Congress’s strategy is becoming clear. The scary implications for India are not likely to be felt in 2024 but who knows what can happen by 2029?
Events of the past few weeks have made the grand game plan clear to us. The TLDR version is this: get a firm lock on minority (read Muslim) votes. Use that as a lever to force other dynasts into yielding seats. Try adding a percentage of Hindu votes using the leftist propaganda ecosystem and blatant lies.
You may recall Akhilesh Yadav’s original unilateral offer of 11 seats to Congress. And this was hardly a month ago. You could say it was all part of the usual drama that all parties and alliances do. But it was less than half of what Congress was expecting. Yadav had also made a lot of anti-Congress noises and mocking remarks about caste census etc., in the past, especially after the MP polls.
Then a set of interesting events unfolded. The President of All India Muslim Jamaat, a Barelvi Sunni outfit, Maulana Shahbuddin Rizvi, wrote a letter with two interesting remarks.
- That 98% of the Muslims voted SP in 2022 polls
- SP is not giving enough seats to Congress for 2024 GE, thereby strengthening the BJP.
Arfa Khanum Sherwani, a Wire “journalist” of the “Ideology hasn’t changed, strategy has” fame pitched in with her “activism” too. Doing even better than the Maulana, she said “Samajwadi Party which received almost all of Muslim votes in the last assembly elections in UP decided not to nominate even a single Muslim out of three seats in the Rajya Sabha”.
Clearly, the pressure was on Akhilesh Yadav from the ecosystem. If you need our continued 98-100% support, give in. If not, lose our votes. I have picked two examples, but you can come across several others that fit the pattern. He caved in, offering 17. Time will tell how many Congress will win.
The same trick will be repeated in states where it will work given the demographics and state of play.
The most interesting thing about these two remarks, made by people who know India’s politics and their community fairly well, is this. If anyone outside the left-Islamist ecosystem says Muslims vote as a block or in unison, they are bigots, Sanghis, and anti-Muslims. “Experts” then cite “statistics” to show that like everyone else, Muslims too vote in complex ways. If you think about it, this is exactly how the temple destruction of Islamist era was handled. Leftists and their army of historians will deny it happened and the Islamists will brag about it and threaten more the same. Here we have Islamists bragging that practically everyone voted for one party and demanding their pound of flesh, while leftists will provide cover fire to deny it ever happened.
Be that as it may, let us turn to the other implication of this. Through his consistent anti-Hindu, pro-Muslim rhetoric and divisive, communal politics, Congress under Rahul Gandhi (or shall we say Sitaram Yechuri), has obtained a firm lock on Muslim votes. Or it thinks it has. Now the trick is to fool enough Hindus into voting for them on freebies, false promises, usual divide and rule caste tricks, and generous help from George Soros, extended Stalinist left propaganda ecosystem.
This “vote bank” is now being used to squeeze and literally blackmail other dynasts into yielding seats or risk losing their main support plank and fall into the abyss. As I have mentioned earlier, most regional dynasts are happy with the takings in their own states and have no major national ambitions. They know their aukat. To lose even that would be an existential crisis. Throwing away a few more seats for the GE is no big deal.
It will be interesting to see if TMC under Mamata Banerjee will be immune to this or will also fall in line. She owns the minority vote there and in many ways is a pioneer. To be fair to her she has not been overt with her hatred towards Hinduism unlike Rahul and some of his minions. She just corrals the minorities into a safe vote bank and does it well. Depends on what she thinks the minorities will do – stick to her or switch sides to Congress. If she suspects the latter, she will also quietly surrender, as Akhilesh did. Because a mass migration to the CONLEFT continuum will essentially finish her career. This is more so after the horrendous Sandeshkali incidents.
This too clever by half play with nothing but the resumption of the UPA loot era as the goal and scorched earth as a tactic if it fails, is obviously dangerous for the nation and has already resulted in counter polarisation and increased communalisation of the public space. Even if it succeeds, it can only result in blatantly Hinduphobic policies of the sort we are seeing in Congress states and increased demands for religion-based concessions. A recipe for disaster. But let us set that aside to look at electoral possibilities.
For the May 2024 polls, chances are the Modi wave will carry BJP through even if it takes a hit here or there. Of course, anything can happen but you could say this is the consensus of the day. But what about longer-term prospects? After all, Rahul Gandhi is two decades younger than Modi. Are we doomed?
I can only see a few things that can potentially defeat this devious game plan of the shehzade.
One is, Muslims, at least a significant percentage of them, see through the game and wake up. I have said this before – they have been taken for fools and their interests are exactly the same as everyone else’s. Modi is delivering on them at a rate much faster than others. Plus they don’t have the same agenda as the Stalinist left and some corrupt dynasts – the complete destruction of Hinduism. Their goals are more pragmatic and utilitarian. I find the comments made by Hasan Suroor in his most recent article interesting – they confirm what I suspected. Modi’s pasmanda outreach, if followed through by RSS and others at the ground level can accelerate this process. I sincerely hope they do. Because the other option, listed below, is far worse. If they pull it off, all bets are off and Dynasts will have no leg to stand on. It will be impossible to reverse course – they have paddled too far up the hate-Hindu-cheat Muslim creek.
Second is, that someone with a national mindshare presence, similar ambitions, and age on his side beats Rahul Gandhi at his own game by doing it slightly better. Yes, I am talking about Kejriwal here. If you notice the recent seat-sharing drama, Yugpurush has been cleverly leveraging his current strength to add to the kitty in states where he thinks he has a future. And clearly using Congress as the useful idiots that will enable the same. He also knows the media ecosystem is controlled by the CONLEFT continuum and he has no way of replicating that. His every move is a play on his strength and a step to add more to it. My past articles will make clear I hold no briefs for this anarchist charlatan but the point here is he has a chance.
The third is of course, more of what has already been happening – counter-polarisation to a point where this tactic completely loses all relevance. The shrill noise from the left ecosystem and the visceral anti-Modi hate shown by the Polpotist left’s activist cabal and the keenness to divide on caste and regional lines reflects this fear. Although arithmetic is different in each constituency, overall if say, 60% of 80% decide to vote one way, the rest don’t really matter. Given the concentration of Muslim voters in select pockets this actually works in even more simple ways – you don’t even need 60% – 50% of 90% would be good enough! Obviously, this makes the hill harder to climb where Hindus are only 50% or less, but those are not many, at least not as yet. BJP’s inroads into the Christian community both in Goa and Kerala as well as North East will help matters here.
The fourth of course is that Congress, under Rahul or some other leader, say Priyanka, sees the foolishness of this and reverses course. As I mentioned briefly they have paddled too far up the creek to do that. The derision which greets Rahul’s temple runs in social media is a pointer. And his instruction to the priest not to apply too big a tilak and his body language – that of a clearly unwilling person dragging himself into the temple with an angry face and arms behind his back, for the sake of ticking a box – clearly doesn’t help. Furthermore, the minority community, as shown clearly by Arfa and the Barelvi Mullah cited earlier, thinks it has put in all its work already and wants to see dividends. Even if they do, the hardcore fringe leftists with their own anti-Hindu pogrom agenda, that have been backing the dynasty project will not let them – they control the purse strings as well as the media and academia. Why would Cambridge bother to invite Shehzade to lecture?!
Let us watch the space.
