A cursory look at the qualitative buzz-words employed by analysts to make sense of the 2019 Lok Sabha verdict in India brings into the centrality, terms and phrases like ‘Right-wing Populism’, ‘Anti-Elitism’, ‘New Hindutva’, ‘Advent of Fascism’, ‘Ethnic Democracy’, ‘Status War’, ‘New India’, ‘Verdict against Politics of Opportunism and Divisiveness’, ‘Nationalism’, ‘Hindu Unity’, and ‘Final Demise of Pseudo-Secularism’ emanating from the Left, the Centre and the Right perspectives.¹ On the other hand, analysts privileging quantitative methodology have endorsed most of the qualitative readings tangentially, thereby collapsing the Left and Right binary while highlighting and cautioning us to see the subtext of the verdict in terms of regional variations in the trajectory of the ‘Modi wave’ which failed to sway the southern states barring Karnataka.²

A third dimension is added by comparative analysts who place every national phenomenon in a global perspective ranging from the left Trots-kyites to right neo-liberals who see the 2019 verdict as part of the inward retreat of democracy as a political fact whose economic manifestation is the rise of increasing protectionism, as seen in the emerging trade wars indicating the loss of solidarity and interconnectedness.³ In nutshell, the analytical mosaic of the electoral verdict offers a realm of competing meta-theories, thick with intersectionalities, their differences notwithstanding.

In the wake of an overarching consensus around a set of meta-narratives which have set the terms, conceptual categories and agendas of academic and popular deliberations informing the quest to make an informed sense of the verdict, it is pertinent to retrieve the multiple local narratives in their local socio-political and cultural context emanating from field visits by researchers, journalists and other analysts that dominated the debate while the electoral processes were ongoing and the verdict was not out, thereby disturbing and complicating the emerging consensus around meta-theories despite their ideological antagonisms.⁴

Given the limitation of the scope and space of this essay, local narratives would draw mainly upon the North Indian states, in particular Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, though some references would be drawn from other states also. In this backdrop there are noteworthy local factors that fly in the face of any sweeping generalization of the 2019 verdict as a phenomenon of a pan-state sweep of Hindutva as a socio-political fact or the heralding of a process of ethnicization of Hindus across caste and community, leading to India descending into the league of an ethnic-democracy like Israel, wherein the majority community has a de facto and de jure privileged status vis-à-vis an ethnic minority.⁵

 

Before we delve into those local inferences in reading the verdict in its local context, it warrants attention to note that during the ongoing electoral processes from March till mid-May, the Mahagathbandhan was as much a relevant factor among the observers as well as the observed, i.e. the electorates. Employing the ‘rational-choice-model’⁶ it was expected that in both the northern states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the core support base of the anti-BJP coalition, roughly comprised around 40% of the total electorate.⁷

The fact, that the BJP had lost the assembly elections in three crucial Hindi states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan close on the heels of the announcement of the 17th Lok Sabha election, generated a rational inference that the issues that dominated the three assembly elections like agrarian distress, inflation, Dalit anger and, more importantly, a resurgent opposition led by the Congress, would make the repeat of a 2014 kind of Modi wave like phenomenon difficult, while opposition alliances in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar would put forth a formidable challenge to the saffron party given the conducive interface of political inclination and demography therein.

However, not only did those rational inferences fall flat on their face, but BJP also swept both the states with a much bigger victory margin than 2014 wherein, along with its ally, it attained around 51% and 53% vote share in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar respectively. The Mahagathbandhan had to content itself with a vote share of around 39% and 32% respectively.

This then leads us to relook the entire deliberation around the electoral process in a holistic way and try to answer three key questions: (a) why the Mahagathbandhan failed to take off in these two states despite having a demographic advantage; (b) how did the BJP manage to vanquish the formidable challenge; and (c) what does the verdict say about the Idea of India?

 

In the popular perception the post-verdict saga of the Mahagathbandhan in both the states seems like ‘much ado about nothing’ given their poor performance in Uttar Pradesh and a pathetic one in Bihar. Though, the subtext of the verdict wouldn’t sound as harsh for the opposition, particularly in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, if seen in terms of it getting near 39% of the total vote share.⁸ Bihar certainly merits special attention for the colossal fall of the RJD-led alliance which couldn’t even retain one-third of the popular votes.

In the wake of extensive field visits by the author in both the northern states,⁹ one trend signifying severe limitation of the opposition alliance that emerged unambiguously was the failure of the Mahagathbandhan to establish a sense of relatedness among the electorate hailing from non-Yadav-non-Jatav-non-Muslim sections in Uttar Pradesh and non-Yadav-non-Muslim and a substantial section of Kushvahas, Nishad and Musahars in Bihar. That is, the opposition alliance failed to capture the popular imagination of the electorates beyond their core constituencies in both the states.

