Spectacle of Indian elections finally coming to a close.
By Raaghav Sharma
LONDON: With the election campaign finally coming to an end, a round of applause is well-deserved to all the participants who turned it into such an exciting spectacle. To name a few; the tweeting speeches or bitching politicians, the eternally debating media and the omnipresent pundits who can conjure up an opinion on almost anything.
As we wait for the votes to be counted, let us step back and ponder for a moment what this election has been all about. And will it leave a mark on the Indian electorate other than the stain left by the election ink gradually fading on the index finger.
By step back, I mean to 2009. When having suffered yet another election defeat the NDA was faced with a bleak future. BJP’s own seat share had gone down from 138 (2004) to 116 while the Congress party’s tally had gone up from 145 (2004) to 206. The alliance partners had also dwindled. The notable desertions were the TDP, AIADMK, Biju Janata Dal and the Trinamool Congress. The party’s ideology of “Hindutwa†and its link with the RSS was being questioned and debated, with the penny not dropping on either side. To make it worse it was accused of infighting amongst its top leadership and speculation was rife that in the future BJP might end up being a regional player rather than a national party.
Faced with such daunting odds the party needed to come up with some answers quickly. This need became even more urgent when the UPA II became mired in a series of mega corruption scams and still the opposition was unable to capitalize on them. Being countered with the argument that they had their own scandals to answer for an ingenious solution was urgently required to tackle all these problems simultaneously.
That genius came in the form of an innocuous tweet by BJP patriarch L.K. Advani around August 2012, aimed at focusing the national debate on choosing the next Prime Ministerial candidate. That tweet and the debate it ignited, initially threw up names like Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and L.K. Advani. This was stroked further by a steady stream of tweets and statements suggesting a Prime Minister candidate from a third front bringing in names like Nitish Kumar, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Jayalalitha. This mass dialogue (which it had snowballed into) finally ended with Narendra Modi being appointed the BJP’s (Not NDA) Prime Ministerial candidate. But not before it had even drawn the Gandhi-Nehru scion within its purview.
Curiously, this whole debate and the campaign that followed reminded me of a well-known episode from Hindu Mythology, Samudra Manthan or the churning of the ocean of milk.
As the story goes, the Devas having lost their kingdom to the Asuras approached Vishnu for help. Heeding to their request Vishnu devised a plan to churn the ocean of milk to extract the immense treasures hidden within it, including the nectar of immortality or Amrita. But he asked them to unite with the Asuras in conducting this exercise and share the bounty with them while promising that he would ensure that the Amrita would only be theirs, (a healthy reminder that politics was alive and kicking even then.)
So the Devas and Asuras together cast their herbs in the ocean and the churning began using the serpent Vasuki wrapped around Mount Meru like a rope, being pulled alternatively in either direction by them.
Just as the ocean started revealing its treasures it gave up a deadly poison capable of destroying the whole world. There was confusion all round till Shiva came to the rescue by swallowing it. Aided by Parvati laying a hand on his throat the poison was arrested from going any further and remained there forever, earning him the title Neelkanta. With the poison safely deposited down Shiva’s throat the Samudra Manthan could proceed in earnest. Eventually it gave up the Amrita and as Vishnu had promised only the Devas got to have it.
Coming back to our story, Advani’s tweet was a precursor of the churning that was to follow. By turning it into a Prime Ministerial election he would get the BJP to unite while forcing the other parties to take a definitive stance. This being achieved the Devs’ and Asuras could take up their positions on the opposite ends of the ideological Vasuki and begin churning the “Indian†Ocean. That is after casting their own special herbs of development, secularism, good governance, corruption, reservations, Jan Lok Pal, RTI, MNREGA, Adhaar, food security bill etc. etc.
But inevitably, the poison of Indian politics namely, the Hindu-Muslim divide would have to be tackled, especially from a BJP point of view.
The 1906 British elections had resulted in a landslide victory for the Liberal Party under the leadership of Henry Campbell Bannerman. With their commitment to democratic institutions that led them into a marathon battle with the Conservatives and the King over the powers of the Aristocratic House of Lords, they also decided to introduce the electoral principle in India by passing the Indian Councils Act 1909. This for the first time introduced elected representatives to the Imperial and local legislative Councils, and the elections in 1910 saw some 135 elected Indian members enter the various Legislative Councils.
However, heeding to the fears expressed by the Muslim community over being marginalized in a “first past the post†electoral process, the Act provided for reserved seats and separate electorates for Muslims. These fears were founded on Hindu revivalism in the preceding decades that morphed into the cow protection movement, culminating into widespread rioting in 1893.
Whatever the reasons may have been, this safeguard resulted in institutionalizing the communal divide in Indian electoral politics. Instances such as taking out religious processions etc. became regular flash points between the communities. Indeed an order passed by a District Magistrate recently banning victory procession in Muzaffarnagar, could easily be mistaken to be an order sitting in the British archives passed by a British magistrate during the Raj!
So when confronted with this poison once again, help came in the form of Narendra Modi swallowing it. Thereby becoming the only identifiable figure of this toxic legacy as the chants of “Har Har Modi†grew louder. Playing his part to the hilt Modi refused to don a skullcap or apologize for 2002. With the emphasis shifted from stopping “communal forces†to stopping Modi, it liberated the BJP from its own ominous past to pursue a wider NDA alliance and at the same time  garnering maximum support from its own vote base.
With this grand Samudra Manthan finally coming to an end it remains to be seen who all eventually get to taste the Amrita. But more importantly will it change the polity and governance in any significant way. Or are we simply supposed to wait for the next stain on our index finger.