The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has emerged from India’s 18th General Election as the single largest party with 240 seats. Its allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) have won 53 seats, which takes the NDA tally to 293 – 21 seats more than the 272-mark needed to form the government.
NDA’s main opposition, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA bloc), a conglomerate of 40 parties led by the Congress Party, has won 235 seats with Congress winning 99 seats. This was the BJP’s third electoral iteration under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak (apparatchik).
Much is being made of the Indian voter’s choice to stop the BJP from single-handedly winning the election. That party, which had scored 282 seats in 2014 and improved the tally to 303 in 2019, has bagged 240 this time. While it had its NDA allies supporting it in 2014 and 2019, in terms of numbers it wasn’t beholden to any of its allies. The magic number being 272, it was secure through its own headcount.
Going into these elections the INDIA bloc focused on the fight between constitutionalism and authoritarian fascism — i.e., the argument that India stands for secular plurality, not a Hindu Rashtra. Hence the BJP’s loss of seats is being hailed as a win for constitutionalism against Hindu essentialism.
The contention that the Indian voter has rejected the politics of hate and communalism is even less convincing. Communalism is not a new phenomenon in India, nor did it begin with the BJP.
Let me politely disagree with these analyses.
Firstly, when the BJP won the 2014 election, emerging as the majority party, it had actually bucked the nearly quarter-century trend in India’s politics of coalition governments, at least two of which were quite fractured.
The story goes back to 1989, India’s ninth General Election. The Congress Party emerged as the largest party by winning 197 seats, but fell much short of the required majority. The late Rajiv Gandhi declined to form the government, citing inadequate numbers.
That was the beginning of India’s coalition governments. After Gandhi bowed out, a National Front coalition, led by the Janata Dal, formed the government. The JD was the second largest party with 143 seats. The trend was to continue with Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpyee and Dr. Manmohan Singh running coalition governments.
What does this mean? Far from being a major reversal, Modi bucked this trend not once but twice, even improving his numbers in 2019. In fact, at least four factors should have knocked him out this time: his handling of Covid, the economic downturn during the two years of the pandemic, India’s highest rate of unemployment in nearly 40 years and increasing inequality.
Further, while numbers are what they are and 240 is certainly a major fall from 303 and 282, the BJP’s closest rival in standalone terms, the Congress Party, has bagged only 99 and the entire INDIA alliance has a total tally of 235, five seats less than the BJP alone.
The contention that the Indian voter has rejected the politics of hate and communalism is even less convincing. Communalism is not a new phenomenon in India, nor did it begin with the BJP. Anyone interested in the communal motif that ran through India’s society and expressed itself in its body politic can read it in historical works. As Professor Gopalan Balachandran wrote in Religion and Nationalism in Modern India, “There is also considerable strength in the more general argument that…attributing historicity to secular and democratic values in contemporary India presents her secular democrats with a key weapon in the attritional battle in which they are engaged.”
As if to the prove this point, Modi 3.0 has cocked a snook at constitutional inclusivity by not having a single Muslim in his 72-member cabinet. But he wasn’t satisfied with just that. In another snub to analyses that said that this time he would be constrained by his coalition partners, he has retained all the important ministries for the BJP, including “education” — the fount of RSS ideology.
That attritional battle increasingly refers to the tension that informed the Hindu majority since the formation of the Indian National Congress and has been recorded by the late Mushirul Hasan. As Balachandran, writing in 1996 in the paper cited above, says, “increasingly the unity of the Indian nation is now sought to be defined, constructed, and directed explicitly against a significant segment of her society, viz . the Muslims who constitute nearly an eighth of India's population.”
The difference is that Modi owns and expresses that anti-Muslim sentiment. He might have a Muslim here and a Muslim there but his politics is very clear and it appeals to his voters. Even if one takes communalism as a single constant — as liberal analysts are doing — the mathematics on the election tells us that India is divided down the middle. But we all know that a single constant is hardly a good exercise in analysing anything.
To put it simply, a Hindu voter may not have voted for the BJP this time for a number of reasons. Hence, to think that the votes the BJP lost were due to a renewed mass belief in constitutionalism is to go beyond wishful thinking.
As if to the prove this point, Modi 3.0 has cocked a snook at constitutional inclusivity by not having a single Muslim in his 72-member cabinet. But he wasn’t satisfied with just that. In another snub to analyses that said that this time he would be constrained by his coalition partners, he has retained all the important ministries for the BJP, including “education” — the fount of RSS ideology.
Much has been written about RSS’ fascist, Hindu-supremacist ideology. A 2019 book by eminent Indian jurist and writer, A G Noorani, titled, RSS — A Menace for India definitively chronicles the provenance and ideology of the organisation.
Noorani says the RSS is a fascist, deceitful and communal organisation. In a pre-book launch interview to Huffpost, he said, “Look, this is the party which floated the VHP [Vishwa Hindu Parishad] in 1964, Jan Sangh in 1951 and the BJP in 1980… You see, people say, ‘let it become a conservative and non-communal party.’ You can’t do that. You can’t ask the Pope to become Protestant. This is their philosophy and outlook.”
So, what about his key coalition partners, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Janata Dal (United) [JD(U)] with 16 and 12 seats, respectively? They are supposed to be “non-communal” and would perhaps tame Mr. Modi’s baser instincts?
Coalitions in diverse (and divisive) states and societies are a norm. Despite the heavy baggage of ten-year-long incumbency, Modi has managed to get the BJP the highest number of seats. And he is unlikely, given the mathematics, to need Houdini-like skills to get out of political deathtraps.
Highly unlikely. Both Chandrababu Naidu of TDP and Nitish Kumar of JD (U) are pragmatic politicians. Kumar is in fact known for checking which side of his bread is buttered, earning himself the moniker, Paltu Ram (turncoat Ram). Both are adept at working with bigger national parties and invested in state politics and development. Naidu wants to build a new state capital, Amaravati, a key priority for him. And he wants to continue to attract investment in new technologies such as AI to create high-quality jobs in Andhra Pradesh.
I have no expertise in the minutiae of India’s regional and state politics but even from my distant vantage point, the two coalition partners seem unlikely to ditch the BJP just because Mr. Modi has little enthusiasm for Dr Ambedkar’s constitution.
Finally, the bit about Modi being a novice to coalition politics. Technically, yes. This is a first for him. But a first doesn’t mean he is incapable of finding and keeping allies. His rise within the BJP and the aura he has created within the party and across India, among his supporters, is a clear indicator of his ability to wade through treacherous waters.
Coalitions in diverse (and divisive) states and societies are a norm. Despite the heavy baggage of ten-year-long incumbency, Modi has managed to get the BJP the highest number of seats. And he is unlikely, given the mathematics, to need Houdini-like skills to get out of political deathtraps.
And if he does get into one, or thinks he might, he could always create a crisis in the west. That’s where his foreign and security policies come in. We shall analyse those in a subsequent column.