The Elections are over. The elections will come again. The sweet taste of victory and the bitter taste of defeat will linger long over the participants, people and parties. Out of the two states that went to Elections, both having BJP as incumbent Government, one has been lost, and another, won by the BJP. A Municipality election in Delhi which coincided with the two bigger elections has also seen a change of power, from BJP to AAP. Where BJP has lost, the tendency has been to hide the details behind data. This could also be due to the laziness of the analysts or due to the complex manner in which human beings make decisions. It is because of this, we are often shocked, surprised and amused by the electoral results.
Most predictions are made on the basis of arithmetic, and most of the results are based on chemistry. Statistics hide failures and amplify successes. The results have their roots in the subtle and sublime, not in rhetoric and rallies. Rallies at best round off the loose ends left hanging by the do-gooders who work around the clock, around the intervening years with the people, in between the elections. Elections in a democracy are nothing but the conversations that the citizens hold with the men who they elect to rule over them. They also represent in their form and format the breakdown or continuance of the conversion in the period when elections were not around.
In Gujarat, BJP came to power with a thumping majority. Out of 182 seats contested, BJP has got a whooping majority of 156 seats. Among the other parties that we know of, Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP got 5 seats, which is 2 seats more than the Independents, and 4 seats more than the Samajwadi party. Congress has turned out to be the second largest party, still with 17 seats, even after a vile, loud and acrimonious opposition to what they call Hindutva politics. The elections, as I contend, are nothing but a culmination of a five-year-long conversation that the political parties have with the electorate. It is easy to attribute the devastating decline of the Congress from 77 seats in the 2017 Gujarat elections to 17 in these elections to a lacklustre campaign of the senior leadership of the Party in Gujarat.
In the initial post-independence era, Congress enjoyed the unhindered and unquestioned access to the position of power, granted in gratitude by an indebted nation, fed on a structured narrative that it was Congress and Congress alone which gave us freedom. Later Congress was replaced by Nehru, and then by his descendants. We have walked far from that point, as India celebrated its 75th year of Freedom this year. With initial euphoria dead; an ill-managed economy, widespread corruption and power concentrated in the hands of few on account of their dynastic rights, based on the mythical role of Congress no longer holds good for the people. Now, when Gujarat questions you why was Sardar Patel given Bharat Ratna in 1991, you do not raise rancour over the Statue of Unity, you silently apologise for the oversight of your ancestors. When the Dalits of Gujarat ask you about why Dr Ambedkar got the Bharat Ratna only in 1990, by a non-Congress Government, you do not throw an Una at their face. You acknowledge the mistake. When you have 90 per cent of the voting majority in Gujarat from the Hindu faith, you do not insult Hindus, you do not attack Hindutva, and you accept the fears and insecurities of centuries which have seen the tyrants trample over the revered temple of Somnath. If Congress has to really unite Bharat, it cannot be done by vilifying the majority faith, by calling those who voted for Narendra Modi bigots.
When it comes to Gujarat, there is a lot for Congress to apologise for. From Congress Councillor from Godhara lighting up the fire to inflaming 2002 riots in which around 750 Muslims and 250 Hindus died, by the refusal of Congress Chief Ministers of neighbouring states of MP (Digvijay Singh), Rajasthan (Ashok Gehlot) and Maharashtra (Vilasrao Deshmukh) (Reference: Narendra Modi: A Political Biography) ignoring the desperate call for help from the then CM of Gujarat, Narendra Modi. Rhetoric can work to fool people from outside the state, but you cannot speak of scorching summers to the people shivering under the cold and watching over a snowstorm which just passed them by. No Congress leadership has ever apologised to the people of Gujarat at large and to the Muslims of Gujarat who were used as expendable tools by Congress to get rid of the BJP in power in Gujarat.
Which community had more human losses is irrelevant since when a smaller and more aggressive community brings about violence on a majority community with a huge numerical advantage, eventual losses will be more on the side of a smaller community, even if they be the initiator of the violence. This was a case in the Direct Action Day violence in Kolkata as well. Much water has flown down Sabarmati since. The communities have aligned and reworked the ways of working with each other. The hatred has dissipated and is only visible in the eyes of politicians. As for the BJP, there are bridges built between the two communities. Congress, however, still thinks that polarization is the way to win. This explains that within Gujarat, a criminal thrashed by Police for trying to intrude into the Hindu religious affair of Navaratri Garba finds Congress siding with him, but a Kishan Bharwad who was murdered by Islamists finds no mention. To imagine that the people of Gujarat are not watching which side which political party leans toward is foolish.
