Will the opposition group outweigh BJP’s Hindutva in the general elections? Part-2

The Bharatiya Janata Party is once again dreaming of hoisting the victory flag riding on the horse of Hindutva under the leadership of Modi in the Lok Sabha elections to be held next year. This is the same Hindutva which BJP and RSS had given ‘edge’ against Congress in the 80-90s by swearing to build the temple of Lord Shri Ram Lala present in every corner of the Hindus in Ayodhya. From then till today, BJP kept expanding with the help of Hindutva and Congress kept shrinking. To compensate for the lack of Congress, many regional satraps expanded their political presence in different states. In this, backward and Dalit leaders like Lalu Yadav-Nitish Kumar in Bihar and Mulayam Singh-Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh emerged. Within a few years, he blew away the Hindutva politics of BJP. Some climbed the ladder of power with the help of backward and Muslim vote banks and some with the help of Dalit-Muslim vote banks. All of them even became Chief Ministers in their respective states. This happened because after the alleged demolition of Babri Masjid structure in 1992, Hindutva politics started getting marginalized, while the politics of forward-backward-Dalit and Muslim vote bank started moving forward.

In the name of casteism, people started voting for different parties. The backward people went with Mulayam and the Dalits went with Mayawati. BJP remained a party of only the upper castes, whose participation in the society was very less. BJP and Congress were continuously becoming weak, but the condition of Congress was not as bad as that of BJP. That is why Congress remained in power at the Center or kept roaming around till 2014. This trend stopped in 2014 with the beginning of the Modi era in central politics. Modi’s coin was so popular that both caste politics and its pioneers were marginalized, but somewhere in the hearts of those doing casteist politics, they definitely had this intention that one day or the other their casteist pot will once again rise on the political stove. That is why efforts for this also continued. For this, non-BJP parties started fanning the demand of conducting a caste census, the most important thing in this was that the old veteran leaders of the Congress and former Prime Ministers themselves, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were against the caste census in the country. Rahul Gandhi has turned the same threat into a weapon to bring Congress back to power.

Time will tell who was right and who was wrong, but the way the opposition is thinking that it will defeat BJP with the help of caste census politics in the Lok Sabha next year, is a fatal thinking, even if it will help India. The alliance may gain power, but the country will have to pay a heavy price for it. The way some people are shaming Sanatan Dharma under the guise of caste census is just an example of it. It may be true that discrimination between high and low is visible in Sanatan Dharma, but this is not Sanatan Dharma, it is a deficiency of Hindu society. Otherwise, Sanatan Dharma is quite right compared to those religions where Holi of blood is played in the name of religion. Terrorism is nurtured, but due to vote bank politics no one is ready to open their mouth on it.

It is extremely shameful that while the BJP is trying to heat up the Kamandal politics by using its biggest and sharpest political weapon Hindutva again, the warriors of social justice RJD, JD (U) and Samajwadi Party are trying to counter it by Hindu polarisation. For the sake of caste census and Ramcharit Manas controversy, Mandals have started playing the game of polarization of backward class politics. If we talk about BJP, then in fact Bharatiya Janata Party and the entire Sangh Parivar are working on a dual strategy. One is the open and official strategy of the government and the party and the other is a hidden parallel strategy through non-party organizations i.e. the affiliated organizations of the Sangh Parivar. Under this, various non-BJP organizations associated with the Sangh Parivar will have to continue taking forward the Kamalda politics of the Sangh Parivar by continuously heating up the issue of Hindutva and Hindu polarization. That is why, on one hand, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his ministers and the BJP will vigorously publicize the work and achievements of the central government in the last ten years and tell the public how India’s real development journey has started from 2014.

Under the second strategy, excessive publicity of completion of construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya by January 2024, continuous heating of the atmosphere on issues like cow slaughter and love jihad, call by some saints to make India a Hindu nation and organizations like VHP, Bajrang Dal and others. The BJP’s Hindutva MPs and leaders are also supporting this and giving a message to the Hindus that just as the BJP governments at the Center and the States have continuously pushed forward the agenda of Hindutva since 2014, issues like Triple Talaq, Article 370 have been resolved. Similarly, if India has to move forward with the agenda of Hindutva and move towards creating a Hindu nation, then in 2024, the BJP and Narendra Modi government need to win with an even bigger majority.

On the other hand, Congress, encouraged by the victory in Karnataka, has prepared a bundle of issues against BJP and Modi government apart from Kamandal and Mandal, which include inflation, unemployment, farmers’ problems, problems of small industries, medium business and shopkeepers, laborers. Issues like the everyday problems of the government and the outdated pension scheme of government employees and the widening gap between the rich and the poor through corporate corruption are included. Now it remains to be seen which side the camel will sit on in the Lok Sabha elections next year.

-Ajay Kumar