NATIONAL POLITICS

Amulya Ganguli on the Prospects for BJP

By its own admission, the BJP's central leadership opted for a compromise last year to defuse the factional squabble in the party's Gujarat unit because it did not want a split on the eve of the general election.

What is noteworthy about this episode is the element of dissimulation. Clearly, the BJP's central leadership was play-acting when it revoked. Vaghela's suspension, removed Keshubhai Patel from the chief minister's post and pretended that all was well. It has also to be noted that the person sent to Gujarat to carry out this act of deception was none other than the celebrated poet and orator, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who is said to represent the BJP's "human face".

Evidently, the 13-day prime minister's moderate image is used by the Sangh Parivar not only to deceive the Indian public with promises to freeze all contentious topics on the Parivar’s agenda like abrogation of Article 370, construction of the Ayodhya temple, introduction of uniform civil code and so on, but also to charm the BJP's own dissidents into submission. There is little doubt that the man is worth his weight in gold, or bricks with Ram inscribed on them.

Vajpayee's utility to the Parivar as a mediator has suffered a serious setback. The game of deception can be played only once. So, the next time Vajpayee is wheeled out to project a kinder, gentler face to the outside world, few will believe him.

In a way, this is the inevitable fate of all moderates in an extremist party. The latter may use them on certain occasions and even project one as a frontline leader while the hardliners huddle in the background, out of the public eye. But the moderates have no determining influence on the party. Only the politically naive can believe, therefore, that the moderates in the BJP should be encouraged so that they can help the party to shed its angularities.

The Gujarat rupture has taken place just before another crucial election that in UP. A setback there, such as being unable to secure a majority in the Legislative Assembly, can be no less demoralizing. The BJP presumed that it would have an easy run in view of the expected division of the non-BJP votes between the BSP-Congress alliance and the Samajwadi Party. But two new developments have complicated the situation.

One is the Vaghela factor. Like a betrayed wife, the Gujarat leader is likely to play the backward caste card with a vengeance, thereby widening the backward- forward divide that is very much in evidence in the BJP's UP unit.

The other is the Shiv Sena factor. As the election day approaches, it will become increasingly clear that the BJP has been unable to provide a stable government not only in Gujarat, but also in Maharashtra, the two States where the Hindu brigade's electoral victories... had given advance warning about the Congress's downfall.

What is significant is that in both the States, the BJP's discomfiture is due to its own internal problems. While the Gujarat factionalism resembles the familiar Congress disease, the strains in Maharashtra have lessons for all votaries of ultra-rightist politics.

For a start, they show that a shared antipathy towards the Muslims is not enough of a binding force. They also show that even an increase in a coalition's popularity does not ensure its cohesion. Although the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance secured a higher percentage of votes in 1996 than in 1995, the two are drifting apart. The reason goes beyond what usually undermines an opportunistic alliance individual greed and ambition, although these are also present in full measure. But there is something more which is disrupting the Maharashtra combination. It is the fact that Bal Thackeray's outfit is not a normal political party. Its rise to power has also been along unusual routes.

In Shiv Sena, the lumpen elements have always been in the forefront part from the fact that its ideology if it can be called that has changed with the requirements of the time from a purely local, sons-of-the- soil bias to the present one. The Shiv Sena has also been unable to change its heavy-handed style of functioning.

The result is an embarrassment for the BJP. In the BJP's view, the tie-up with the Shiv Sena is a morganatic affair which has to be generally kept under wraps. But the latter resents such a superior attitude and is determined to show that it is no less respectable an organization than the BJP. Hence, the proposal to join the Federal Front. If the BJP can woo these parties, why not the Shiv Sena?

The fallout of such wrangles on the UP contest cannot be gainful for the Hindutva lobby. It is the avowed objective of both Vaghela and Bal Thackeray that the BJP does not become stronger than it is. In this, their aim is no different from that of the secularists.

