As India’s mega election begins, caste-based parties threaten to upset Modi’s apple cart
- Over 39 days, some 900 million voters will decide if they want Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to remain in power
- While much of the spotlight has been cast on Modi, the lack of a national election narrative has allowed state parties to boost their numbers by forming alliances across caste lines
The Indian National Congress is the main opposition but has been weakened after its ambitions of leading a coalition of anti-Modi alliances fell flat. Regional parties are now poised to help determine the formation of the new government when results are declared on May 23.
Vaibhav Gupta owns a store selling popular T-shirts endorsing Modi and the ruling BJP. However, the resident of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state did not support the BJP at state level in 2017.
“I chose the Samajwadi Party as it had a chief ministerial candidate. I did not know who would lead the BJP,” Gupta said.
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But this election is about “bringing Modi-ji back to power”, he said, despite being dissatisfied with the ruling party over unfulfilled promises to build the Ram Mandir – a Hindu temple for Lord Ram – in Ayodhya.
Gupta explains his switch in allegiance to the “grand alliance” struck between Uttar Pradesh-based Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, and his dislike for the latter party’s leadership.
In the 2014 election, the BJP mobilised the personality cult of Modi and an anti-Congress message. They successfully neutralised more parochial considerations of caste and regional pride – but these have now resurfaced in the absence of a overarching election narrative.
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Uttar Pradesh delivered to the BJP one-quarter of its 282 seats in the lower house, helping it gain an absolute majority to govern.
This time, the alliance between Samajwadi and Bahujan Samaj, stitching together a formidable coalition of caste-based parties, creates a challenge for the BJP, which hopes to form a government on its own.
Congress has sought to expand its “big tent” credentials but regional players have been cautious in their response. Nonetheless, the party has managed to form alliances in Bihar, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
Such developments suggest that although Modi dominates Indian politics, these elections could be determined state by state.
“This is a national election, no doubt, but the higher popularity of state governments vis-à-vis the central government is not going to make matters easy for the BJP,” a team from the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and its Lokniti Programme wrote in an article for The Hindu newspaper.
Leaders of regional parties, such as Mamata Banerjee – who founded the All India Trinamool Congress, the fourth-largest political party in the outgoing lower house – have already been talking about shaping the government after the polls.
Banerjee asked one interviewer: “Don’t underestimate us. How are you so sure that my party will not be the largest?”
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Other smaller parties, including the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) of southern India’s Telengana state, are projected to perform well.
Independent researcher Priyanka K, whose constituency of Secunderabad in Telangana state is held by the BJP, does not want to support the party because of its communal politics. But she is also unhappy with the Congress candidate.
“The other option is TRS, for which I have voted in state elections,” she said. “However, I am worried the TRS will end up supporting the BJP post-poll.”
Recent surveys suggest the BJP can count on support from the majority of India’s eligible voters, who think the government deserves a second term.
A poll of some 10,000 respondents across 19 states by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies found 59 per cent of respondents were satisfied with the BJP government, and 46 per cent felt it deserved another chance.
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They were less sure last year – only 41 per cent of respondents in the Centre’s January 2018 survey spoke favourably of Modi.
This surge of support for the BJP is in part due to its last-ditch efforts to manage agrarian discontent over a debt crisis, drought relief and collapsing prices. In February, the government authorised transfers of 6,000 rupees (US$87) to small farmers. The government has managed to transfer the first of three instalments to more than 25 million farmers, pacifying rural voters.
Modi has also fuelled nationalism with India’s cross-border air raid against Pakistan after a suicide bomb attack killed Indian paramilitary personnel in the dispute Jammu and Kashmir state.
On April 9, as the campaign ended for the first phase of polls, Modi appealed to the country’s 81 million first-time voters to dedicate their vote to the dead soldiers and military personnel who led the strike.
Opposition parties criticised Modi’s appeal as breaching the Election Commission’s advisory for political parties to not use the activities of the armed forces for propaganda.
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Ultimately, the BJP is confident its base has no alternatives, even though three core expectations of BJP voters have not been fulfilled: the implementation of a uniform civil code, the abrogation of the constitutional provision that provides autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir, and the construction of a temple for Lord Ram at Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya at the site of a demolished mosque.
BJP supporters see those as tenets of Hindu nationalism, running counter to the interests of the Muslim community.
As BJP leader Subramanian Swamy said recently at a conclave organised by the Hindi news channel Zee News: “Who else will do all these? We are the ones who will carry out these promises, even if it takes a while … So people have to say: ‘Let’s pardon them this once; they will get it done the next time.’”