These are the undercurrents which, to my mind, were in play in Gujarat. As for the apathy of senior Congress leadership is concerned, there are two aspects to it. One, merely because your probability of winning is less, you do not abandon your team in the thick of a political war. Secondly, if the issue is about the state not falling in the way of Rahul Gandhi’s nationwide Congress Carnival, resembling a travelling circus of the past, the organisers need to answer why did the Bharat Jodo Yatra not start from Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat and also if the Yatra is apolitical, why is it funded by a political party which in turn runs of the contribution of masses who contribute to resurrect the Congress as a political party. The isolation of the Congress from the people is so pronounced that as late as the 12th of November, 2022, AICC Gujarat in-Charge, Raghu Sharma claimed that the results will surprise all and we will form a Government…We will get more than 125 seats. (‘Congress Plans 25 Mega Rallies, to bring out Big Guns for Mission Gujarat, India Today: 12th of November, 2022, Supriya Bharadwaj). As things stand post-elections, Congress risks losing the status of Party of Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly with one seat lesser than the minimum 18 seats needed (10% of total seats).
In all fairness, one can only blame the local Congress leadership for trying to keep up the pretence in the face of abject alienation by the merry-making senior leadership aided by the consultation of the unelected and the unelectable gang comprising of Jairam Ramesh, Supriya Shrinate, Kanhaiya Kumar among the key strategists of Rahul Gandhi. The rally keeps attacking national heroes and Hindus on Social Media and Main Stream Media, taking up petty fights with the private person like the maker of the film ‘Kashmir Files’ on the Hindu Exodus from the valley of Kashmir in face of the terror of Islamist terrorists, thereby sending a message to 90% of the electorate in Gujarat and to 80% electorate nationally, that they do not care about the Hindus. Their antipathy to the reconstruction of places of Hindu pilgrimages is too visible to the people of Gujarat where the annual pilgrimage, calledPravaas, is a routine way of Gujarati life.
As for AAP, a party more and more being run by a megalomaniac Arvind Kejriwal as a personal fiefdom with no qualms about lying in public space. It is not that the politicians have not been charged before the arrival of Kejriwal for being economical and inventive with facts (Sharad Pawar, on record, acknowledged inventing a fake Bomb blast which never happened in a Muslim area to secularise Mumbai Bomb Blast) but they did it with hesitation and enough cover. Kejriwal has brought an embarrassing level of brazenness into the space of Political lying. The constant bribes he passes on the media in form of advertisements from Delhi state funds, ensures that no one ever holds him to his word. Just as he predicted a sure-shot victory in Goa, in Uttarakhand, in UP, in all the places where he lost his deposit in the majority of the contested seats, he claimed thus in Gujarat. His party got 5 seats in the elections. The blatant media channels, however, hailed this as a great victory for AAP in Gujarat, the sober ones like ToI called it a ‘mixed result’ hailing it as a success in a ‘debut attempt’. The fact is that this was not a debut attempt for Kejriwal, it was his second foray into Gujarat.
In the 2017 election, AAP contested 30 seats in Gujarat and lost deposits in almost all. Most AAP candidates got votes in two digits (a surprise given the large joint families in Gujarat), and the best performer was Arjunbhai Rathva who got 4500 votes in Chhota Udaipur. This time again Kejriwal continued with his manufactured lies at an industrial scale, without any pangs of guilt or human hesitation. The way Kejriwal has perfected the art of lying compares itself well with earlier senior political leaders in the words of Oscar Wilde in The Decay of Lying when he writes – They (earlier politicians in our case) never rise beyond the level of misrepresentation, and actually condescend to prove, to discuss, to argue. How different from the temper of a true liar, with his frank, fearless statements, his superb irresponsibility, his healthy, natural disdain of proof of any kind! How perfectly Arvind Kejriwal fits the description.
His devastating loss has not wisened him. If anything, they have turned a professional liar into a hardened one. Now he claimed that AAP has become the party with the fastest journey to being a national party in Indian history. The fact is out of the ten political parties that became national after their formation post-independence, with a decade behind it, AAP has only TMC and BSP which took more than ten years to turn national. NCP became National in less than one year and BJP within Four Years. Gujaratis are straightforward people, known for excellent business ethics. If anything, this five-seat win of Kejriwal is nothing but a fluke, in the face of a sea of lies, he unleashed on the state. Claiming to bring in clean politics, he threw the highest number of criminals in the fray, as against both BJP and Congress.
