First came the Delhi jolt in February and now Bihar. The humiliating defeats have raised doubts over the winnability of the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo. No wonder, dissidence has raised its head with party seniors, led by L K Advani, seeking a review of the electoral loss. Will the party learn the lessons and brace itself for future fights?
In Salman Rushdie’s fantastic work of magic realism, Haroon and the Sea of Stories, there is a character called the Shah of Blah with an ability to spin stories. In a dramatic moment, he is told: “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true…” After that, when the Shah of Blah stands up to tell a story, no words come out.
BJP president Amit Shah has none of the amazing dimensions of the fictional character, but he, too, has not said much since all his strategies for Bihar came a cropper and exposed as built on his faulty understanding of the state (The novel incidentally opens in the “saddest of cities” that stands “by a mournful sea full of glum fish”).
The BJP is used to dealing with failure and rebuilding itself. In the 35 years of its existence, it has undergone many dramatic upheavals and critiques within the party are not unusual. But the consensual nature of the party had certainly undergone a change in the age of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Shah. Both are seen as strongmen who do not brook dissent kindly. From being a party with many leaders, it has to some extent become a cult around one leader, with Shah emerging as the primary manager-executioner-strategist.
What the Bihar debacle has done is raise serious questions about the political model promoted by Shah. This model fundamentally consists of a blitzkrieg built around Modi, an expensive publicity campaign through billboards and media, and thousands of cadres being roped in to create the necessary ground conditions that can, as in the case of Bihar and Delhi, also involve an attempt to generate some amount of communal polarisation.
It worked for the BJP in the general elections of 2014, where the biggest haul of sets came from Uttar Pradesh that was already communalised by the Muzaffarnagar riots. It also worked because Modi was at that time posited as a larger than life figure against an enfeebled Congress establishment that had been in power for a decade.
Again, in Maharashtra and Haryana state elections that took place a year ago, it was the discredited Congress that was crushed by the Modi-led BJP. After all, it is one of the thumb rules of politics that the Opposition does not just win but the ruling party defeats itself when it is unable to regenerate and reinvent itself.
Now, very early into its national reign, the BJP is confronted with that challenge. There is at one level the problem of not being able to move any substantive legislation in Parliament when it meets in late November for the Winter Session. The ruling dispensation’s misery in the Rajya Sabha will only get worse as we proceed to the next general elections in 2019. Hence, the question of law making stands seriously challenged in a manner that will undoubtedly impact on the authority of the prime minister.
In the realm of political ambitions, new realities now have to be confronted. First, post Bihar, it’s become clear that the index of Opposition unity is the key to defeating the BJP. In many of the states coming up for elections in 2016, there is not even the need for that. By March, the West Bengal elections will take place and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is by all accounts strong enough to manage on her own. In 2014, Shah had spoken of opening the gates to the east and that plan has already sunk in Bihar. The best the party can hope for in Bengal is a poor third place.
Later, there’s Tamil Nadu where the BJP is not a serious contender. But if it had hoped for some position as a junior ally in one of the two Dravidian coalitions, the attractiveness has only diminished over the past few months.
‘2G problem’
The prime minister’s international image, on which he stakes so much, has also been undermined by recent events in India, as seen in the protests and questioning he was subjected to in the United Kingdom.
The state where the BJP does have realistic hopes of recovering some lost honour is Assam that goes to the polls in April. The BJP won seven of the 14 seats in the Lok Sabha poll and would be up against the Congress regime of Tarun Gogoi. After the Bihar verdict, Gogoi spoke of creating a “secular front” but Assam has its own distinct realities. It’s still not clear how the principal players will proceed. Sources say the BJP is working on a plan to give tribal status to six communities in the state that are listed as OBCs, but such moves are fraught with unforeseen consequences in the ethnic, tribal and religious maze of Assam.
Meanwhile, what can be said with certainty is that the old guard of the BJP – L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Shanta Kumar and Yashwant Sinha - have used the Bihar debacle to make their dislike of the Modi-Shah dispensation clear, but the RSS will not support them beyond a point. It should not be forgotten that it was the current Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat who had been emphatic about the need for people above a certain age to retire and step back. Still, there are long standing fraternal links with the seniors and the RSS would also not like discourtesy shown to them.
The problem is not just the old guard but the growing number of voices against Shah’s handling of the Bihar contest. And what should worry those at the helm is that Shah is seen as a proxy for the prime minister. Indeed, outside the BJP office in Patna during the elections, one of the remarks being made by local workers is that the BJP in Bihar has a 2G problem (two Gujaratis)!
Since the prime minister is an elected figure who still has considerable support, it is only Shah who can be sacrificed, something that will only happen if Modi gives the go ahead. The official position of the party at this point though is that it is a collective responsibility.
(Naqvi is a Delhi-based author and journalist)