BJP goes bust

Hindutva politics suffered a sizeable defeat in elections in the Indian states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, as people voted out Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP. Coming just months before the 2019 national elections, the vote was a massive embarrassment for Modi. It seems that the BJP-backed cow vigilantes’ lynching spree was a bridge too far, even for loyal BJP voters. Even Modi’s last-ditch efforts to woo poor voters, with vote-catching phrases such as “You can’t understand the difficulties faced by the poor, but a chaiwallah can” failed miserably. The BJP chief ministers from Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh have already conceded defeat, while the Congress is ahead in Madhya Pradesh, though Modi’s party could still technically cobble together a coalition.

State elections, however, have not always been a reliable trend indicator for national elections. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s BJP swept these states in 2003 and lost them in all the three in the following year’s national elections. One thing is clear though. While hard rightwing politics may have lost this time, the centre-right shift led by the Congress shows that right-leaning voters still have considerable influence in India. Additionally, the rightwing Shiv Sena has also come out with statements that infer that the election was only a rejection of the BJP’s version of hard-right jingoism, not their ultra-nationalist politics. It claimed Modi’s economic policy failings at the centre were to blame for the BJP’s poor show.

Meanwhile, the RSS, the ideological parent of the BJP, is also analysing the pros and cons of sticking with Modi, or moving even further right to Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of UP, who still heads a militant organisation called Hindu Yuva Vahini, and who makes Modi look almost statesmanlike. All of this makes it clear that Hindutva is likely to stay in India.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2018.

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