What
Narendra Modi is doing is akin to tapping the neglected votebank of the
majority Hindus.
Indian
politics has had absolute shades of minority appeasement. The politicians
enjoying the riches of a fractured majority votebank have crossed limits many a
times in appeasing the minorities, clearly at the cost (risk) of inciting
communal divide in the country.
It
is foolhardy to ignore this fact. I am confident that I am free from religion
and caste biases and I am not writing this because I am a Hindu. I am writing
this because I am an Indian first. Hindus, Muslims or people of any other
religion or faith are equal citizens of India and there must not be
preferential treatments based on religious lines, as the politicians have been
doing, to a particular religion.
In
a democracy with staggering number of poor people, that India is, the only criteria that can be used
to adopt a policy of preferential treatment are the prevailing social and
economic conditions.
If the
BJP has to come to power and if Narendra Modi has to become the next prime
minister of the country, they need something to mobilize the votes that can
match the huge (but not
enough, as it may depose the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government but
may not guarantee the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) the 7 RCR) anti-incumbency against the Manmohan
Singh led UPA government.
And for
an alienated votebank, largely unaware of its rights and the power of its vote,
that can be achieved through polarisation of votes on communal lines.
Polarisation
of votes on the communal lines is the only factor in the prevailing
sociopolitical circumstances in the country that can unite the majority Hindu
votes divided along the different caste and regional lines.
It is
not that only Narendra Modi is realizing it. Others, too, realize it but they
would never be sure of getting returns as they, till now, have played the
communal card of the minority appeasement politics and have no experience on
dancing to the tunes of majority appeasement.
While
Narendra Modi of the day is creation of the communal card of majority
appeasement politics! An intensifying ‘communal Vs secular’ debate benefits his
style of politics.
It is
true, the BJP did reap the benefits of religious politics by exploiting
the majority sentiments on Ram Temple issue to become one of the major
political forces in the country but it doesn't hold that ground
anymore. On the other hand, Modi, though trying to reach out to the Muslims or
other votebanks in recent times, has carefully continued with his Hindu
hardliner image.
But, in
the prevailing circumstances, the BJP is not going to play the religious card
openly in the elections, and even Narendra Modi is not going to be verbose
about exploiting the religious sentiments.
When,
the
mere presence of Narendra Modi is enough to polarise the Hindu votes.
And the
rest of the job of carrying out acts, the ‘push’, like ‘84 Kosi Yatra’ or
‘rallies and protests for the Ram Temple’ or ‘Kashi’ or ‘Mathura’ or
‘anti-Hindu violence in J&K’, can be ‘performed’ by Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or some other
Hindu outfits.
Modi
has proved his identity as an efficient election manager in uniting the
fractured Hindu votebank in Gujarat. He has,
for the first time in the Indian political history, successfully sustained the
majority appeasement politics by combining it with a pro-development agenda and
its efficient execution.
It is
true what he has been able to achieve politically in Gujarat cannot be applied
for the rest of India. But the alternative premise
is also equally possible that it can be applied to the rest of India.
What
happens will only decide the next course of drama in the political arena of India and that leaves the door open
for extensive and wild experiments, at least, till the outcome of the next
parliamentary polls.
In
other words, ‘what is going to
be and what is going not to be’ can
only be tested on the timescale and the immediate point of reference for this
on the timescale is going to be the next parliamentary polls.