To many, the 2024 general elections will mark a watershed in the history of Indian politics. The elections in India prove again and again that parliamentary democracy has taken deep roots in the nation of 140 plus crore where people speak different tongues and pursue diverse faiths.
Notwithstanding the detractors and the prophets of doom, the Modi government will be completing ten years in office and will be seeking the re-election. Indian elections are always a statistian's delight. They also provide fodder to people who think 'politically'. In the coming weeks, the psephologists will spend countless hours analysing the swings and 'sweeps'. In PM Narendra Modi makes a hat-trick to power, he will touch Pt Jawaharlal Nehru's record. But the fallout of the same will be much more than that.
As it is, PM Modi and his party have been busy last nine years and half 'diagnose' maladies in Nehru's policies; and often not without good reasons. In contrast, the Congress and the eco system have always tried to hype Nehru's contributions and present their leader in good light.
For instance on Kashmir, Nehru's follies have provided good fodder to the BJP and the saffron eco system. Now that could be more !
As it is there is an unprecedented push to 'cultural nationalism' and Hindutva narratives. The run up to the Jan 22, 2024 Ayodhyadham Ram temple consecration is just a glimpse of that. Unlike Nehru - a sophisticated western educated Nehru, at the centre of Indian politics is now the BJP rooted in Hindutva and oriental values; and the centre of BJP stands Narendra Modi.
Without doubt, the BJP is against the dynasty rule Nehru family. The fact of the matter is between Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi together headed the government in New Delhi for 37 years.
For 10 years, Rajiv's widow Sonia Gandhi ran the show through a 'weak and remote controlled PM Manmohan Singh'. But the BJP leaders also have shown how they abhor 'Nehruvian politics' - if at all there is something like that.
Since nation's independence, politics has mainly centered around the Congress, who ruled the country for a total 52 years with the odd interval. It was a dominance that waned in 2014 and the 2019 results almost ended it.
The third time win will certainly place BJP at the historic turn of events. Modi has already put the country on a different track. Even his foreign policy decisions at times are guided by their own rules - something what was genuinely avoided by Congress and even other non-Congress regimes.
The inauguration of new Parliament building following strict Hindu rituals including Modi prostrating and Aug 5, 2020, PM performing puja at Ayodhya are two major milestones. Even in the run up to the Jan 22, 2024 mega event one missive is getting clearer by the day ....
The faceless Indian - the man and the woman on the street - will easily attribute the credit for the Ram temple to one man – Namo and his Moditva. In fact on Aug 5th, 2020 when Modi sat on Bhoomi pujan for the start of the construction of Ram temple, many compared the auspicious occasion to President Rajendra Prasad gracing the ceremony of the 'reconstructed Somnath temple' in 1951. So there are millions of Indians who would hail Modi for performing those socio-religious tasks.
And obviously they form his core vote bank.
"Conventionally, a prime minister would attend such an event as the chief guest, while the key rituals would be performed by a religious leader present on the occasion – in Ayodhya, it would be someone like Mahant Nritya Gopaldas, who is not only the head of the old Ramjanmbhoomi Nyas and the newly formed, government-constituted Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust but also the senior-most seer in the temple town.
He has had a long association with the Ram temple movement," wrote senior Lucknow-based journalist Sharat Pradhan for 'The Wire' in 2020.
Of course, all these leave an social impact. Hence, it may not be wrong to say that under Modi, India is now 'unapologetically Hindu'. And the transformation is producing a new elite who are pro-Hindu and even pro-Hindi.
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| BJP flags in an election camp in front of a local Baptist church, Nagaland |
“The media and political opponents of Modi are also responsible for this scenario. The entire focus in the past six-seven years has been on the communalization of India,” observed Tushar Bhadra, a political observer from Modi’s constituency in Varanasi. (2020)
He said this phenomenon is not being grasped properly and hence a battle between Bharat (India's traditional Hindi name) and so-called post-colonial rule 'modern India' could ensue in the coming years. Many top officials in the national capital Delhi or in the Hindi heartland state of Uttar Pradesh have not studied abroad or at St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, unlike their predecessors.
And in 2022, when Opposition parties named their alliance as 'I.N.D.I.A' apparently to tease Modi, the ruling dispensation countered in their own style. Even invitation for G-20 Summit leaders and others from the President of the republic was one behalf of the first citizen of Bharat.
At the formal Summit, Modi had name plate - 'Bharat' and not India. In the UN, External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar started with salutation - 'Namaste, I am Bharat'.
Thus, the real challenge could be the undoing or fall of India that was known so far and 'built over the past seven decades'. The emergence of the Hindu intellectuals has given a new spin. People discuss openly how anti-Hindu, Nehru has been. "To tolerate an anti-Hindu minority-appeasing culture became part of India's secularism politics under Congress," says a RSS leader.
“The new generation has changed a lot. They think communal,” said Ramakanto Shanyal in West Bengal. He said this while narrating how his cousins and their children were now touchy about mundane things like employing laborers to work in their garden. “They won’t employ Muslims. This was unthinkable in communist-ruled Bengal till the nineties,” he says.
The new ruling political class, under the patronage of its century-old Hindu fountainhead called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), often offer a new definition of a pluralistic nation.
Of course, some of the gradual transition perhaps started under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the first prime minister. It was Vajpayee who conducted India’s nuclear tests on May 11, 1998, triggering jingoistic celebrations across the country that are being carried forward now under Modi.
It was the Vajpayee government that had set up a Commission headed by a Supreme Court judge and also comprising a Christian former Lok Sabha Speaker and Parsi intellectuals such as Soli Sorabjee as members to work on ideas and plans to revamp the Constitution.
The bureaucracy and governance system under Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first PM, was generally believed to “think in English” as part of India’s place in the world community.
That has begun to change slowly. So, South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement or the Vietnam War are no more part of intellectual debates among students and media persons in Delhi or Kolkata. The debates now are veering towards provincialism guided by the Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan ideology.
Thus, in 2021 assembly elections in West Bengal also became an open contest between native Bengali culture versus the "Hindi and Hindu only" approach of the BJP. In 2023, DMK in Tamil Nadu have passed remarks against Sanatan Dharma. In neighbouring Karnataka there is already a movement for protecting the native language.
Not long ago, TV anchors castigated leftist leaders for attending a webinar organized by the Chinese embassy to mark 100 years of the Communist Party of China.
These changes in the national attitude are telling. They cannot be ignored.
Prime Minister Modi and his BJP have legitimized the Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan political metaphor to such an extent that even a seasoned politician like Himanta Biswa Sarma, after becoming chief minister of Assam recently, announced restrictions on cow slaughter and cattle movement. Sarma, a former Congressman, is now perhaps more Hindu than those originally from the pro-Hindu BJP.
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