is a frightened little department of the government in reality and will do Modi’s bidding. A leader of boatmen of the Ganga says similar things sitting in his home. He also underlines the “atank (terror)” factor. He finds his name missing from the voters’ list, although it was there in the 2022 assembly election. Many other names have also gone missing. Open regime criticism can invite a knock on the door, he says.

My attempt to assure Ramkumar that the Supreme Court is seized of the EVM matter is met with a sneer. It may have sounded too much like upper caste borsch. The UP dalit is wide awake – without question.

Ramkumar is candid. In the cluster of the 500-odd poor homes where he lives, amidst mostly Dalit communities but also some OBCs like the Patels (Kurmis), he says some Dalits “will probably sell themselves for murgha and sharab (chicken and booze), some could be swayed by the free five kg ration (under the government’s scheme to keep the poor dependent and without employment), but the bulk of them will vote the way they want and they will vote for the opposition this time”.

Also read: Rattled by SP’s OBC Outreach, BJP Tries to Pit Yadavs Against Yadavs

Although he shan’t be voting himself, he says he and his friends, although they aren’t with any party, have set up a small office to support Modi’s opponents. More, they will try to get the recipients of free foodgrains to change their mind by impressing on them the need to have a job and stand on their feet. But he doubts he shall be able to convince most of the Patels to change their vote to the opposition.

We are introduced to a BJP municipal councilor in Varanasi. He is very courteous, complacent and self-assured. “This is the PM’s constituency. It’s only a question of whether we can win with the same margin as in 2019 (Modi was ahead of his nearest rival by more than 4.75 lakh votes.).” This does indeed seem to echo a commonly heard sentiment in the city.

But we still ask the councillor why in Modi’s mammoth recent roadshow in Varanasi, prominent BJP and RSS workers, as we heard, weren’t able to recognise most participants. It appears that the glam brigade – the dancers and clappers – weren’t the only ones to be called from Gujarat, but vast contingents of ordinary cheering contingents as well.

The councilor now wore a hang-dog look. He meekly said, “For some reason the scene this time seems different from 2019, I can’t say why. I don’t know.” But the gentle BJP mid-level worker remained steadfast to his cause and maintained, “We’ll win here you will see. It’s only a question of margin!”

Changing moods

Rae Baraeli, where Rahul Gandhi is the candidate, and Amethi right next door, where he had been defeated by Union minister Smriti Irani in 2019, are a whole world apart from Varanasi. This is especially true of Rae Baraeli. Here again the most widespread talk is about the margin with which Gandhi will sweep the polls. It’s pro-Congress talk here, no matter where you turn. The star campaigner is Priyanka Gandhi, for Rae Baraeli and Amethi – and there aren’t many like her in any party. In elegant Hindi she brings on candour, wit, polish and gashing thrusts in all her public meetings, thrilling listeners and smoothly looking past even seasoned television journalists who ask the same boring questions, without regard for context.

A select contingent of about 250 Congress workers has been brought to Rae Baraeli and Amethi from across UP as well as other states not to organise meetings and rallies but to knock on people’s doors across the two constituencies. They go like clockwork. After the polling here on May 20, these special forces were likely to be moved to Varanasi, where voting is due on June 1, to boost the Congress campaign there. Under Priyanka’s leadership, the contest for Rae Baraeli and Amethi appear to be directed as a single unified effort.

In Lucknow, before we set out for the twin constituencies, RSS-BJP circles tell us that the result in Rae Baraeli was pre-ordained, and that there was no stopping Gandhi, but there was a fight on in Amethi. The Congress was in the fight, they acknowledged. This turned out only half true.

Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge in Amethi. Photo: X/@kharge

While Rae Baraeli had a brisk and busy but very assured air about which way things might be going, Amethi seemed a cauldron deriving from public anger against the incumbent MP. The BJP office looked sleepy but for the presence of a bunch of young volunteers from the BJP’s notorious IT cell whose reputation for poison darts, fake news, and disinformation has been widely noted.

The most senior party official available, a gentleman of RSS background, enthusiastically covered the ground of BJP’s “achievements” which the prime minister routinely seeks to highlight, but there didn’t appear much in these to highlight the local MP’s activities. Indeed, Irani’s belligerence in parliament, in TV studios and in her public interventions is spoken of widely. Amethi too appears to have made a particular note of this aspect of her personality.

In the wider constituency can be heard even the language of revolt. Strong language against the government, forceful criticisms of their MP as well as the most senior members of the ruling party, are common besides the usual talk of rampaging unemployment, unbearable prices, and (especially in Muslim segments like Jais) of names being struck of the voters’ list in very large numbers.

Earlier reports of the campaign in UP in prominent Delhi newspapers under the by-lines of prominent analysts had noted the “voters’ silence”, duly discussing the likely meaning of this. The present writer, visiting the crucial state at a slightly later stage, found the opposite to be true. Everybody was by now talking. It appears the earlier reluctance owed to fear of official reprisal. This has wholly dissipated. This could be worthy of analysis.

Spending a day in Allahabad on our way back to Delhi, we just missed being at the venue of the joint Phulpur rally of Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav Some parts of this charming city fall under the Phulpur constituency and we saw the event live in parts on people’s cell phones. It was hard not to be overawed.

But seeing the video in its entirety afterward brought home the meaning of energy when people go into action. The whole clip could have been a part of the Rising of 1857 – the quibbles about its meaning centring on the failure of crowd control arrangements seem mundane and academic. This was evident from the mood in the city that day. In the end, the Rising was quelled by the rulers. What happens to the volatile mood on view everywhere in UP can take us to the edge of our seats.

Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.