India: Resurgence of BJP in Narendra Modi’s era

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by Abhinava Srivastava 1 June 2019

In an interview to TheHindu, media scholar Arvind Rajagopal highlighted an interesting side-effect of institutional expertise. While explaining the reasons why Indian secularists failed to predict the ascendancy of BJP in power in the Nehruvian era, he said that more significant expertise sometimes convinces you for spurious reasoning.

This exactly seems to be the case for all experts (including the author of these lines)who hoped that BJP’s political fortunes in the leadership of Narendra Modi would be challenged if not overturned in the seventeenth parliamentary election. But the results suggest that Modi phenomenon has worked and worked in an unprecedented way to give the party a mandate which again unsettles the conventional wisdom of discerning election results.

The opposition articulated its strategy around the usual sentiment of anti-incumbency, forgetting perhaps that it is narrative that ultimately wins the election. Overreliance on anti-incumbency also defies the fact the sentiment has itself been inconsistent in rewarding opposition in recent decades. Right, that BJP capitalized huge anti-incumbency against UPA in the 2014 general election, but it did so with the narrative of ‘developmentalism’ meticulously crafted around Narendra Modi’s image. If anything, Congress pitched and offered in this election was the social-democrat model electoral returns of which were already marginalized in 2014.

It is therefore futile to ask what misfired for the opposition. It is time to ask what exactly worked for a party whose chances of coming to power were termed once ‘negligible’ by eminent political scientist Paul Brass. It is undoubtedly true that part of BJP’s current electoral success is broadly a result of the transformation of the party’s social and political base along popular Hindutva lines in the last two and half decade. How massive expansion of TV media with a range of politico-social developments in the early ’90s helped BJP to transform its political base structurally is now a well-known story. Ram Janmbhoomi movement and consequently the demolition of Babri Masjid provided party political visibility, and soon it emerged as a serious political contender to the Indian National Congress at the national level.

But despite being the part of this broader shift, there is something more exciting and peculiar about BJP’s triumphs in successive general elections. It needs to be emphasized that BJP managed to compensate anti-incumbency sentiment primarily through the massive popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is in sharp contrast to conventional political wisdom.

But Modi phenomenon is unsettling such wisdom in an amazingly complex manner. It has rightly made some observers argue that Narendra Modi’s emergence in Indian politics is an autonomous phenomenon, something which can’t be termed as an extension of Sangh’s (RSS) politics. Others, however, contend them saying that Narendra Modi is merely consolidating Sangh’s political and social base. They point out at Sangh’s role in alleviating Narendra Modi as Prime minister of India. In many ways, such discussions have found currency in recent years, and it is either of these two arguments that have shaped mainly the public discourse on why BJP is seizing centre stage of Indian politics so tirelessly.

What such discussions have, however, missed is that BJP’s current electoral success is not reducible to either set of arguments. Narendra Modi could not have paralyzed opposition’s fortunes had he been left to his charisma. Organizational machinery of RSS has certainly reinforced rhetoric and narratives he pitched through different platforms.

However, his personification as ‘strongman’ and ‘developmentalist’ is no less a factor in BJP’s phenomenal electoral success. It is Narendra Modi’s personification in such terms that have helped BJP to maintain a distinct authoritative and populist outlook and to achieve a broad social base across different sections of society in recent years. Whether it is demonetization, GST or air strikes to Pakistan in the wake the of Balakot attack, with every such move Narendra Modi managed to personify himself as a champion of strong leadership.

The move of demonetization was decisive in this respect. Modi anchored demonetization as an exercise of resentment against elites evoking familiar narratives of ‘Shuddhi’ or ‘Shuchita’ against black money and corruption. He defined demonetization as procession where, amidst all sufferings, virtually every honest Indian could oblate against black money. The then Union and Broadcasting minister, Venkaiya Naidu’s remark of ‘Asura (opposition) disturbing peace during Yagya’ (demonetization) perfectly, demonstrated the narrative Narendra Modi attempted to pitch.

If this helped BJP to offer a new language of politics, it equally reinforced the perception of Congress being a party of elites and BJP a true representative of common man aspirations. One can see Modi evoking these narratives in an almost every political project he launched gigantically during his regime. In many ways, ‘Main bhi Chaukidar’ campaign was an extension of ‘Chai Wala’ rhetoric and helped Modi to create an aesthetic sense of ‘proximity to the people’, to quote eminent political scientist Jan-Werner Muller’s term. This is what Congress president Rahul Gandhi missed while coining the slogan ‘ChaukidarChor hai.’ He launched direct attacks on Narendra Modi failing to counter the narrative Modi represented through ‘Main BhiChaukidar’ campaign. In a way, he dismantled Narendra Modi but not the idea of Narendra Modi as some political commentators have highlighted recently.

However, it would be misleading to argue that such spectacles were entirely invented during Modi’s regime. One can easily recall how the idea of strong leadership gained susceptibility during Indira Gandhi’s government resulting in the imposition of national emergency. It has been rightly highlighted that despite being a watershed movement for Indian democracy, a section of middle class initially saw emergency as disciplinary exercise which could bring the country in order. In many ways, the popular perception of ‘train ran on time’ during the emergency is still prevalent. It was only after the onslaught of forceful sterilization; emergency was protested that consequently resulted in the historic ouster of Indira Gandhi and Congress.

But unlike Indira Gandhi, Narendra Modi’s personification is fueled by speculator growth of media. It is now believed that mushrooming of TV, print and new media has unleashed a unique ‘visual regime’ in India. It is through this regime new cultural and social forms emanating from Modi’s personification have gained currency in recent years. It needs to be emphasized that BJP has seized the rise of mediated spaces in an extraordinary manner. The proliferation of mediated publics has allowed BJP to expand and consolidate its social base. Undoubtedly, the results of mushrooming of mediated visual spectacles have been complex in India, but BJP’s successive wins hint that increasing media visibility has certainly suited the cultural and social forms party intended to represent.

Revealingly, Modi has managed to revive majoritarian politics of BJP in a new populist language. It sometimes helps to strengthen the perception that the party has departed from its traditional Hindutva base to the agenda of development and good governance. As a result, a party often seems neither insulated from nor associated with the majoritarian issues. Maintaining this gulf enables it to negotiate between its hard-core Hindutva image and the development image and that perhaps explains BJP’s resurgence in Narendra Modi’s era.