Weaponising Hinduism will win elections, however…

‘…It will not assist the social gathering run a peaceable and equitable India,’ warns Vir Sanghvi.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi addresses Bharatiya Janata Party leaders a day after the National Democratic Alliance gained a majority within the Bihar meeting election, November 11, 2020. Photograph: Vijay Verma/PTI Photo

Even the prime minister’s bitterest critics must concede that over the past six years or so, he has achieved what was as soon as thought-about unattainable: He has weaponised Hinduism as an election-winner.

Till Mr Modi gained his landslides, politicians had all the time believed that whereas minorities could vote on the idea of non secular identification, most Hindus have been too safe and too snug in a rustic the place they constituted the overwhelming majority to permit their faith to affect their voting choices.

Hindus did generally vote on the idea of caste, however even the Jana Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party believed that faith was not sufficient to sway the votes wanted to win elections.

L Ok Advani’s emphasis on such points as Ayodhya could have laid the foundations for the BJP’s rise.

But when it got here to elections, it was the much less radical, extra ‘secular’ Atal Bihari Vajpayee who was made the face of the social gathering within the hope of attracting voters past the Hindutva loyalists.

Mr Modi has modified all that.

The BJP’s enchantment is now unapologetically Hindu-focused.

It makes no try to get minority votes and doesn’t trouble an excessive amount of with even the symbolism of minority candidates.

As its supporters brag, it has ended the veto energy that Muslims have been as soon as believed to have held at nationwide elections.

Even if the entire minorities vote in opposition to the BJP, it doesn’t matter.

As lengthy as Hindus, who represent 80 per cent of the inhabitants, vote for it in giant numbers, the BJP will nonetheless win elections.

The apparent advantage of all this for the BJP is that its electoral juggernaut is tough to cease.

But there’s a draw back. It has to periodically re-assure its Hindu constituency that it’s implementing a pro-Hindu agenda.

This authorities’s formulation has been to let BJP-ruled states run amok of their pursuit of this nakedly pro-Hindu agenda whereas the Centre discreetly averts its gaze.

During the social gathering’s first time period on the Centre it was such points because the safety of the cow that occupied centre stage within the states.

Passions have been raised to the extent the place harmless Muslims have been lynched on mere suspicion of possessing beef and BJP spokesmen took to describing the Congress as an ‘anti-cow social gathering’ as if this was a severe cost to stage within the twenty first Century.

IMAGE: Bharatiya Janata Party President Jagat Prakash Nadda, Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi and Home Minister Amit Anilchandra Shah. Photograph: Manvender Vashist/PTI Photo

During Mr Modi’s second time period, the identical formulation has been adopted.

Once upon a time, the idea of love-jihad was considered a delusion restricted to the lunatic fringe.

Now it’s the topic of laws in such states as UP and in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka the place Bills are being ready.

Once once more this results in heightened passions and the focusing on of minorities.

This strategy has labored so effectively with the BJP’s assist base that the social gathering’s default place has grow to be to time period anybody from a minority who dares protest about its insurance policies an anti-national or a traitor.

This was the strategy favoured through the anti-CAA laws the place all protests have been met with recommendations that they’d been impressed from throughout the border: From Pakistan and even, Bangladesh.

The farmers tenting on Delhi’s borders have met with the identical therapy.

They have been known as separatists and Khalistanis (as a result of a lot of them are Sikhs).

And when that hasn’t labored, they’ve been known as Maoists and terrorists. (I’m ready for a authorities spokesman to name them Turban Naxals.)

In the case of the farmers agitation, not less than, diminishing returns have set in and BJP spokesmen at the moment are providing clarifications. (‘Only a few of them are Khalistanis.’ ‘They will not be Maoists however they’re underneath the affect of Maoists’, and many others.)

But the federal government remains to be unwilling to take the farmers’ objections to the brand new laws critically.

After all, the BJP has an amazing majority in Parliament so it has the assist of the folks, it asserts.

It was this type of argument that was used to stifle the controversy on the farm Bills and to quick circuit the consultative course of.

IMAGE: A Nihang seen through the farmers’s agitation in opposition to the brand new farm legal guidelines at Singhu border in New Delhi, December 28, 2020. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

On one rely, the federal government is true.

With its loyal Hindu constituency in place for it to rely on, it needn’t fear in regards to the votes it might lose through the CAA agitation or due to revulsion over love jihad.

As for the farmers, Punjab is one state the place the Modi wave was turned away on the border.

So how does it matter if Punjab farmers are upset? They by no means voted for the BJP anyway.

The hazard with this strategy is that it reduces every little thing to electoral math.

In reality, there’s far more to governance than profitable elections.

All liberal democracies, even these with majority governments, are primarily coalitions.

You can not run them on a purely majoritarian foundation.

You have to search out a way of giving those that didn’t vote for you (particularly if most of your votes got here from one neighborhood) a say in how issues are run.

If you do not, then there are two penalties.

The first is that as a result of Parliament is dominated by the brute majority of 1 social gathering, it ceases to function a strain valve for dissent.

Instead, those that don’t agree with the federal government merely take to the streets or discover different methods of protesting.

We noticed that with the anti-CAA protests.

And we’re seeing it now with the farmers’ agitation.

The second consequence is extra worrying.

If you counsel to minorities that they don’t have any voice in India, the place the Hindu majority guidelines, finally, they’ll come to the conclusion that they don’t have any stake in India, both.

At a time when Pakistan is attempting so arduous to revive the Khalistan motion, does it make sense for our authorities to name patriotic Sikhs Khalistanis?

At a time when international Islam goes by a radical part, is it smart to let Muslims really feel that they don’t have any place in India?

Weaponising Hinduism will win elections for the BJP.

But it is not going to assist the social gathering run a peaceable and equitable India.

Vir Sanghvi is a TV presenter and journalist.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com