The parties which failed Gujarat, failed because they did not understand Gujarat. They spoke to the people of Gujarat with visible disdain. They claimed that the growth in Gujarat was a jobless growth and promised to bring Delhi or Rajasthan Model. The fact remains that against Gujarat’s unemployment rate of 1.72%, Delhi under Kejriwal stood at 12.74% and Rajasthan under Congress Government was at 30.72%. The narrative both the parties in contention built was totally incongruent with the realities of Gujarat and instead of aligning with the aspirations of the electorate, they tried to school the electorate, tried to belittle their intelligence. The infrastructure which they claimed was non-existent, was visible to the people. They lied and lied, and abused those who contradicted their lies. You cannot hold a proper conversation with people you hold in great disdain. Congress looked at the people of Gujarat with disdain and suffered for that.
This would also explain the big failure of BJP in Himachal and the Municipality elections of Delhi. While BJP was not totally wiped out by AAP as was claimed by Kejriwal, it was reduced to a minority position with 105 wards victory out of 250 wards. Congress, on the other hand, was totally decimated. The data play can bring some comfort to BJP in Delhi, as their vote percentage has risen by 3% to 39%. The fact remains that the number of BJP Councillors in the new MCD is less than the halfway mark where they held an overwhelming majority. We can find ways to offer solace to Delhi BJP but the fact remains that it suffered the same challenge which the congress faced in Gujarat. The communication with the voters snapped.
When Citizens suffered at the blocked Delhi border, with the city held captive, except a lone voice of Kapil Mishra, the state capitulated. When Saffron was attacked by AAP, when the Islamist agenda was raised by the fanatics on the back of a foreign-funded CAA protest culminating in anti-Hindu riots, BJP at large was missing from the scene. Kapil Mishra was there to support the riot victims but mostly as an individual. When Nupur Sharma was thrown under the bus by the BJP leadership to appease a far-flung Muslim dictatorship, people might have forgiven them, but when Tablighi Jamat, declared a terror organisation even by the Islamic state of Saudi Arabia for their fanatic views, was restored after blatantly adding to Covid spread across India, was forgiven, Delhi noticed dreadfully.
When the Jahangirpuri riot culprit’s illegal house came to the note of people, they also noticed how this must have come up due to negligence and corruption of the BJP-ruled MCD. Illegality encouraged and ignored by the conniving state not only has an economic impact, but it also impacts the lives of law-abiding citizens. Why would Delhi citizens not question how under the nose of MCD, AAP Councillor Tahir Hussain created a riot fortress? BJP needs to evaluate and answer these questions. When Kishan Bharwad was murdered by Muslim fanatics in Gujarat, HM of Gujarat, Harsh Sanghvi visited the family of the victim. When Heera Gujarati was murdered in Delhi when Dilbar Negi was burned alive and Rahul Rajput was stabbed in Delhi, did you see senior BJP functionaries visit the families?
When recently Nitish was murdered in Delhi, did the BJP Delhi leader organise a candlelight vigil in Central Delhi, while the Delhi Police like earlier tried to whitewash the case? When the Hindu temple at Hauz Qazi was desecrated by the local fanatics, the Delhi Police under the BJP acted against the protesting Hindus. These things write themselves up on the minds of Hindus orphaned by political parties in the rush of appeasement. If these sentiments play up against Congress, it is totally impossible that they won’t be against the BJP.
Gujarat leaders do not make great speakers in Hindi for national channels, but they are sincere and committed to their ideology, the ideology with which Jan Sangh was founded. I do not know much about Himachal, but I know that BJP there was speaking about Central projects and initiatives. It has forgotten how to speak in the local dialect. Learn to converse with people, then only the Chanakya arithmetics will fall in place. If I was a friend of Heera Gujarati, I will not vote for someone who did not stand with him merely because he made a stellar speech in the election campaign. Lazy analysts will continue to fool politicians but the fact is that the only counter to BJP is more BJP. When BJP gets 50% votes in India, remember, in 2024, you cannot win by calling those 50% people fanatics, hate mongers and bigots. If you think that, there is something wrong with your mind and strategy both. The elections are a moment of learning for both those who win and those who lose.
