People's Democracy

Gloomy Prospects For BJP & Cohorts

 Harkishan Singh Surjeet

THE writing on the wall is more than clear: by all indications, the BJP and its hangers-on are on their way out. Hindi daily Navbharat Times has aptly summed it up. Its screaming headline on May 3 said: “In Delhi, the BJP is saying, Sangham Sharanam Gachchhami. In view of empty chairs in its rallies, the party has pushed the panic button.” One can only add that it is not the story of Delhi alone; rather the party has graduated from anxiety to desperation to panic in very many parts of the country.

WORRISOME PROSPECT FOR BJP

AND this is the situation when, by the time of writing these lines, the poll process is not yet complete. The prospects are worrisome for the BJP also because it has not much strength in areas that are to go to polls on May 5 and 10.

For example, take Kerala where the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front is likely to sweep the polls. Here the BJP is nowhere in the picture. In West Bengal, the Trinamul-BJP combine is all set to lose many of the seats they held in the dissolved Lok Sabha. Here too, the Left is set to register significant gains.

In Tamilnadu, what to talk of BJP, even its ally, the AIADMK, is afraid of the people’s wrath against its misrule, and the Democratic Progressive Alliance is expected to bag some 32 out of 39 seats, apart from the lone seat in Pondicherry. As The Indian Express editorial said on May 3: “There is good reason for the BJP’s southern discomfort because the Jayalalithaa government has managed, in a short span of three years, to dissipate the formidable reserves of popularity the AIADMK had enjoyed when, in 2001, it was swept into power.”

It is estimated that in Delhi, the BJP may lose 4 or 5 seats out of all the 7 it had captured last time. The Congress is likely to get a majority of the 10 seats in Haryana. In Himachal, the BJP may lose 2 to all the 4 seats; similar may be the story in Uttaranchal where the BJP had bagged 4 out of 5 seats last time.  

As for Bihar, the BJP and the reconstituted JD(U) are finding the going extremely tough; the opposition is likely to make big gains. So much so that railway minister Nitish Kumar openly accused his party colleague and defence minister, George Fernandes, of having killed the party’s prospects. Jharkhand is already witnessing a severe anti-BJP mood among the people because of the misrule of the BJP state government.

As for Uttar Pradesh with 80 seats, the biggest state of Indian Union, the BJP had not much hope anyway. Here, the BJP’s only hope is that votes would get split four-way and it would get some seats in that melee. But the thing to note is that, even if the electorate get divided, there appears to be not much chance for the party. Even its dirty game of maligning the Samajwadi Party by issuing nasty statements about the supposed affinity between the SP and BJP is not likely to pay it much dividend.

MINISTERS HAVING NIGHTMARES

A STRIKING thing about the BJP’s dwindling prospect is that all the union ministers in the fray are finding their potatoes very hot. Fernandes is having sleepless nights in Muzaffarpur, and so are Rudy in Chhapra and Digvijay in Banka. Shahnawaz Khan, the BJP’s showpiece for Muslims, is likely to get defeated in Kishanganj.

In Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad is proving too tough for M M Joshi, number three in BJP hierarchy and the most ruthless champion of saffronisation. 

In Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, Ajit Panja and other leaders are having nightmares these days.

It will thus not be surprising if one sees many NDA heads rolling when the results are out. And who can say whether these polls will not make a record of sorts by claiming the heads of a large number of ministers! 

And not only ministers, other BJP bigwigs are also finding the situation really tough. UP BJP president Vinay Katiyar has run away from his home district Faizabad, choosing to contest from Lakhimpur Khiri in the hope that backward class votes would push him through. But even there, the poor response to the meeting addressed by Narendra Modi, that butcher of Gujarat, has indicated that that seat too may be tough for Katiyar. In any case, as The Statesman editorial on May 3 said: “That Faizabad is no longer safe for the BJP, says a lot for their support base.”

VAJPAYEE’S IMAGE GETS BATTERED

BUT most pathetic appears to be the plight of our prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Maybe, personally, he sails through in Lucknow but, here too, many of traditional BJP supporters have turned against it. 

This is what a story in The Hindu (May 3) says: “Yet there is an inexplicable anxiety in the BJP camp about the Lucknow campaign. This anxiety became considerably pronounced after Mr Vajpayee’s election meeting two weeks ago drew a very meagre crowd. Since then, two central ministers, Sushma Swaraj and Rajnath Singh, have been camping here and are content to address street corner meetings. Another senior leader, Pramod Mahajan, too has been trying to generate some excitement. The corner meetings do not draw more than a 1,000-odd crowd.”

But, in fact, all this reflects a more serious trend --- that Vajpayee’s own image, which the BJP and NDA always regarded as a big asset, has got severely battered. This is what the said Hindu report also pointed out: “Mr Vajpayee himself has been drawing rather poor crowds. His best meeting so far was a week ago in Aligarh, which saw a decent gathering of 20,000. Otherwise, he has not been able to attract big crowds, according to district level officers in western and central Uttar Pradesh… The Vajpayee magic is on the wane, at least in his home state…. The more Mr Vajpayee is seen as yet another politician, working the votes, the faster is the erosion in the carefully cultivated aura of a statesman.”

The paper’s conclusion is forthright: “the Vajpayee factor (is) running aground.” Here we can only add that this phenomenon is not confined to UP but runs across the country. More importantly, this trend of his dwindling appeal continues unabated.