(Source: The Indian Express, 5 September, 1996)

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Smita Gupta on Muslim Voting in UP

As far as the Muslims are concerned, they will continue to vote for the strongest non-BJP candidate, with the advantage remaining with the UF: for one, the Congress has not been forgiven for not protecting the Babari Masjid; secondly, the Imam of Jama Masjid's fatwa in favour of the BSP has not pleased the community - as recent letters in the Urdu press testify

(Bearers The Times of India, 11 September, 1779)

Swapan Dasgupta on Religious Minorities as Political Cannon Fodder

As speaker after speaker from the opposition benches rose to praise Vajpayee the man and at the same time denounce the BJP for its lack of commitment to secularism, they ended up conveying the impression that only the minorities stood in the way of the mandate being taken to its parliamentary conclusion. When Vajpayee demolished the myth of the BJP lacking support of the Dalits, the Scheduled Tribes and the Sikhs, he was merely confirming the underlying rationale behind the polarization; effective governance was being vetoed for the sake of one community.

This is indeed the major trap that both the secularists and the Muslim community have fallen into. By unwittingly submerging their identities, they have posited themselves against common sense and against consensual wisdom. For the anti-BJP parties there is still a way out since they have other social constituencies to cater to. But the Muslim community can hardly rejoice in the knowledge that they were made the cannon fodder in a game of power politics. They were seen to be the real force behind the opposition's veto of the BJP government, thereby confirming Vajpayee's lament that the Hindus felt beleaguered to the point where India now has a majority with a "minority complex".

Not only are Muslims finding it increasingly difficult to get elected from mixed constituencies, but practical considerations are making it virtually impossible for even non-BJP parties to field Muslim candidates in winnable seats. Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha has fallen steadily from the high of 47 in 1980 to 25 (minus Jammu & Kashmir) in 1996. In states such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and even Andhra Pradesh (outside of Hyderabad city) and Assam, it has become a Herculean task for Muslims to win a parliamentary seat.

While articulating "Muslim" interests, the secularists appear to be losing sight of the Muslim community's growing marginalization, except as solid vote banks. At election time, considerable importance is attached to the shrewd tactical voting by Muslims to defeat the BJP. What has been conveniently glossed over is the countervailing tactical voting by Hindus.

Reports from all over Uttar Pradesh and even Bihar suggest a growing inclination on the part of Hindu voters to vote tactically against the candidate being preferred by their Muslim neighbors. In the Bhojpur region of Bihar, even the CPI(M-L) has suffered on account of its supporters switching at the last minute to the BJP as a reaction to Muslims turning out for the Janata Dal.

The Muslim leadership needs to ponder over the implications of this trend. It is one thing for Muslim intellectuals to rail against Brahminical hegemony, but market, it continues to be a vehicle of social when this becomes coterminous with a parallel endorsement of opportunism and social fragmentation, reaction is bound to set in.

By mortgaging enlightened self-interest to self- serving secularism, the Muslim community has done itself a great disservice.

(Source: The Indian Express, 1 June, 1996)

India Today on Voting Behaviour

Myth: Elections in India are decided by the so-called vote banks. The voters do not think or act as individuals. They act as a herd, and votes are bought through middlemen.

Reality: The ICSSR-CSDS-India Today poll shows that social groups do tend to vote in similar directions, but no group is ever completely homogeneous. Even when they vote in a similar direction, it is not because of any collective conspiracy or herd mentality. Their shared circumstances lead them to arrive at similar conclusions through independent reasoning. A substantial chunk of votes decides on their own.

Ever since the beginning of social-scientific surveys on the Indian elections in the '60s, there is abundant evidence to show that vote banks simply do not exist. Some parties do get more than their average share of votes from certain castes or communities. Sometimes there might be localised en bloc voting. But there has never been anything like en bloc voting by caste or community groups at the state or national level. In 1971, in the heydays of Dalit-Muslim 'vote bank', the Congress did not get more than 10 per cent over its average vote share among these communities. An analysis of the 1996 Lok Sabha election voting behaviour (India Today, May was an election marked by extraordinarily intense caste 31) confirmed this picture once again. In Uttar Pradesh, it polarisation. Even then every party lost at least one- fourth of the votes of the caste/community supposed to be its vote bank.

The present survey throws fresh light on some related aspects of the vote-bank myth. It questions the assumption that the turnout varies dramatically from one caste or community to another. In the '96 Lok Sabha elections, all sections of society recorded a turnout in the range of plus or minus 3 per cent from the national turnout in an Indian election is higher among the average of 57 per cent. Unlike western democracies, the disadvantaged - the very poor, Dalit and rural voters. Contrary to popular myth, the Muslims recorded a lower turnout than the national average. The rich, the educated and the urban voters were less enthusiastic. At a time when democracies are being reduced to a formal political transformation in India.

(Source: India Today, 31 August, 1996)