Despite loss, BJP continues communal rhetoric

In five of the six Lok Sabha constituencies in Mumbai there was no ‘Modi wave’. Instead, what we saw was a Dalit-Muslim wave. With Assembly polls later this year, this is bad news for the ruling Mahayuti.

They’d been bussed to Shivaji Park for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s final rally in Mumbai. But in less than two hours, the women started leaving. It was 8 pm and the PM was nowhere in sight. Home was a good two hours’ journey. Surprisingly, even after Modi started speaking, the steady exodus didn’t stop. His key phrases in this campaign: ‘vote bank politics’, and ‘vote jihad’, could barely be heard by those already outside the historic maidan.

This sign that there was no ‘Modi wave’ in Mumbai was reinforced by the results. Where the PM held his typically massive roadshow, his party lost, even though Mihir Kotecha’s was among the first names to be announced as a candidate by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In a city where the original BJP-Shiv Sena alliance had captured all six Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and 2019, the new BJP-Sena alliance (the NCP didn’t contest from Mumbai) has been left with just two. The Shinde Sena candidate scraped through. It was Union minister Piyush Goyal who saved the day for the BJP by winning with the biggest margin, not just in Mumbai, but in Maharashtra: 357,608. Mumbai North saw a ‘Modi wave’, and it helped Goyal triumph despite being an outsider replacing a local two-term BJP MP. However, the wave was confined to this constituency as it has a predominance of Gujaratis and pockets of North Indians. But Gujaratis abound along the route of Modi’s roadshow too. While the BJP's Kotecha scored big there, he fared badly in the Muslim-dominated assembly segment of the constituency.

This was the scenario in all six Mumbai constituencies. Instead of a Modi wave, a ‘Muslim wave’ had emerged, powering the victories of candidates of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). However, Gujaratis and Muslims weren’t the only communities driving victories in Mumbai. Two other sections played an equally important role.

The first were the Dalits. Though Prakash Ambedkar’s party contested 38 seats, he could play spoiler in only four: three of which were fought by the Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray (SS-UBT). One of those seats was Mumbai North West, where the SS-UBT candidate lost by a mere 48 votes. Ironically, Thackeray was the first to welcome Ambedkar into the I.N.D.I.A. bloc.

The second section comprised all the communities that call Dharavi their home. Dharavi’s residents helped the SS-UBT’s Anil Desai win against a two-term sitting MP in Mumbai South Central. Desai, a two-term Rajya Sabha MP, and resident of Mumbai’s most exclusive residential area, won his first real election from a constituency that includes the city’s largest slum.

When it sits down for its famed post-results introspection, one hopes the BJP will discuss why these sections of Mumbaikars ensured the defeat of the ruling alliance’s candidates. So far, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has blamed the ‘consolidation of Muslims’, and also the Opposition’s ‘false narrative’ that the Constitution will be changed, which influenced the Dalits to vote against it.

Surely the party can’t be in such denial. Even if it ignores the targeting of Muslims over the 10 years of its regime, didn’t it hear Modi warn Hindus throughout his campaign that if the I.N.D.I.A. bloc came to power, it would hand over their wealth to Muslims? Fadnavis himself accused Thackeray of ‘appeasement’ and mentioned ‘Pakistan’, ‘Janaab’ and ‘Tipu Sultan’ at the Shivaji Park rally. Kotecha repeatedly described the Muslim area in his constituency as a ‘den of drugs, a mini-Pakistan’.

Is it any surprise then that its residents rejected him, and Mumbai’s Muslims voted en bloc for the Opposition?

Similarly, the BJP could not have forgotten that its leaders had said that the party needed 400+ seats so that they could change the Constitution. Indeed, Bibek Debroy, who heads the PM’s Economic Advisory Council, had written two articles recommending a change in the Constitution.

Did the BJP expect the Opposition to ignore these warnings? Even its newly recruited supporter Raj Thackeray demanded of Modi at the Shivaji Park rally that the Constitution should not be touched.

Fadnavis is surely aware that Dharavi’s residents are opposed to the Dharavi Redevelopment Project because of the way his government promoted it. Rules were modified to benefit its executor, the Adani group, contradictory statements were made about the rehabilitation of residents; indeed, the project has been opaque to the core.

The BJP and its allies have four months to stem the alienation of Mumbaikars before the Assembly polls. But, a day after the results, a BJP ex-MP attributed Kotecha’s defeat to his constituency’s ‘Bangladeshi area’. Not much hope then.

(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.