Shams Ahsan

 

Reasoning is a disloyal companion. It deserts you when you need it the most. The result is: You take decisions which prove to be detrimental. The decision by the rightist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to anoint Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate for the forthcoming parliamentary polls lacks reasoning.



I had expected BJP’s sharp-witted national leaders to be intuitive and insightful or at least ambitious.



But then politics is often dictated by populism. When the wind blows it sends up clouds of dust blurring the terra firma. Things look hazy. The dust in the air created by the upsurge of support for Modi has blurred BJP’s vision.



Populism, however, is like quicksand. It is misleading and deceptive. Modi is popular among the urban elite, industrialists, and the Twitter generation. The class to which Modi appeals does not take pains to wait in long queues outside polling booths on election day.



Those who go out to vote with a herd mentality are not Modi’s supporters. This so-called ethnic voting is determined by the affiliations of caste, religion and language. Modi has further hustled these herds of voters away from BJP by his divisive and polarizing policy.



Then there is the regional pattern, which has resulted in the dominance of regional parties on the national level. In the 2009 parliamentary elections, the total vote share of regional parties was 52.54 percent as against 47.36 percent for the Congress and BJP combined. Most of the regional parties have an inherent aversion for the brand of politics Modi practices. So it is almost impossible for him to rope in regional parties (barring a few) for any pre-poll alliance.



Then there is the most important and determining factor: The humiliation of the party’s patriarch, L.A. Advani. He is the co-founder of the BJP and Modi’s mentor. In the 1990s, he played with a much straighter bat the brand of politics which Modi practices today. He enjoys respect in the party and still has substantial hold on the cadre. It is much more difficult for Modi to fight Advani than to fight his prospective Congress rival Rahul Gandhi. For him, a sulking Advani is more dangerous than a sober Rahul.



But the war bugle has been sounded. Advani will make his own moves on the sly to fight the monster he has created. Modi will have to recognize and sideline Advani loyalists in the party for his own survival. He will also ignore Advani’s men in the distribution of tickets to fight elections, chipping away at the party’s own votes.



Modi’s presence on the national scene has created a political space which could be exploited to electoral advantage by regional parties.  Congress could fill this space except for the fact that the party is in total disarray.



It may seem too far-fetched at this point to imagine Advani playing the role of senior statesman around whom regional parties could rally, shedding their leaders’ personal ambitions for power. But anything can happen in politics. After all politics is the art of the impossible.



However, wait till December when assembly elections take place in four states: two ruled by Congress and two by the BJP. The results of these elections could well be a referendum on Modi.

 

— The writer can be reached at [email protected]