#370: Has The BJP Succeeded In Polarising The Indian Society?

What we got, instead, was a New India that is bent upon turning our past into dust and building, on its remains, monuments to majoritarianism and entrenched power. What’s important is that this New India did not emerge one fine day at the stroke of some midnight hour. Instead, it has been built gradually, but steadily, since the first year of the BJP government. The BJP’s hammer has hit the chisel of hate and intolerance day in and day out to chip away at the democracy of India. Today, you can say and do things that were unimaginable back in 2014. You can be openly bigoted, differentiate among people on the basis of religion, repeatedly lie to the people, make a mockery of the Parliament and through it all, have the unyielding support of large pockets of the public.

All this while, we continue to pride ourselves as a democracy. No one could have imagined such a move even being considered back in 2014, much less that droves of people would actually come out in support of it. This is the tail-end of a long process of manufacturing narratives that serve the narrow outlooks of the BJP and its Sangh Parivar.

India on the eve of 2014 elections seems distant, like happy childhood memories. BJP fought the 2014 elections on the plank of development and anti-corruption. The buzz words were “policy paralysis” and “Gujarat Model of Development”, with a garnish of the “56-inch chest” rhetoric. Anti-incumbency was high and a general perception of deep-rooted corruption among the dynastic Congress persisted. This made a lot of people turn towards the alternate of a party promising a change and a fresh vision. Its leader was a larger-than-reality Chief Minister with a personal story of hard work and a professional story of nothing but development.

Those who opposed Narendra Modi’s bid for Prime Minister were apprehensive about hist past record of the Gujarat Riots of 2002 and the BJP’s pro-rights tilt. But many dismissed them as mere apprehensions. Perhaps the absolute majority came as a surprise, but an NDA victory was not doubted by most in 2014. What no one saw coming was how insidiously a new normal would be established.

In the early days of the BJP government, the party pushed forward the image of a Modi wave and the Prime Minister was deified. Controversies ruptured intermittently like the Ghar Wapsi antics in 2015 or the controversial statements of MP Sakshi Maharaj every now and then. The Arunachal Pradesh Assembly was dissolved as a throwback to the earlier days of Centre dissolving state assemblies with impunity, but SC soon stepped in.

The people rested in a sense of assurance in the constitutional safeguards.  It was all at a digestible level as long as the BJP remained assured of its electoral gains. Any criticism of the government at this point could be shut down by pointing out similar moves by other parties in the past.

The foundation of whataboutery as a means of shutting down criticism, used to great effect subsequently, was being laid. Demonetisation seemed to have been devised to score brownie points but ended up being a failed PR exercise.

Slowly and steadily, ultra-nationalism was introduced to introduce the credentials of the government. College students were branded “anti-national” and truth became a casualty. This trend was decidedly endorsed with the appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the CM of UP.

By appointing a practising Hindu priest as the Chief Minister of the most populous state of India, BJP signalled that it was no longer concerned by mere public opinion. However, it remained as concerned as ever about its seat tally. BJP losing the Gorakhpur Parliamentary by-election rang the warning bells for the party.

When reality started catching up with the Modi wave, the BJP shifted towards more polarising positions. Mob lynchings targeting Dalits and Muslims were being reported with alarming regularity. The police, in response, was more concerned in investigating whether or not the victim actually possessed beef rather than pursuing his murderers. Today, lynchings in the name of cow have become a mere statistic. The Sangh became the sole authority to vend certificates of being Hindu or anti-Hindu in an effort to discredit the voices of rationality and dissidence. TV anchors, one after the other, started toeing the Government’s line and a unified narrative started taking shape.

It all seemed like individual events that could be debated as stand-alone issues according to their own peculiar merits or demerits. What we missed was the greater shift in the public agenda. The very fact that opinion was actually divided over BJP legislators supporting the rape accused in the Kathua case instead of there being outright condemnation brought us to despair, but not surprise. The government brought in a bill to grant citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from the neighbouring countries while subsequently labelling Rohingya Muslims as illegal migrants. A law billed as making electoral funding more transparent through the use of electoral bonds, allowed foreign funding of political parties for the first time in the history of India.

As the 2019 general elections appeared on the horizon, the BJP was single-mindedly focused on ensuring a second term, and nothing sells like nationalism. A fact-deficit, chest-thumping narrative of a resurgent armed force was built. First with the surgical strikes, then with the Pulwama attacks and the aftermath. The ordinary Indian’s deep emotional attachment to our country was exploited for political gain.

BJP repeatedly asked the Opposition to be bi-partisan but it itself was happy to dispense the anti-national label to those that questioned the conflation of loyalty to the country with loyalty to the government. Once again, the people questioning the government were shouted down because how could you not stand with the nation at a time like this? The voices asking for peace and calm were drowned in the rhetoric of ultra-nationalism. This was aided by the shrinking space for dissent.

Not a single Minister addressed the people of the country and instead, a press conference was organised with the spokespersons of the three Armed Forces. This was a classic case of evading accountability and hiding behind the uniform.  The media could not be looked at for providing an informed discussion on important matters and the social media space was awash with BJP-supporters who are lacking in giving arguments but well-equipped in giving abuses.

The campaign for the 2019 elections was truly ugly with everything from doubts on the Election Commission to political violence. The promises of development and crackdown on corruption were switched out in favour of a simple idea- BJP is the sole party acting in the interest of India and if you are not with the BJP, you are against India. This narrative was reinforced through TV news coverage, social media posts and WhatsApp forwards.

Everything from advertisement campaigns to memes were deployed in the BJP’s strategy to deliver their message. The Hindu CSDS-Lokniti Post-Poll Survey shows how this narrative was extremely successful in reaching the public. The 2019 debates and the key issues were in stark contrast to 2014.

2014 was about which vehicle would take the country faster on the road to development and prosperity. The 2019 election was about what is the identity of India, what do we stand for and what do we want to stand for. The casual use of communal rhetoric and hate-filled speeches would have not been acceptable in 2014. The level of political violence wouldn’t have been acceptable in 2014.  Juxtaposing the two election seasons shows us how BJP has succeeded in establishing a new normal.

We now live in a country where communal sentiment is commonplace, even among the government leaders.

The 5 years of the BJP government have been an exercise in the systematic de-sensitisation of the Indian public. Capitalising on the rapid availability of social media echo chambers, the BJP has today succeeded in polarising the Indian society. Today, the people are not fighting the government, instead, the people are fighting the people.

For every gross violation and misconduct the government undertakes, there is the ready availability of reactionary groups willing to defend and celebrate them. A slew of words has been manufactured- “presstitute, pseudo-secular and urban Naxal”, among others, to discredit the civil society that seeks to question the government. No one can define what these words mean or who they refer to, but everyone understands them as slurs to be used against those who dare to dissent. Today, the NDA is in majority in both Houses of the Parliament, effectively ending the ability of the Legislature to act as a check on the Executive. The News Media is under siege, once again, from their own counterparts who are bent upon dragging the principles of journalism through the dirt. The last remaining hope is the Judiciary, which is barely functioning under the burgeoning burden of pendency.

All of this has been only an account of some of the gross violations of established principles of Indian politics. These are the problems that the BJP has created while being in power. There isn’t space in this article to mention all the problems that we expect the government to fix, in which the BJP has had a chequered record. I wish to end this article on a hopeful note, but as I sit here mulling about the character of this New India, no silver lining shines through. So, allow me to quote Aamir Aziz and say, “Tha intezaar jin ka, woh achchey din aa gaye”.