Driven Modi, drifting I.N.D.I.A

Ram temple inauguration won’t sway the voting masses. Ideas, intent and intensity will.

The battle lines for the 2024 parliamentary elections are drawn. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, driven by one overriding ambition – to win the coming election at any cost -- and mobilising every trick, resource and agency at his command in that pursuit, announced with much pomp the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22, on the site where the Babri Masjid was demolished by a mob led by former BJP stalwart L K Advani in December 1992. Advani sought to use the Ram temple issue to win elections himself. Now, Modi wants to sway the Hindu masses with it. 

But who can divine the inscrutable heart of the masses! 

In the state elections held in the immediate aftermath of the Babri demolition, who had imagined that the Hindus would not be swayed by the BJP’s Ram temple mobilisation and that the party would not just lose but would be pushed into the political wilderness in UP for years by the rise of the Mandal forces! 

Neither did Ram come to the aid of Advani to catapult him to the coveted PM’s post, whether in the late 1990s, when Vajpayee made the grade as only he was acceptable to the large NDA coalition, nor in 2014, when the RSS/BJP chose Modi over Advani as the BJP’s PM candidate. 

Modi’s rise in 2014 was itself not on the back of an overt Hindutva campaign, but on the perception of him being a clean and able administrator. The Ram temple issue and Modi’s own image as a strong leader who would restore the pride and rightful place of Hindus, whom the BJP had always painted as victims of Congress’ Muslim appeasement, was always in the background since 2002, but it was his resounding slogans of good governance and development that resonated with the masses, disillusioned as they were with the UPA scandals and disenchanted with the perceived weak leadership of Manmohan Singh. 

While the Ram temple is widely hailed by the BJP as Modi’s gift to Hindus, Ayodhya’s spanking new airport, sporting themes from the Ramayana in vivid motifs, was presented as symbolic of the mixed metaphor that Modi has mastered. Inaugurating the airport, he described it as India’s march on the twin planks of tradition and development, faith and modernity. 

The Modi image, combined with the political strategy of consolidating Hindu votes by demonising Muslims, has not worked in the South, including in the last two elections in Karnataka and Telangana, or in the earlier elections in Punjab, Jharkhand, Himachal, West Bengal, Odisha, and to some extent even in Bihar. But the party bested Congress and swept to power in the just-concluded elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which were all won by Congress in 2018. 

Is there any method in this madness? Who can fathom the mind of the electorate? 

Ranged against the now seemingly invincible Modi, Rahul Gandhi, the feisty scion of Congress, a gadfly who constantly torments Modi, has announced a Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (BJNY) -- less vibrant in name, perhaps, than the earlier Bharat Jodo Yatra -- that will set out on January 14. It will begin symbolically from strife-torn Manipur, whose BJP government has given only conditional approval, and end in Gujarat, traversing east to west across 14 states. Will this be as arduous, adventurous and exciting as the earlier march of 4,000 kilometres that energised the people, whose numbers swelled as they joined Rahul Gandhi along the way? People love underdogs and those who dare. Will BJNY have a similar impact?

Who can tell! He was ridiculed earlier, too, at the start of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, but his genuine empathy with people, infectious bonhomie, energy and endurance, not to mention the message of the yatra itself, won millions of hearts. 

Mao-Tse Tung’s ‘Long March’ was for a Communist ‘people’s revolution’ in China; Gandhi’s ‘Dandi March’ was to break the salt laws and emphatically convey non-cooperation with the British Raj. The former was an armed revolt, the latter a resistance movement sworn to non-violence, and the common people rose as the sea in tumultuous waves in both cases. What is the message of Congress and Rahul Gandhi, who is venturing into the yatra as a lone wolf and is politically out on a limb here? Where are the I.N.D.I.A bloc parties and their disparate leaders with oversized egos? Is there an overarching, electrifying message from them for the people of India that sets their hearts aflame and that can counter Modi’s overpowering persona and the BJP’s ‘Hindu first’ messaging, inherent in the inauguration of the incomplete Ram temple? 

The whole nation, especially its youth, rose in unison when Jayaprakash Narayan gave a call against Indira Gandhi’s Emergency and called for a “total revolution” to overthrow her. Of course, there was no “total revolution”, but the Janata Party, a broad spectrum of Opposition leaders and parties, came together and defeated her in the 1977 elections. Unity of purpose brought them victory, although they could keep up neither that unity nor that rag-tag government for long.  

Do we see a similar wave of anger against Modi across India amongst the various sections of society, as was witnessed against Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, that I.N.D.I.A leaders can tap to get the masses behind them? 

Shouldn’t Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party put all their time, energy and focus on working with the I.N.D.I.A bloc leaders, instead of venturing on this long march at this juncture when elections are only about three months away -- on seat-sharing formulas, strategies, themes for central communication and messaging, a common minimum programme and a common fund for the elections, a vibrant vision for India and, most importantly, to knit everyone together and reach an understanding on who will lead I.N.D.I.A post-elections? 

We all know what Modi stands for, or at least assume that, given the BJP’s consistent messaging, he stands for a Hindu Rashtra that is acknowledged as a superpower by the world. Whether he can achieve that vision without carrying along all sections of society and the many states that are not under BJP rule, is another matter.  

But does anyone know what I.N.D.I.A stands for? Being just anti-Indira was enough to overthrow her post-Emergency, but being just-anti-Modi, without a Jayaprakash Narayan to tap into it and lead them, will not be sufficient for I.N.D.I.A to defeat Modi?

(The writer is a soldier, farmer and entrepreneur)