(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)
So now that we have the results of the 18th Lok Sabha elections, I am sure you, readers of the Political Line and The Hindu, were not surprised. Our reporting and commentary captured the churn under way — about the BJP facing a decline, but not a defeat. The news is not that Narendra Modi continues to occupy the Prime Minister’s chair but that he needs the support of alliance partners to remain in the seat. What should amuse us all is the fact that everyone seems to be happy about the results — the winners, losers, bystanders, commentators, and cheerleaders. Rarely has a political churn produced such widespread happiness in a country. It is a case of all happy people being happy in their own ways.
Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi are happy. Mr. Modi is happy that he has managed to win a third term, albeit without a commanding majority. It could have been worse; what a relief! Yes, he needs crutches, but he can stand and walk. It is the happiness of a plane crash survivor. Mr. Gandhi thinks bringing down Mr. Modi to a position of dependency itself is a massive victory for him, and he has not stopped smiling since June 4, after the Congress won 99 Lok Sabha seats.
Centralisers and federalists/regionalists are happy. Religious nationalists and secularists are happy as well. The BJP has opened its account in Kerala, which used to be protected by a formidable ideological and geographical barrier that had prevented the party’s entry until now. Hindutva has expanded to the southern tip of India and consolidated in the eastern frontiers. It has trounced the regional party of Odisha, Biju Janata Dal (BJD), and captured power in the State.
“But wait,” the regionalists say.
The BJP’s tall claims did not impress the Tamils, and the DMK held its ground, and how! The Narendra Modi-led BJP’s very survival in power in Delhi now depends on a regional outfit — the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). Moreover, the BJP faced major setbacks in Maharashtra at the hands of regional outfits.
Caste autonomists of the heartland are happy. The BJP had been trying to gobble them up in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar for several years by alternatively befriending and combating them, and its strategy appeared almost successful in recent decades. But the caste autonomists have made a comeback. They are now checkmating the BJP, both as opponents and allies.
The Samajwadi Party in U.P. has stopped the BJP juggernaut as an opponent; the Janata Dal(United) in Bihar holds the key to the BJP’s power in Delhi as an ally. Both parties have resisted the BJP’s agenda of promoting a totalising Hindu identity politics and represent a combination of subaltern Hindu social groups. Both SP and JD(U) are friendly with religious minorities, particularly Muslims.
The Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs, including each community’s communal and secular voices, are happy.
They have pushed back the BJP or at least tempered its power. All of them feel empowered. Both the BJP and the separatists are happy that family parties that peddled Kashmiri and panthic (Sikh) identity politics have faced setbacks in Kashmir and Punjab. Separatists in Punjab are happy; Marathas in Maharashtra, and Rajputs in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and U.P. are happy too at seeing a tamed BJP.
Most of all, the collapse of the fatalism associated with the supposedly inevitable victory of the BJP and Mr. Modi has empowered the BJP voter and its grassroots workers and leaders. They feel reassured that they cannot be taken for granted now.
The Election Commission of India must be happy — despite inefficiencies and partisanship, it still has managed, to a great extent, to protect the integrity of the electoral process. The judiciary is happy that the political executive’s overwhelming power over the last decade has been checked. The media and journalists are happy. By and large, they had been rendered irrelevant in the past 10 years, having been cornered to become either cheerleaders for the ruling party or the opposition’s propagandists. They hope dynamic politics would revive the role of journalism.
Federalism Tract: Notes of Indian Diversity
Confusion of categories: Idli can’t claim the privilege of sattu
Can instant idli or dosa mix qualify as sattu? This is a governance issue. A tribunal in Gujarat has decided that they are not the same. The GST rate applicable for idli and dosa mix is at the heart of the dispute.
Governance and rule of law require sensible grouping of people, places and concepts. But achieving consensus over categories is always difficult. Questions over legitimacy of categories have always led to legal and political disputes. Meanwhile, in a brazen misinterpretation of law, the Madhya Pradesh High Court has ruled that a Hindu and a Muslim cannot marry under the Special Marriages Act.