 

It emerged categorically in both the states that the dominance of the oppositional narratives to the BJP in the public sphere, was emanating predominantly from the core support base of the Mahagathbandhan so much so that depending upon the political preference and invocation of issues and reasons justifying the same, made it easier to guess their caste/community profile. Thus, the sole anchor of the opposition narrative around agrarian distress, unemployment, inflation etc. in 2019, hailed from a limited social base of dominant and assertive intermediary castes like Yadav, Jatav-Chamar in Uttar Pradesh while Yadavs alone in Bihar, besides the Muslim vote being common in both the states.¹⁰

On the other hand, an overwhelming majority of upper castes, non-Yadav OBCs, and a significant section of Dalit respondents, rallied behind BJP quite enthusiastically, citing the Modi factor as the superseding consideration behind their decision to support the party. Among the non-Yadav electorates in Uttar Pradesh, one found people hailing from castes like Kashyap/Jhimar, Saini, carpenters in Meerut, Muzaffarnagar and Saharanpur region; Lodh, Kurmi and Kushwaha and others in Braj, Rohailkhand, and central UP regions; majority of Kurmis, Rajbhar and Kushwahas in Awadh and Poorvanchal regions heavily consolidated behind the BJP.

 

Similarly, the spirited support of the upper castes, Brahmin, Thakur, Bania, Tyagis and others for the BJP was quite visible across the state. Besides, a large section of non-Jatav Dalits like Khatiks, Valmikis and Katherias (Dhanuk) and Pasis in western, central and Awadh regions, were enthused by the Modi factor so much so that they were willing to overlook the weaker profile of BJP candidates while voting.¹¹ Similarly, in Bihar, there were hardly any enthusiastic takers of the Mahagathbandhan and its narrative besides the Yadavs and Muslims. Thus, in an ironical way, the strength of the Mahagathbandhan emerged as its limitation when not only did it fail to resonate beyond its core support base but also created a conducive ambience for the emergence of a counter-consolidation in favour of the BJP.

For instance, in quite a pejorative way in Uttar Pradesh, the Mahagathbandhan support base was dubbed as the coming together of ‘Hathi, Lathi aur Saat Sau Chhiyasi’ (Elephant, Baton and 786) signifying Jatav-Dalits, Yadavs and Muslims much to the chagrin of others, creating an incentive for counter-consolidation.¹²

It is pertinent to note why local factors like the social background of the electorates determine their preference about a party as well as issues. For the dominant intermediary castes like Jats, Yadavs and Jatav Dalits, Modi signified the process of de-centring their political prominence in Uttar Pradesh. Thus, these Modi detractors nurtured a strong sense of tangible loss of power since Modi’s arrival. On the other hand, for upper castes, who lost political prominence by the early 1990s in the wake of the Mandalization of state politics, wherein the dominant OBCs and assertive Dalits acquired prominence, the domineering presence of a Modi-led BJP since 2014, marked a corrective measure.

 

Along similar lines, the non-Yadav OBCs who by the late 1990s had got disillusioned with Mandal politics, having witnessed its tangible benefit cornered by one OBC caste represented by the Samajwadi Party, felt their new centrality in the political scheme of the Modi-led BJP, which represented an aspiration that had been long overdue. To them, an electoral defeat of Modi would not just be about alternating one party with the other, but rather going back to the undesirable prospect of allowing the dominant castes to call the shots. The domineering presence of the Yadavs in Bihar has been more intense, given their demographic weight.

Thus, the BJP’s ascendency in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar had made upper castes and non-Yadav OBCs political allies without any real correspondence in their social lives. Similarly, the desperation to make a comeback to the core political imagination of the state, has made socially antagonistic communities like the Yadavs and Dalits join hands.

Second, it is crucial to understand the complex but meticulous caste-community dynamics employed by the BJP. While much of the focus of the opposition and the analysts was on the multiple ways of the ‘othering’ of Muslims by the saffron party, there’s another kind of ‘othering’ by the BJP that doesn’t get as much attention as required. If one takes a pan-Indian scenario, one trend that unambiguously emerges is the marginalization and ‘othering’ of the socio-politically dominant Hindu castes/community in the BJP in most of the states. This aspect gets substantiated when one sees the declining importance of the Maratha caste in BJP ruled Maharashtra, Patidars in Gujarat, Jats in Haryana, Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Ahom in Assam, tribals in Jharkhand and most importantly, mobilizing the Dalits, tribal and OBCs against politically entrenched Bhadraloks in West Bengal.¹³

 

This subtext of a very different but more significant non-Muslim ‘othering’ by the BJP offers us a glimpse into the inner working of a contemporary BJP, wherein while the debate around the Muslim question gets inflated disproportionately, allowing the party to use it as a red herring strategy to hide its intra-Hindu caste social engineering, something that neither generates an animated debate nor becomes part of the opposition strategy.¹⁴

In this background, it is crucial to note that in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, while the Mahagathbandhan fielded 10 Yadav Lok Sabha candidates each, the BJP-led NDA fielded just one and five respectively. In particular, a state like Uttar Pradesh wherein Yadavs are estimated to constitute around 7-8% of the population, fielding just one candidate speaks volumes about the BJP’s employment of multiple ‘otherings’. Like Yadavs, the same is true about the negative interface of the BJP and dominant Jatav-Chamar Dalits.

