‘The setback to the BJP in the general election, in hindsight, was more an irritant in the long arc of Hindutva than a rupture’
| Photo Credit: THE HINDU/RITU RAJ KONWAR
The year 2024 began with the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, which was a culmination, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said at the event, of a long anticipation, “We have waited for 500 years,” he said. As 2025 begins, we see the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat facing resistance from co-travellers of the Sangh Parivar for emphasising the singularity of Ayodhya for Hindutva. “The Ram temple was a matter of faith and Hindus felt that it should be built… Raising issues about some new sites out of hate and enmity is unacceptable,” Mr. Bhagwat had said on December 20, 2024, responding to several claims over more religious places. Many allies of the Parivar questioned this premise soon after, and asserted that a reclamation of all alienated Hindu sites was non-negotiable. What we are witnessing is a conflict between the Sangh Parivar’s desire to stabilise itself as the natural platform of governance and the power of the politics it created which is increasingly not in its control. It is the politics of anticipation, which ignores culmination.
Parties that and leaders who mobilise people to question the existing order through civil disobedience, and even sabotage, want order, discipline and hierarchy as soon as the set goal is achieved. The founding leaders of the Republic said, as soon as Independence was won, that there would be no place for civil disobedience any more. But then, new political ideas and new political entrepreneurship come into play, and new movements take shape.
On anticipation
Looking forward is a more evocative act for the human mind than looking back, psychological experiments reported in the Journal of Experimental Psychology suggest. People relate more intensely to emotional events that are expected in the future than those that happened in the past. Anticipation of something — it could even be a negative thing — is more engaging than retrospection about a past event. But for the human bias for anticipation in comparison with retrospection, there would be no yearning for progress, and there would be no politics or religion. It is anticipation that drives political and religious action (for instance, Christians wait for the second coming of Jesus), and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has used this psychology to the maximum benefit. Ram Lalla Ayenge, Bhavya Mandir Banayenge (roughly translated as, Infant Ram will arrive, the majestic temple will be built) was the slogan of the Ayodhya movement; the slogan that catapulted it as the dominant party in 2014 was ‘Achchey Din Aaney Waley Hain – Good days are arriving’. Anticipation is set against the backdrop of retrospection in political campaigns — what is coming is to reclaim, avenge or/and change the past. The intense emotional energy of the masses behind the Ayodhya agitation was built on an extraordinary anticipation-retrospection frame. The arc of time it proposed to cover was five centuries into the past and a millennium into the future, in contrast with the five-year terms of governments. Speaking at the inauguration of the temple, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it was the beginning of an epoch of 1,000 years.
Claim of singularity, election results
The temple inauguration was suggested as a moment of singularity of space, time and community. “The temple has been built where we had resolved to build it,” Yogi Adityanath said, alluding to another slogan that had animated its supporters since the 1980s — “mandir wahin banayenge”. This meant the temple would be built at the exact spot believed to be the birthplace of Lord Rama, replacing a masjid that stood there. Ayodhya was to be to the Hindu nation what Mecca is to Muslims, and Jerusalem is to the Jews and Christians. “All roads lead to Ayodhya,” said Yogi Adityanath. “All minds are united in the thought of Sri Ram.” Now that its political power is consolidated, the RSS possibly wants to bring the revolution to an end, and establish order. “There is no need to look for a shivling in every mosque,” Mr. Bhagwat had already said in 2022.
But this claim of singularity was challenged, during the 2024 general election by a new anticipation that swelled among the subaltern caste groups. The fear that the BJP might use any massive parliamentary majority to roll back the reservation policy of the country by amending the Constitution spread like wildfire in the heartland of Hindutva, and stopped the BJP short of a majority in the Lok Sabha. The retrospective component in this context is the history of caste oppression. A temple was meant to unite all minds, but the fear of reclamation of the old social order through an end to reservation drove many subaltern voters away from the party.
Though the BJP tripped on the caste quota question in the general election, it remained largely in control of the narrative in 2024. The party’s expansive anticipation-retrospection plane that spans centuries, allows it to sidestep the ‘promise vs performance’ paradigm that traps incumbents between two consecutive elections. All Opposition parties are caught in an extremely unfavourable anticipation-retrospection frame — for instance, a plurality of voters in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar appear to be fearful of the return of the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal, respectively. Looking forward, and looking back far enough, the voters could be inclined towards the BJP than its opponents, and this is particularly true for the Congress. Though the party has been out of power for 10 years in Delhi and more in States such as Gujarat, it is still bearing the burden of its earlier decades in power. Its retrospective political capital, as the party of the freedom struggle, has long been exhausted, and its call for a national caste census has created no intense anticipation among the target group. In the retrospective frame for the Congress, voters see the Emergency, the 1962 war with China, and the dynasty, but not the agricultural revolution or the communication revolution. Though 2024 was a bad year for incumbents worldwide, the BJP and Mr. Modi fared quite well. Anti-incumbency is stronger against the Opposition parties, it appears. The BJP won a third consecutive term at the Centre, but with reduced strength, and it has managed to stay in power in the two crucial States of Maharashtra and Haryana, in the recent Assembly elections.
Parties and their challenges
The capacity of the RSS/BJP to sketch out a retrospection-anticipation plane comes from a willingness to constantly introspect. The BJP recovered from the setback in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra in the general election and launched a new campaign of Hindu unity — ‘batenge to katenge, i.e., divided (along caste lines), you will be slaughtered’, and ‘ek hein to safe hei, i.e., you are safe when you are united’. It went on an overdrive to reassure the OBC/Dalit voters that reservation would never cease. Meanwhile, its opponents lulled themselves in triumphalism and complacency after the general election and failed to interpret the results correctly in order to build on them. The party that won the 2024 elections went back to its constituents in panic mode; and the ones that lost went into a prolonged season of self-congratulation. The setback to the BJP in the general election, in hindsight, was more an irritant in the long arc of Hindutva than a rupture.
But that does not mean the BJP can take its popularity or success for granted. Hinduism, unlike monotheistic religions, promotes multiplicity and circularity and has an innate resistance to singularity — of faith, leader or even god. For the Sangh Parivar, the challenge at the beginning of 2025 — which is also the 100th year of the RSS — lies in taming the mutinous anticipation among its supporters who are searching for new sites to project it; and the anxiety among the subaltern social groups about its long-term plans for oneness. For the Congress, the challenge is to build a politics of anticipation, and shift the retrospection frame of the public to a favourable angle.
varghese.g@thehindu.co.in
Published – January 01, 2025 12:16 am IST
