Assembly Election Results: Confronting Hindutva Consolidation
THE results of the five state assembly elections are striking for the way the BJP has won in the three heartland states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
A major victory is the coming back to power in Madhya Pradesh, a state where it has ruled for two decades, except for a fifteen-month break when the Congress was in power. The Shivraj Chouhan government has not only staved off any anti-incumbency but won with a bigger vote share (48.55 per cent), which is nearly 8 per cent more than what the Congress polled.
The BJP could unseat the Congress governments in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. In Chhattisgarh, where the BJP had been routed in the last elections, despite all exit polls predicting a Congress victory, the BJP could defeat the Congress comfortably getting 54 out of 90 seats and increasing its vote share by 13.3 per cent over the previous election.
In Rajasthan, where the Ashok Gehlot government had ushered in a number of significant welfare schemes and the governance was considered better than in Chhattisgarh, the BJP was able to out-maneouvre the Congress and get 115 of the 199 seats which went to the polls.
How to account for this BJP victory and the Congress debacle? Various factors are being attributed by political analysts for these results. However, one singular fact must be seen as central, which is that in all the three states there now exists a consolidated Hindutva influenced bloc of voters. That the BJP had succeeded in creating an overarching pan-Hindu identity was something which was noted at the time of the 2019 parliament election. This is all the more so in northern and western India.
The basic failure of the Congress has been its inability to confront this reality and work out an ideological platform and a political narrative which can take on and overcome this Hindutva ideological domination. Rahul Gandhi, responding to the election results, stated that, “The battle of ideology will continue”. But this is precisely the problem. Where has there been an ideological battle waged by the Congress against Hindutva?
On the contrary, there has been a pandering to Hindutva sentiments. The chief practitioner of this soft Hindutva has been none other than Kamal Nath, the PCC chief and the former chief minister who led the Congress’s electoral fight in Madhya Pradesh. It is Kamal Nath, who has been continuously imitating the Hindutva plank and even sought to outcompete the RSS-BJP in patronising chauvinist babas and swamis. Kamal Nath had called for the recitation of Hanuman chalisa in all Congress offices on the day the foundation of the Ram temple was laid at Ayodhya in August 2020. More recently, he presided over the `merger’ of the Bajrang Sena with the Congress, an organisation whose leader proclaimed the need for the creation of a Hindu Rashtra. In a state where the RSS has been working systematically in all areas and sections of society to spread the Hindutva ideology, the stance adopted by the Congress has only further strengthened the hold of Hindutva on substantial sections of the people.
In the case of Chhattisgarh too, Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel took to flaunting his Hindu religious identity and implementing government programmes like building the Ram Van Gaman Path. As a result of this approach, both in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the RSS and other Hindutva outfits had a free run in communalising sections of society and targeting minorities.
The results show that the BJP has made big gains in the tribal reserved seats of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. In the 2018 elections, the BJP had won only 19 of the 76 ST seats. This has increased to 44. The BJP won 17 of 29 ST seats in Chhattisgarh and 27 of 47 in Madhya Pradesh. One of the reasons for the BJP’s gains in the tribal areas is the continuous process of `Hinduisation” of adivasis being taken up by RSS outfits like the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. Further, there were organised attacks on Christian adivasis in some areas of Chhattisgarh. The Baghel government did virtually nothing to protect the rights of the Christian adivasis.
Many observers have noted that the Congress’s promise of a caste census did not have much impact among the OBCs in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. This was to be expected given the fact that in both these states, OBC-based politics and political parties have not grown. Further, as post-poll surveys show, a substantial section of the OBCs are already with the BJP which is an aspect of the pan-Hindu identity consolidation.
The Hindu nationalist voting bloc provides the BJP with an inherent advantage. To this bloc it just needs to add other vote getting measures. One such is the pool of beneficiaries through welfare schemes and cash transfers like the Ladli Behna scheme in Madhya Pradesh and another is micro-caste electoral engineering. The latter was a particularly important feature in the electoral success in Rajasthan where the BJP’s meticulous selection of candidates based on caste considerations paid off.
The Congress approach to go it alone in these states has also proved to be shortsighted. While the main fight was between the BJP and the Congress, the refusal of the Congress to have electoral adjustments with parties like the Samajwadi Party in Madhya Pradesh and other smaller players in these states prevented the rallying of all the anti-BJP forces.
The Congress’s decisive victory in Telangana has led to the ouster of the two-term TRS/BRS government. Much of the blame for the debacle of the BRS lies with the capricious leadership of K Chandrashekar Rao. First of all, in a whimsical move, the unique Telangana identity of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) was abandoned for a Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi. There were the erratic forays into Maharashtra, Odisha and other places to establish an all-India character for the party, even while discontent was brewing at home. Till six months ago, it appeared as if the BJP was gaining ground and emerging as the main challenger of the BRS.
However, with the Congress victory in the Karnataka elections in May, the mood changed and Congress began to garner all the anti-BRS forces and the momentum continued till the Congress registered this big victory. However, it must be noted that the BJP has improved its position significantly winning eight seats compared to one seat in 2018 and increasing its vote share from 7 to 13.9 per cent.
The Mizoram election has seen the end of the three decade rule of the Mizo National Front (MNF) and the victory of the newly-formed Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM), which has won 27 out of the 40 seats in the assembly. Unlike the MNF, which was part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Lalduhoma, the chief minister-designate of the ZPM has announced that it will not join any national alliance.
It has happened twice in the recent past that the results of the assembly elections in the three Hindi states have not been reflected in the Lok Sabha elections held a few months later. This happened both in 2004 and 2019. If the Congress and other major opposition parties draw the right lessons from this defeat and take appropriate measures to project an alternative political, ideological and economic narrative alongside an effective pooling of the anti-BJP votes, the battle for 2024 will be truly joined.
(December 6, 2023)
