BJP’s Allergy to Democracy

BJP’s Allergy to Democracy
Praful Bidwai
The News International, 21 May 2004

The BJP has proved unwilling to play by the rules of democracy. That’s why India stands convulsed by Sonia Gandhi’s decision not to become Prime Minister - despite a landmark electoral verdict in her favour. This great act of renunciation enhances her moral-political stature. But it equally exposes the BJP as an egregiously intolerant party, which is deeply uncomfortable with democracy, and has contempt for political decency and Constitutional law. The contrast between the two could not be starker. The Indian Constitution bars discrimination between citizens "on grounds of religion, race or place of birth".

Besides her "inner voice", a major reason behind Gandhi’s decision is the hysterical campaign the sangh parivar threatened to unleash on the "foreign origins" issue for utterly petty reasons - with a nod from the BJP’s top leaders, including Vajpayee. Evidently, Sonia Gandhi reckoned that a situation of prolonged strife and contention would not be in India’s interest. It would distract the government from addressing urgent tasks, and weaken its mandate.

The mandate itself is a stunning rejection of the NDA and its economic, social and political agenda. Contrary to BJP propaganda, the verdict isn’t "fractured", attributable to tactical or "local" factors, good alliance building, "anti-incumbency", and the success/failure of "political brands".

In fact, this election marks a clear watershed. The NDA called for an early election in the supreme confidence that it would win hands down. It was trounced in 24 out of 28 states. Its defeat was strategic and derived from people’s anger against its policies.

The pattern of the vote is complex, regionally differentiated and reflective of India’s diversity. But the overarching trend is unmistakable. Just as the Congress in 1977 swept the Southern states, the NDA too retained Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. But nobody in 1977 denied that the Janata Party had an unambiguous mandate. The UPA’s right to rule is far stronger than, say, the Janata Dal’s under V.P. Singh in 1989. It has 320-plus MPs on its own in the 543-member Lok Sabha.

The Indian people voted against the NDA’s pro-rich, pro-corporate neo-liberal policies that impoverish the majority; they rejected hate-driven Hindu-fundamentalist politics of exclusivism and Islamophobia; and they reaffirmed their commitment to pluralism and secularism. The Left gathered its highest parliamentary tally in history.

The electorate strongly supported the Congress wherever it took a clear, combative stand on secularism, and on poverty and unemployment. Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi added to the impact. But an anti-BJP sentiment already existed - rooted in public anger at the NDA’s zealously neo-liberal policies, which have produced agrarian distress, unemployment and hunger.

Three dissimilar states capture the verdict’s essence - Andhra Pradesh, noted for the computer-savvy Chandrababu Naidu and Microsoft’s investments; Gujarat, "Hindutva’s laboratory" notorious for the 2002 butchery of Muslims; and Uttar Pradesh, where Hindu fanatics razed the Babri mosque, and where the BJP was hoping to score huge gains.

Naidu was ignominiously defeated both in Parliament and state elections - because of his unabashedly pro-investor policies. For him, it was always more important to be at Davos than to bother about the suicides of 3,000 highly indebted farmers, crushed by high power and water charges (thanks to privatisation), and cheap imports. His Information Technology balloon burst. Andhra’s software rank slumped from number 3 to number 5. Naidu refused to demand that the BJP bring the Gujarat pogrom’s perpetrators to book.

Gujarat is the one state where the BJP has ruled on its own, for long years. It was forecast it would sweep Gujarat - as it did in the post-pogrom state elections. Instead, it lost in half the constituencies. It performed worst in those very areas where the anti-Muslim violence was most virulent. Clearly, it was penalised by an
electorate finally disenchanted with Hindu-chauvinism and with Modi’s neo-liberal policies.

In UP, the BJP’s social base has shrunk. Even the Brahmins are deserting it. Its defeat in Faizabad-Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura only means the temple/mosque issue is dead. The BJP has been reduced to just 15 seats in UP, Bihar and Jharkhand put together. In the North as a whole, it has shrunk into a minor party. The defeat of Hindutva hardliners like Vinay Katiyar and Murli Manohar Joshi shows the BJP’s "identity politics" has no popular appeal.

The elections demolished another myth - Vajpayee’s "magic" and charm as Hindutva’s "soft" face. The NDA built a personality cult around this. Many BJP’s supporters put Vajpayee in the same league as Nehru, or Indira and Rajiv Gandhi at their respective peaks.

Vajpayee turned out a dud. Neither intellectually nor politically was he ever in Nehru’s league. In Lucknow, he undignifiedly started begging for Muslim votes. The saree stampede showed he was trying to bribe the poor to get votes. When the BJP switched from trying to win Muslim votes to splitting them - what UP’s politicians call "dividation" - Vajpayee got surreal. He courted Mulayam Singh Yadav and asked Muslims to vote for him, not the Congress! On polling day, only 35.4 percent of Lucknow’s electorate bothered to vote - a rate unprecedented in a senior politician’s constituency.

In the last six weeks, Vajpayee’s stature has eroded more than in the preceding six years! The BJP is now left with no issues. Having nothing to offer, it has focused on "foreign origins". This indicates a deep xenophobic pathology and contempt for the popular mandate. The NDA used gutter-level language to agitate that issue during the campaign. But this simply didn’t wash. The people did not fall into the xenophobic trap. For them, a person born abroad, who has voluntarily accepted Indian citizenship, is as authentic a national as any other. What matters is citizenship, not "native" ethnicity.

The BJP has also strained to present the share-market crisis as business’s rejection of the UPA. There are two components to this. First, there is a massive decline in stock prices all over Asia. The FIIs had pumped in almost $600 billion into the "emerging markets" of China-Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and India. They are now pulling out some money because of high oil prices, fear of inflation, and a US industrial upturn. A big bear cartel has been hammering down the Mumbai market to bully the Congress into adopting conservative policies.

So, it’s especially tragic that the Left parties aren’t joining the UPA government. Their entry would have given it gravitas, prestige, and longevity. They can still play a vital role in negotiating a common agenda, which reflects popular aspirations and rational priorities, covering economics, social policy, institutional structures, and foreign and security policy. The economic priorities include major employment programmes, macro-economic correction through progressive taxation, and reform of the public sector, not privatisation.

It’s necessary to reaffirm secularism actively by exemplarily bringing the Gujarat pogrom’s villains to justice, by resolving the Ayodhya dispute through a temple-plus-mosque formula, by banning Togadia-style hate-speech, and revising communal textbooks. It’s imperative to "detoxify" institutions corrupted by the BJP.

India must return to Non-Alignment and emphasise a non-hegemonic, multi-polar, peaceful and rule-based world order. Similarly, its security policy must be freed of BJP-style jingoism. This is a wonderful opportunity to turn the people’s aspirations into radical policies.

Copyright 2004 hiPakistan