The electoral contests in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir turned out to be bipolar, as expected.
But the success of forecasts ends there, as the others could have been more wrong. The Bharatiya Janata Party secured its highest ever majority and third successive victory in Haryana, while the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, where pollsters predicted a hung verdict, made a decisive call in favour of the National Conference-Congress combine.
The Haryana outcome will particularly embolden the saffron party, as it could overpower a strong anti-incumbency current among a large section of the electorate by deploying a mix of micromanagement tricks and social polarisation tactics. The results will also reinforce the perception that BJP’s management of elections is most sophisticated – an impression that had suffered when the Lok Sabha poll results were announced four months ago.
The BJP has added the icing on the cake by registering its best-ever performance in the Jammu region. The Union territory, incidentally, also marked a strong division in voting preferences between the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley and the Hindu-majority Jammu as all of BJP’s 29 victories came from the latter.
The BJP, in all likelihood, will use the Haryana and Jammu outcomes to advance the idea that a majority of Hindus are still backing it despite all their complaints and that the Lok Sabha setback was only temporary. On more than one occasion, the saffron party has made it evident that it prioritises its social polarisation strategy within the Hindu communities as much as it propagates the brand of Hindutva that is entirely dependent on the othering of minorities.
In Haryana, it consolidated a majority of non-dominant Hindu communities and “upper” caste groups by exploiting widespread social resentment against the dominant Jats. Over the last decade, it has adopted similar consolidation mechanisms against Marathas in Maharashtra, Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Patidars in Gujarat, and Kurmis in Chhattisgarh. It has been able to take advantage of social fault lines and has been successful in bringing non-dominant and unrepresented communities under the Hindutva umbrella.
The “othering” of minorities and the focus on equitable representation of Hindu communities together has evolved into a potent success formula for the BJP, thanks to which it has beaten anti-incumbency sentiments against its state governments more than once.
While much of its initial successes came as a social response to existing domination of one or other caste groups in ruling parties across states, its formula continues to reap dividends because of the reluctance, and even obduracy, of opposition parties to acknowledge these social fault lines and correct their courses. For instance, while the Jat leadership of Haryana Congress effectively picked up ground-level concerns of the electorate and ran a spirited campaign, it still remained unforthcoming in sharing its power with other caste groups. Rather, Bhupinder Hooda, who was leading the Congress canvassing, seemed intent on weakening other party factions that were led by leaders belonging to various other caste groups. His overconfidence clearly got the better of his widely-acclaimed political acumen.
It is also because of such factional strife that the Congress could win only six out of the 32 seats it contested in J&K. There, it was still saved from shame by its regional ally, the National Conference.
In the last five years, the Congress has raised some of the electorate’s most pertinent concerns – all of which were pleading to be attended to by the Narendra Modi government. Its political messaging is one of inclusion in which it has appealed to all classes of people irrespective of caste, class, creed, race, and religion. However, its universal language remains merely rhetorical because of its failure to diversify its state leaderships. Ironically, the Congress in its Udaipur Declaration in May, 2022, had precisely made it a point to make its leadership – right from the block to national level – more socially representative, but has since forgotten about it. Rather, its central leadership has succumbed to the pressures of its regional satraps, portraying even its “high command” in poor light.
Not that it doesn’t know where it lacks, but Congress still fails to see this as its primary problem. It tasted success in the 2018 polls of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan where it fought under the banner of a collective leadership representing different social groups. But it lost the same states when the party’s incumbent chief ministers attempted to concentrate power in their own hands in 2023. Similarly, it could defeat the BJP comprehensively in Karnataka when Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar, both of whom enjoy popularity in different segments of the electorate, put up a united campaign.
On other instances, the Congress has also benefited from ceding space to its regional allies when the political coalition represented diverse groups; Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana being such examples.
The Samajwadi Party under the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav showed in the Lok Sabha polls how persistent hard work to make a party more socially representative from top to bottom can upset even the formidably-placed BJP. The Congress could learn a lesson or two from its INDIA ally. Sharing power is an irreversible democratic norm now. Ignoring this crucial social dimension of Indian polity will only compound its problems, not make them vanish.
(This article was first published in The Wire)
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