No wonder, then, that Vajpayee’s own plight is sad. One really feels sorry for him if here he appeals for a BJP candidate to be sent to Rajya Sabha and there he mentions that India is the most populous country in the world! One can only say it is high time he takes sanyas from politics, retires to the Himalayas and concentrates on writing poetry.     

PROPAGANDA BLITZ FAILS

IT is thus clear that the propaganda blitz the BJP had unleashed with the media’s help has failed to cut any ice with the people. Its feelgood campaign has turned feel bad for itself as the mass of the people have, by their own experiences, realised that if India is shining at all, it is shining only for a handful of capitalists and multinationals.

A queer aspect of this phenomenon is that even a large section of the media, who were bent on moulding public opinion in favour of BJP through their so-called opinion polls etc, seem to have deserted it. But there is nothing surprising in it. For, today, the media appear to be more concerned about saving their own credibility than projecting the BJP. After their second exit polls on April 26, the media have found that their own credibility, and thus their audience and their revenues, are at stake.

It is in this situation that the BJP gave up its development plank and began maligning that the opposition lacks unity and cannot provide the country a stable government. Here we shall not talk about what miseries a ‘stable’ government heaped on our people in the last six years. That is known to one and all. The thing is that while claiming that only the NDA could provide a stable government, BJP leaders, true to their salt, went to extremes in distorting facts and even telling outright lies to the masses.

Take the case of big newspaper ads the BJP recently issued. One such ad says it was Mrs Indira Gandhi who pulled down the Charan Singh government in 1979. Then, it was the Congress that pulled down the Chandrashekhar government in 1991 and two United Front regimes in 1997 and 1998. The meaning is obvious, and so is the distortion.

Take the case of Morarji government that fell down in 1979. Can the BJP men deny that that government fell on the double loyalty issue? The fact is that the Jan Sangh component of Janata Party, that later came out of it to form the BJP, refused to give up its loyalty to the fascistic RSS that was trying to control the Janata Party and its government from behind the scene. It was this adamant attitude of the present-day BJP leaders that led to the fall of Morarji government.

Then, in November 1990, the BJP voted with the Congress to pull down the V P Singh government which it was supporting from outside. Again, the BJP voted with the Congress to pull down the Deve Gowda and Gujaral governments during 1997-98. Thus, if the Congress was guilty of pulling down these regimes, can the BJP hide its own sins by laying all the blame at the Congress doors?

Another BJP charge is that the Congress did not make Jagjivan Ram, a Harijan, the prime minister. Again, the BJP is no less guilty. In 1977, when it was a question of selecting the leader of Janata parliamentary party, late Jayaprakash Narayan was in favour of Jagjivan Ram. But the casteist Jan Sangh component did not want to see Ram as prime minister and, through J B Kripalani, outmanoeuvred him in favour of Morarji. This was after Nanaji Deshmukh’s formula --- that leaders beyond 60 in age must not contest for the post --- had failed to find any takers. This formula was meant to clear the way for Vajpayee who was then below 60. But it boomeranged on Nanaji himself who retired from politics in order to set an example (!) and remained in wilderness thereafter.   

BJP BACK TO COMMUNALISM

YET, aware that neither stability plank is going to help it nor has its move to woo the Muslims succeeded, the BJP has gone back to the same old groove of communalism. This became clear when it inducted hawks like Modi and Uma Bharti for campaigning in UP and elsewhere.

The Hindustan Times editorial on May 3 said: “By keeping Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi out of the BJP’s nationwide campaigning team, the party had earlier signalled its decision to stick to its bijli-sadak-paani-India Shining-and-feel-good combo.... So what has made the same rather confident party bring Mr Modi --- and a few others like Uma Bharti, not known for keeping a tactful lid on matters such as ‘Hindu pride’ --- back in the campaign fray in states like Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan? Answer: Because the BJP’s earlier confidence seems to be wobbling a bit.” However, it is not that the BJP’s confidence is wobbling a bit; it has taken a nosedive. In fact, the editorial says just after that if the BJP’s claim was to get “300 seats on its own,” its estimate slipped “to a 200-plus last week” and that “the exit polls have rattled partymen.” 

Be that as it may, the question is: will the communal game succeed? The answer is: no chance. While in Lakhimpur Khiri, Modi refrained from making any communal appeal, as he saw what the mass mood was. The Statesman editorial, quoted above, says: “The usual double-speak over the Ram temple, which normally works for their benefit, has gone against them this time.”       

The sum and substance of all this is that the common people of this country, who are not wanting in patriotism and secularism, seem to have decided that the BJP and its cohorts have to be thrown out bag and baggage. This is what several papers have noted, saying that even the BJP’s traditional supporters seem to have deserted it.

Is there anything surprising in this? A party that only heaped miseries on our people, that sought to kill our secular ethos and Ganga-Jamni culture, that sought to saffronise the whole system, that excelled all earlier regimes in corruption and that has lowered the country’s prestige in the comity of nations --- can such a party expect that the people of this great country will condone its sins? After all, even if our people are ill-fed and illiterate, they are not devoid of political sense, nor do they lack a concern for the country. For, not the bourgeoisie, landlords or MNCs, it is these people who are the country.

(May 4, 2004)