 

Here, it is important to unravel the calculation behind the extreme ‘othering’ of the dominant Hindu castes as this feature not only punctures the BJP’s claim to represent a united Hindu bloc, but rather points out that the party cannot succeed in consolidating a substantive Hindu support base without dividing the Hindus.¹⁵ The success of this ironical scenario as represented by the BJP has its contextual significance for Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. While Hindutva gives the BJP and its supporters a normative plank to justify their quest for an imagined historical justice, wherein Muslims are not only the oppressive ‘other’ of the past but rather constitute the ‘preferred social bloc’ of all the non-BJP secular parties, the real anguish at the local level among a majority of the upper castes, non-Yadav OBCs and Dalits, tend to revolve around the domineering presence of the Yadavs since the 1990s, when they emerged as the prime beneficiary of the politics of Mandalisation and by extension attained the status of the ruling caste leading to a disproportionate share in states and societal institutions offering perks.

This sudden catapulting of the Yadavs at the centre of the state’s power configuration resulted in their aggressive, assertive and domineering presence in the public arena. This then led to widespread resentment across the caste spectrum – something that the BJP exploited to the hilt from 2014. Thus, the meticulous combination of a loud ‘othering’ of the Muslims and very silent ‘othering’ of the dominant Yadav caste by the BJP signified the fusion of popular resentments among a wide spectrum of Hindus who readily saw the BJP as a friendly party. This helps explain the seamless alliance of upper castes, non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits consolidating behind the BJP, taking its vote percentage past the 50% mark.

The subtext of the 2019 verdict unequivocally reveals that neither does the BJP represent a united Hindu bloc, nor do the majority community conform to any characterization of becoming an ethnic community that has rendered backward caste and Dalit movements obsolete. Hence, the argument that India has become a de facto Hindu rashtra doesn’t hold ground as the political behaviour and preferences of community members, remained plural, contested and dynamic.¹⁶

 

The continued dominance of the BJP is as much an outcome of the crisis of the opposition and its inability to capture the popular imagination of a majority of electorates, as did the Modi-led BJP’s meticulous strategy of fusing development and Hindutva in an aggressive way. The fact that the BJP could not create a social support base of Hindus without the political marginalization of a dominant section of the community, speaks volumes about plurality and diversity being the core characteristics of the Indian societal realm that resonates with the Idea of India that refuses to fit into any sectional meta-narrative. The very idea of a Hindu bloc is nothing but wishful thinking, which will have its intra-community detractors, the reasons for which does not have to be national. Rather, it is the contested terrain of a local power narrative operating in a democratic context that keeps ensuring dynamic and plural power play.

 

Footnotes:

1. The terms have been employed by prominent social scientists like Christophe Jaffrelot, Ashutosh Varshney, Neera Chandhoke, Partha Chatterjee, Dipankar Gupta, Swapan Dasgupta, among others, in the aftermath of verdict of 23 May 2019.

2. For detail see the publications by Lokniti, CSDS.

3. Ajay Gudavarthy, Meghnad Desai and others have argued along these lines.

4. During the electoral processes stretched in various phases, the local perspectives contingent to field visits dominated the electoral narratives which represented a contested picture. However, in the aftermath of the BJP’s mammoth victory, these narratives altogether disappeared from the analysis.

5. The argument that the 2019 verdict has made India an ethnic democracy is gaining thick currency wherein Christophe Jaffrelot has made a strong case for the same.

6. For a slightly more elaborate take on the failure of the rational-choice model to understand the 2019 verdict, see Sajjan Kumar, ‘The Psychology of a Tectonic Electoral Shift’, The Hindu, https://www.thehindu. com/opinion/op-ed/the-psychology-of-a-tectonic-electoral-shift/article27226592.ece, accessed on 9 July 2019.

7. These inferences were based on the demographic profile of the states, their stratified electoral preferences as seen in the recent past and expected outcomes.

8. In the past, a vote share of 39% would have led to an alliance or party sweeping the state. Besides, it indicates that the Mahagathbandhan attained a vote share almost in proportion to their core support base of Yadav- Jatav-Muslim in Uttar Pradesh.

9. The fieldworks were undertaken from February 2019 to Mid-May 2019 in the state of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

10. For details see, Sudha Pai and Sajjan Kumar, ‘Election 2019: As Uttar Pradesh Votes, Will Modi be a Factor?’ https://the wire.in/politics/elections-2019-uttar-pradesh-modi-factor, accessed on 9 July 2019.

11. For details see, Sudha Pai and Sajjan Kumar, ‘Election 2019: As Uttar Pradesh Votes, Will Modi be a Factor?’ https://the wire.in/politics/elections-2019-uttar-pradesh-modi-factor, accessed on 9 July 2019.

12. This aspect was pejoratively used by BJP supporters to claim that the Mahagathbandhan support base was not only opportunistic but also sectarian. Though this phrase was used across the state in Uttar Pradesh, its intensity was greater in Poorvanchal.

13. For detail see, Sajjan Kumar, ‘Does Modi’s Massive Victory Mean India is Now a Hindu Rashtra?’ https://www.huffington-post. in/entry/2019-modi-win-india-hindu-rashtra-election-bjp_in_5ced061ae4b0bbe6e 3325e4b, accessed on 9th July 2019.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.