(The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week by Varghese K. George, senior editor at The Hindu . You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)
President, VP polls: what they say about BJP, Congress
When the Congress was in power between 2004 and 2014, there were two elections each to the posts of President and Vice President; in power since 2014, the BJP also has had the opportunity to elect two Presidents and two Vice Presidents. How the Congress and its allies went about their selections and how the BJP did that, is a study in contrast. And the difference in their approaches explains the continuing crisis of the Indian centrist, liberal political space, and the continuing surge of Hindutva.
Pratibha Patil and Pranab Mukherjee contributed zilch to inspire any social group in the country in favour of a liberal-centrist politics in the country. In fact, between them, they may have alienated significant groups and reinforced the impression that Indian liberalism is a luxury of its minuscule elite minority. Mr. Mukherjee spent his retired life legitimising the RSS. Hamid Ansari, who sat as Vice President for 10 years, had no political connect with anyone. A wandering retired bureaucrat was hoisted as the Vice President of the country because a handful of people sitting in Delhi thought he should be there. If any symbolic message was conveyed, it was negative -- the UPA arrangement already had heavy representation of minorities at the top, including Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi as Chairperson; and a Muslim President had just retired. Altogether, the election of Ms. Patil, Mr. Mukherjee and the 10-year bounty for Mr. Ansari did not gain any support from any segment of the Indian population for the Congress or its allies.
The elections of Ram Nath Kovind, followed by Droupadi Murmu to Rashtrapati Bhavan, on the contrary, have created immense groundswell of support for the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They represent strong political constituencies. Venkaiah Naidu’s election as VP was reward for a party veteran, and a signal to a region that the BJP wants to reach out to; Jagdeep Dhankhar is a leader of the Jat community that is critical for the BJP in several States. In 2017, Meera Kumar and Gopal Gandhi at least represented some politics, as Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates, respectively, for the Opposition. In 2022, Yashwant Sinha and Margaret Alva, between them represent a colossal lack of any strategy, politics or symbolism of the Opposition.
Altogether, the BJP has smartly used elections to the highest offices to demonstrate its ambitions for political expansion, while the Congress and its allies exposed their caste and class prejudices and their inability for imagination.
The BJP’s Muslim strategy, and the pressure from below
National Security Advisor Ajit Doval with All India Sufi Sajjadanashin Council’s (AISSC) Chairman Hazrath Syed Naseeruddin Chishty, Jain religious leader Acharya Lokesh Muni and others during All India Sufi Sajjadanashin Council’s ‘Interfaith Conference’, in New Delh | Photo Credit: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has signalled to BJP workers that they should be reaching out to the Pasmanda, i.e. backward Muslims. The BJP’s apparent outreach to the community involves two prongs — towards the Pasmanda Muslims and the Sufi orders.
Zia Us Salam writes that “the Modi government has opened a new channel of communication with the Muslim community. Steering away from the days of cultivating Imam Bukhari and various Muslim Jamaats, the government is now banking on the well-entrenched Sufi orders for a meaningful dialogue with the largest minority.” Here is another story on how Pasmanda leaders are responding to the BJP overtures.
The outreach may be one part of the story, but pressure from below on the BJP to keep the communal pot boiling is so strong that Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and other Ministers are promising to enact the ‘Yogi model’ in the State. The target of the ‘Yogi model’ is the State’s Muslims. The State’s BJP government is being accused by party workers, and some leaders, of being soft towards Muslim fundamentalism. “Yogi is the right choice to handle the situation in U.P. In Karnataka, we are exercising all the available options to manage the situation. If need be, the Yogi model too would be exercised in Karnataka,” the Chief Minister said, after party workers turned hostile to the leadership following the murder of an activist.
The murder of the BJP worker was followed by the lynching of a Muslim youth. When Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said in 2017 that Kerala should learn from U.P., it was considered laughable. Now the leaders of Karnataka are actively seeking to adopt the Yogi model of governance. Karnataka has been a major growth centre of the Indian economy attracting talent from places including U.P.; its development indices are far better than U.P.’s and it has thriving communities of religious and linguistic minorities. Home Minister Amit Shah visited the State in the midst of all this. That Mr. Bommai, who is a late entrant to the party, is trying to burnish his own Hindutva credentials is evident. The pressure from below is difficult for the BJP handle.
Talking of the outreach to Muslims one might want to ask whether it is mere tokenism or there is more substance to it. This week we have an explainer on the term tokenism – what it means in different situations and how it works.
Laal Singh Chhaddha is Aamir Khan’s new film, which is an Indian adaptation of Forrest Gump. The social media reaction to the film that is scheduled for release on August 11 is indicative of the ‘communalism from below’ phase that India is passing through. There is a concerted campaign to pull down the film, and the actor has requested people to watch the film in response. “Yes, I feel sad. Also, I feel sad that some of the people who are saying this, in their heart, they believe that I am someone who doesn’t like India. In their hearts they believe, but it is untrue. It is rather unfortunate that some people feel that way. That’s not the case. Please don’t boycott my film. Please watch my film,” he said, according to India Today. Mr. Khan has in the past spoken out for protecting India’s pluralism.
There is another film that is politically notable — Rocketry: The Nambi Effect is a biopic of the ISRO scientist who was wrongly framed by rogue officers of the Kerala police. Political opponents of the then Kerala CM K. Karunakaran used it against him, destroying the life and career of an Indian professional. At an event in Chennai, Mr. Narayanan said scientists should get immunity from arbitrary police action.
Outsider vs Insider
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) workers protest over Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari’s remark, at Hutatma Chowk in Mumbai. | Photo Credit: PTI
The debate on who is an outsider in a territory never fails to animate politics despite the evident ludicrousness of it all. We are forever caught in the Aryan-Dravidian debate, even as a group of people just refuse to accept the massive scientific evidence that establishes that migration of Steppe people to the northern plains of the subcontinent indeed happened. Maharashtra Governor B.S. Koshyari, that master of a very loose tongue, has stirred up yet another controversy by taunting Marathi speakers, without any particular context. According to him, if Gujaratis and Rajasthanis leave, Mumbai will be no longer the financial capital of India. That logic is so silly and stupid as arguing that if Maharashtra declared itself an independent country, Mumbai would not be the financial capital of India! Our editorial points out that such conduct by Governors should not be tolerated or rewarded.
Language barrier: Adhir’s Hindi, Mahua’s bag
Our editorial discusses the pros and cons of making mother tongue the medium of instruction for higher studies, and I also want to bring a language barrier that the Opposition faces in India. The Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, recently apologised to President Droupadi Murmu and stated that he had mistakenly used an incorrect word to describe the post she held. Mr. Chowdhury is not a native Hindi speaker. He and most other prominent figures of the Opposition are non-Hindi speakers while the Opposition’s fight with the BJP is primarily in the Hindi-speaking territories of India. Opposition in a parliamentary democracy is all about articulating sharp and intelligent critique of the government and communicate it to the public. As it happens, the Indian opposition speaks non-Hindi languages, limiting its capacity. Regional parties are anyway limited to their States, and the Congress leadership is stacked with leaders from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal.
BJP supporters went on a rampage after Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra apparently hid her Louis Vuitton bag during a discussion on price rise and inflation in the Lok Sabha. Ms. Moitra has been a strident critic of the regime, and her speeches in English are widely circulated by the English-speaking opponents of the Modi government. But her trouble with the bag was instructive of the disconnect between Opposition members and the people they try to represent.
