Dr Satish Misra
Lust for power has unfortunately become a defining feature of the ruling BJP under the duo leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Political power at any cost and by any means is the sole guiding principle of the BJP that is seeking to achieve long set goals of its mentor outfit-the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS).
The above assessment may be challenged by those who are ardent followers and supporters of the saffron Hindutva forces but my conclusion is based on some basic facts and observations that have come to my notice since coming to power of the BJP in 2014 when the party won majority in the lower of house of parliament.
Latest evidence of the above assessment is being witnessed in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections in Telangana capital Hyderabad where BJP’s top national leadership is actively campaigning for party candidates. Election is scheduled for December 1. Sending of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is an abashed Muslim baiter, for a road show only proves the interest taken by the national leadership to polarize voters on communal lines in a city that has about 43 percent Muslim population and has been sending All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) representative to the Lok Sabha since 1984. AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owasi is the current Lok Sabha MP from the city.
While BJP chief J P Nadda himself went to campaign in the local civic elections but what took observers by surprise was when Union Home Minister Amit Shah found time to campaign in the local elections. Shah too targeted Muslims in his speech when he said the BJP wanted to “rid Hyderabad of the Nawab-Nizam culture”, would not tolerate “appeasement of any community” and would ensure “no one will be a second class-citizen”.
“If you give the BJP one chance, we will remove all illegal construction which blocks water exits and make sure the city never gets flooded again,” he said, attacking Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, or KCR, over his government’s handling of the situation.
Apart from Shah, Nadda and Yogi Adityanath, union ministers Smriti Irani and Prakash Javadekar along with fiery MP and party’s youth wing chief Tejaswi Surya were also roped in the campaigning. that is why the Hyderabad municipal election has seen the BJP invoking these selling points: Jinnah, Biriyani, Pakistan, surgical strikes
High profile election campaign in a civic election clearly establishes that the BJP is determined to undertake expansion at any cost. The BJP has been trying to expand its electoral base in Andhra Pradesh for decades without much success. After the partition of the state into Andhra and Telangana, the BJP became more certain that it can expand here too.
Notwithstanding the final electoral outcome at the GHMC civic elections, the RSS-BJP is treating this election as a laboratory experiment whose lessons are going to help the party in assembly elections in West Bengal next year where the BJP top leadership is leaving nothing to chance. Like Hyderabad, West Bengal too has a high percentage of Muslim voters.
The BJP has been working aggressively in West Bengal for decades and it began to see results in 2014 Lok Sabha elections when it won two seats. It went on to improve its tally in 2019 Lok Sabha elections by 16 more seats taking the victory number to 18. However, it could not win many seats in the 2016 assembly elections when its vote percentage plummeted to 10 percent from 17 percent in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Buoyed by polling little over 40 percent votes in 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP top leadership is seeing a bright chance for the party to capture power in 2021 assembly elections and that is why the party has been focusing on West Bengal since Lok Sabha polls itself.
The Union Home Minister has been touring the state frequently and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also been to the state couple of times in the last two years. BJP cadres are aggressively clashing with Trinamool Congress workers resulting in bloodshed on streets of West Bengal. Ruling TMC government led by Mamata Banerjee is suffering from anti-incumbency and the BJP is seeing its chances to come to power in a state where it would have been impossible for the saffron outfit to win a couple of years back.
With huge resources at its disposal as its party coffers are swelling with corporate donations and electoral bonds, the BJP is even wooing dissatisfied or disgruntled leaders of the non-BJP parties to its ranks. The goal is to capture power by hook or crook.
In its expansionist drive, the BJP top leadership is not shy of confrontation and is encouraging its cadres to treat political rivals as not only enemies of the party but that of the Hindu community. The BJP leaders begin to label their opponents as anti-nationals at the first opportunity and leave no chance to sharpen the communal divide so that electorate can be polarized on communal lines.
Acquisition of power and sustaining it through a negative framework of hate and intolerance by the BJP as we are seeing the treatment being meted out to agitating farmers in the Union capital by the Modi government officials, ministers and party leaders will finally result in destruction of the very people in whose name and with whose support party governments are being formed. Heaping abuse on farmers and labelling them as ‘Khalistani’ by party spokespersons may prove to be an effective instrument for discrediting farmers but if it is the correct way is the question that would be asked in coming days, weeks and months. Poor voter turnout however, shows that the BJP campaign has not created any waves among the voters.