Modi-Shah-Bhagwat play good cop-bad cop to win 2019 elections

File photo of BJP president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi | PTI

This BJP strategy also inherently carries the risk of sending out contradictory messages to voters.

The troika of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat seem to be pursuing a good cop-bad cop strategy for 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The coming months are likely to see Modi continuing to play the role of a statesman who believes in ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ (with all, development of all), gender justice (regardless of his silence on Sabarimala in contrast with his outspokenness on triple talaq), and diversity of culture and beliefs. He has to be the embodiment of everything that aspirational India looks for. He has to be the leader of ‘future India’.

The role of the RSS sarsanghchalak and the BJP chief is to ensure that Hindus feel a sense of empowerment and attachment with the ruling dispensation at the Centre. This is why the Sangh and the BJP have suddenly woken up from slumber to raise the pitch once again on the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. This is an issue Modi hasn’t uttered a word on since he hit campaign trail in 2014. In the past four weeks, Bhagwat has repeatedly demanded the construction of the Ram temple at the earliest, “whichever the way and whatever the means”.

The BJP chief has endorsed him, emphasising that “the fact” about the destruction of the temple cannot be sidestepped. Shah is, in fact, emerging as a hard-core Hindutva proponent, repeatedly raising the Ram temple issue, vowing to throw away illegal Bangladeshi migrants, or “termites” as the BJP chief prefers to describe them, and declaring the government’s determination to send “behind bars” “voices that speak of dividing the country”.

Opposition leaders have been left wringing their hands in despair as they see the ruling party’s attempts at “polarisation” ahead of the elections. They have no clue about how to counter it, except through implicit participation by making temple visits an essential part of the poll campaign.

Each in the Modi-Shah-Bhagwat troika seems to be playing his defined role to perfection. Modi is a strong and decisive Prime Minister of whom the world is in awe and, in the case of the immediate neighbours, fear. He would also have people believe that unlike the past governments that worked for “one family”, he is working for all, giving them toilets, houses, health insurance, cooking gas cylinders, electricity, and everything else under the sun. With him in the saddle, everyone should hope to realise his or her dreams in the New India of 2022.

And if some people are sceptic about these claims and promises, they could turn to Bhagwat and Shah, who would help them in rising above temporal considerations and contributing their might to the larger cause of Hindutva.

In 2014, Modi’s appeal transcended castes and communities, helping the BJP shed its Brahmin-Bania-party tag and expand its base among OBCs and Dalits. This expansion has caused unease among its core votebank though. The party’s top leaders are conscious of it and have asked party chief ministers to address it.

They are also conscious of the growing voices of discontent from several OBC groups and Dalits who had very high expectations from an OBC Prime Minister. The saffron party is so unsure about its hold over new caste constituencies that it has postponed its plan to shake the caste cauldron by sub-categorising the OBCs.

The commission set up to give its recommendation on the sub-categorisation has been given several extensions. These dilemmas confronting the BJP strategists explain the saffron party’s return to the Ayodhya temple as also to the plank of cultural and muscular nationalism.

There are elements of assumption and risks in the BJP’s good cop-bad cop strategy for 2019. The aspirational India, Modi’s core constituency, may not take kindly to Bhagwat’s and Shah’s attempts to derail the development discourse. To assume that they would continue to repose faith in Modi while discounting the words and actions of other members of the troika could be foolhardy. An issue like Ayodhya temple that India of 1980s and ‘90s responded to may not evoke much response in 2019 when GenNext across urban-rural divide has different priorities.

The strategy also inherently carries the risk of sending out contradictory messages to voters. Modi might have been projected as Hindu Hriday Samrat post-2002 Godhra riots but a significant section of people voted for his ‘vikas purush’ avatar in 2014. It was the latter that created a ‘personal votebank’ for Modi, over and above his party’s.

Opposition strategists such as Jairam Ramesh of the Congress – who otherwise believe that people vote for the party and not individuals — grudgingly concede that “7-8 per cent” of the voters might have voted for Modi, the individual, in 2014. The BJP runs the risk of losing this chunk of voters with its polarising narrative, which also betrays the saffron party’s lack of confidence in the Modi government’s development pitch.