What’s at stake this election? Not your mangalsutra, but India’s future direction

A relatively tepid voter turn-out in the first two phases of the 2024 general elections has left many analysts to conclude that, in sharp contrast to the wave of 2019, this is a “normal” election in which voters are neither energised nor enthused. Regardless of whether this trend holds, the new consensus, one that seems to be emerging from within BJP circles too, is that the “400 paar” ambition is unlikely to be fulfilled, even as the BJP and Modi himself remain the frontrunner.

Voter lethargy notwithstanding, political rhetoric has now reached its crescendo. The dominant rhetoric of the last week suggests that two big themes are now framing the electoral narrative – Hindutva (or rather anti-Muslim bigotry) and inequality. The polemics being deployed by the BJP to shape the narrative around these themes are a reminder of just how much is at stake for Indian democracy in this election.

First, the bigotry and hate that accompany the Hindutva rhetoric. It is hardly a surprise, especially given the unrestrained ideological turn that the BJP took in its second term, that bigotry and hate speech would find its way into the 2024 election campaign. However, with the crudeness of the Prime Minister’s remarks in Rajasthan last week, his reference to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have many children”; his attempt to whip up deep-rooted anxieties by suggesting that the Congress would “snatch mangalsutras” and hand it over to the Muslim “other”, the Hindutva rhetoric has deepened even as it hit a new low.

Several commentators have suggested that this inflammatory language is a sign of frustration emerging from low voter turn-outs and an effort to energise the cadres. I disagree. In my reading, this is the final unmasking. Thus far, the deployment of crude language and active hate speech had mostly been outsourced to other politicians (it was Amit Shah who spoke of “infiltrators” and “termites” in the 2019 campaign), pliant media and party ideologues. The fact that the Prime Minister himself has unabashedly chosen to indulge in what clearly borders on hate speech suggests a desire to deepen the project of “othering” the Muslim, in ways that are deeply disturbing.

Consider the context of his remarks – the emerging theme of inequality that is now the hallmark of the Congress’ political posturing for this election. In an important essay recently, Political Scientist Suhas Palshikar makes a critical observation. He argues that after much floundering, the Congress party has hit a new coherent ideological identity – Nyay or justice for 90% of the people. Its core message, Palshikar observes, is of “reformulating policy on the basis of inclusion and plurality”. Through its response to the Congress’ political posture, the BJP has found a new prism through which to stoke anxieties and deepen its project of Muslim “othering”. In this imagination, it is the Muslim, as the Rajasthan speech so clearly spells out, who will disrupt the existing social order and grab “wealth”, enabled of course by Congress appeasement.

The constant resort to old tropes of demographic threat and infiltration to whip up anxieties and spread fear are longstanding themes in Hindutva politics. This is now being further deepened by actively linking these themes to the discourse on inequality and redistribution. The contours of the debate on redistribution are being carefully shifted away from questions of economic policy and from larger democratic concerns of fairness, justice, collective solidarity, within which “redistribution” debates have traditionally taken place. Rather it is being recrafted, to whip up paranoia. An idea to fear, that will result in “grabbing” wealth, with the Muslim as the chief enemy.

That this is being done by none other than the Prime Minister himself exposes the extent to which the project of “othering” the Muslim is sought to be normalised in our polity. If it takes this kind of inflammatory “othering” to energise the cadres, a very dangerous future confronts us.

Stepping away from the inflammatory rhetoric for a moment, the inequality debate as it is being currently framed presents another challenge, one that frankly afflicts the Congress more than the BJP. As Palshikar has argued, the BJP explicitly presents itself as a party of aspirations, in which economic expansion will lift all boats, rather than focusing on the ‘last person’ at the bottom. This is as neo-liberal as it gets! But, as is evident from the prominent place given to Modi’s welfare guarantees, the BJP is using welfare benefits as a tool to compensate for rising inequality.

The problem for the Congress is that having articulated its ideological position, its menu of policy solutions to respond to the inequality challenge is not radically distinct enough from the BJP’s. Beyond the promise of a caste census “X-Ray” and increasing the reservation ceiling, the bulk of its policy approach relies on income transfers -- not that distinct, even if the amounts differ, from Modi’s guarantees. Short of some tinkering like the proposed apprenticeship law, it doesn’t present a radical or innovative economic imagination -- especially for the critical challenge of jobs.

For the moment, let us set aside the claim by the BJP that Congress will introduce a wealth tax (a perfectly sensible policy to debate in a country where the top 1% of the population take away the lion’s share of the national income -- one that frankly should dominate the electoral discourse), seeing that most Congress politicians are distancing themselves from any such idea. So the challenge for the Congress is this: Can it raise the stakes for a serious political debate on inequality that enthuses voters, especially as it runs up against the BJP’s project of “othering”. As the election cycle moves forward, we will have to see if our democracy is robust enough to rise to this challenge and wrest the debate on inequality and redistribution from fearmongering, bigotry and divisiveness.