BJP cuts Opposition down to size

THE biggest surprise sprung by the Assembly polls in four states and a union territory is the demolition of two strong pillars of federalism, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC). The parties led by Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin and his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee, prominent anchors of the INDIA bloc put together to fight the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls, have been voted out of power.Yet those who closely monitored the BJP in Bengal and watched the moves of its principal strategist, Home Minister Amit Shah, sensed that the state was on the brink of a significant shift, as momentous as the 2011 transition when Mamata routed the Left Front. The potential power switch from the TMC to the BJP was bound to torpedo the balance that the federal forces could have brought to check the BJP’s hegemony, a prospect the Congress wanted for its own survival — notwithstanding its reservations about state-based parties.Having wrapped up Bengal, the BJP has redrawn the political map. It has the east under its belt and is holding sway over the north (barring Punjab and J&K) as well as the west. Its support in the south remains patchy. Karnataka is the only state it is entrenched in; a breakthrough has eluded it in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh; it remains on shaky ground in Kerala, while it is growing incrementally in Telangana.The BJP’s growth and spread are inextricably linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s expansion, although power at the Centre alters the equations between the ideological parent and its progeny now and then, triggering occasional outbursts on who rules the roost in the Sangh Parivar. However, it need not be stressed that in varying degrees, the RSS has been a source of sustenance to the BJP. The Sangh’s original karmabhoomi was Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, but its work — intended to mobilise workers and propagate its ideology and convictions — did not transform into votes for the BJP’s earlier incarnation, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS).The path to power, both then and now, was traced through alliances with forces that were antagonistic towards the Congress, which was in an even more commanding position in the 1960s and 1970s than the BJP is today. The BJS combined with the Lohia Socialists and the Communists in the 1967 Lok Sabha elections in a coalition known as the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal and again in 1971 with the Socialists and the Swatantra Party despite the BJS’s opposition to the Socialists’ positions on land reforms, the recognition of Urdu and reservations. Its accord with the Socialists in 1977-79 and with the Left, Congress and Socialist factions in 1989 resulted in short-lived governments because the entente was loaded with contradictions.But 1989 and the BJP’s embrace of hardline Hindutva were the turning points in facilitating its journey towards attaining power on its own or with allies but largely on its terms. The strategy paid off as it stamped its footprint in the west and swaths of the north. The east beckoned, and how.Assam was a low-hanging fruit that was first plucked by the state’s Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) but not sufficiently savoured. The AGP was an offshoot of the All Assam Students’ Association (AASU), a precursor to the campaign against ghuspethiye (infiltrators), who it insisted were Bangladeshi immigrants “illegally” encouraged by Congress regimes to cross the border that Assam shared with erstwhile East Pakistan. The dread it conjured up among the Assamese-speaking population of being outnumbered by the illegal immigrants caught the BJP’s attention; the party’s leaders like Jaswant Singh and Arun Shourie were often invited by AASU to address its cadre.Once the AGP achieved a measure of success in 1985, the BJP sought its hand as an ally and the two fought a few elections jointly. Soon, the AGP was subsumed in a larger agenda that the BJP mapped out for Assam and the North-East and reduced itself to a smaller partner, which it remains even today. The BJP capitalised on the Sangh’s groundwork in Assam and raised an edifice resting largely on “illegal” migration. Its success story has few parallels because the traction gained in Assam, a gateway of sorts to the North-East, helped build long-term bridges with other states which are at ideological variance with the BJP but depend on the Centre for grants and funds.The BJP soon figured out that it must make an independent bid to get Left-ruled Tripura, a Hindu-majority state with 9 per cent Muslim population and a sprinkling of Christians among the tribes. Tripura was an integral part of the game plan to enhance its acceptability in the North-East that culminated in the formation of the North-East Democratic Alliance, which proposed to offer a neutral platform to its constituents to engage with the BJP and the Centre without joining the NDA. The saffron party dislodged the Left Front government in 2018, edged out the Congress and installed its first regime in Agartala. The BJP was re-elected in 2023.In Odisha, another major eastern state, for long the BJP hung on to the coattails of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and its charismatic leader Naveen Patnaik, who was in power for almost a quarter century. After giving the impression that it was happy to play second fiddle to Patnaik in 2024, PM Modi and Shah’s expansionist approach got the better of the outward bonhomie. Using the Odisha asmita (pride) as its campaign trope, the BJP tapped into a groundswell of resentment and anger at Patnaik’s reliance on a Tamil Odisha-cadre bureaucrat, his inability to control dissidents and a general yearning for change. Patnaik was ousted and the BJP came to power.In Karnataka, it used other elements in its toolkit, keeping the Hindutva sentiment generated by the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation in the backdrop. It attracted the Ramakrishna Hegde faction of the Janata Dal and subsequently managed to do business with the faction opposed to Hegde, and in the process captured the entire non-Congress space in the state. The BJP also inveigled the backing of the Lingayats, a powerful intermediate caste, through the only leader of substance it nurtured, BS Yediyurappa.While Assam served as a successful entry point to the North-East, Karnataka did not help the BJP fan out in the south. However, no bridge seems difficult enough to cross and it could be a matter of time before the party adds a couple of southern states to its burgeoning kitty.

BJP cuts Opposition down to size

The party’s footprint visible across India, except in some parts of the southern region

Radhika Ramaseshan

BJP cuts Opposition down to size

The party’s footprint visible across India, except in some parts of the southern region

Radhika Ramaseshan

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