These days, general elections are rarely fought on the issues we expect. In 2004, the BJP wanted to fight the election on ‘India Shining’, on how the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had turned India into a major world power. Two decades later, that song still turns up on the BJP’s set list — to mixed responses.
In fact, ‘India Shining’ was thrown out of the window fairly early in that campaign when Sonia Gandhi took the decision to focus on the people for whom India was certainly not shining: those at the margins of our society who had not benefited from economic liberalisation.
Then, in 2014, when Narendra Modi led the BJP into the general election, it was expected that the campaign would be religiously polarised. After all, Modi had never lost an assembly election in Gujarat and had often managed to inject a Hindu-Muslim element into the campaigns. For instance he had fought his first assembly election in Gujarat by including emotive references to Pakistan in his speeches. Sonia Gandhi also tried to fight him on Hindu-Muslim issues going so far as to call him “Maut Ka Saudagar” because of the 2002 Gujarat riots.
So, most people expected a secularist vs communalist sloganeering battle in 2014. In fact, the election was largely free from Hindu-Muslim issues and conflicts. In his speeches, Modi spoke of development and how he would transform India if elected. And naturally, he drew attention to the alleged scams that had rocked UPA-II.
This time around, it was expected that the Prime Minister would take a high-minded approach, avoid sectarian issues, and fight the election on his record. As his supporters keep reminding us, Narendra Modi has delivered on his promises of development, India is headed for greater glory and will soon become a major world power. (Yes, that song, again.) If there was going to be any Hindu-Muslim stuff in the campaign, it would be left to lesser leaders. The Prime Minister would rise above the sectarian fray and would campaign like a statesman.
It hasn’t worked out that way. In his third general election as the leader of the BJP, PM Modi has gone back to some of the rhetoric he used in Gujarat. The Muslim minority is referenced again and again in his speeches. Attacking (or distorting; take your pick) the Congress manifesto, he has repeatedly suggested that were the Congress to win power, it would rip the mangalsutras from the necks of India’s married women and confiscate some of the buffaloes owned by India’s struggling peasantry.
The Congress will then give the mangalsutras, buffaloes, etc. to Muslims. (He uses a variety of code phrases, but the intent is clear.) In his telling, the Congress is not just anti-Hindu, but it also has it in for Hindu buffaloes.
This campaign may or may not be working. But judging by the vigour with which the Prime Minister has continued to hammer away at this theme, the BJP’s internal polling shows that it has had some impact and is worth pursuing.
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Rahul Gandhi’s return to the roots
Similarly, the Congress campaign has also taken an unexpected turn. In the last general election, Rahul Gandhi decided to attack the Prime Minister’s personal integrity only to see the BJP win a landslide because voters did not believe him and had faith in Modi’s honesty.
This time around, Rahul has gone in another direction. He has returned to the approaches of his mother and his grandmother. Sonia Gandhi appealed to the poor in 2004 and 2009 and told them that the Congress would look after their interests with welfare measures. In 1971, Indira Gandhi had told the industrial working class and the peasantry that they were poor because the rich kept them poor. Were she to be elected, she promised, she would squeeze the rich, take their ill-gotten wealth, and give it to the poor.
Rahul’s message, this time around, appeals to the constituency that his mother nurtured in 2004. But what he promises voters is very different. Sonia Gandhi promised to help the poor without ever threatening the rich. Rahul has rejected that approach and gone further back in time: to his grandmother’s rhetoric.
There is a new element too. Many of his speeches speak directly to those at the bottom of the caste pyramid. He repeatedly points out how the upper castes dominate everything in India—from business to government to justice to the media. He suggests that the BJP wants 400 seats in Parliament so that it can change the Constitution and restrict reservation. (This is as much of a wilful distortion as the BJP’s claims that the Congress wants to give Hindu buffaloes to Muslims.)
This is a new Rahul Gandhi, a caste-warrior and a class-samurai, quite different from the peace and love guy we have seen on his ‘Mohabbat Ki Dukan’ yatras around the country. This time, his targets are specific and his rhetoric is more aggressive.
Also read: Why Rahul Gandhi is a threat to Modi-BJP now than he was ever before
Rahul Gandhi’s return to the roots
You could be cynical and argue that for all this talk of a new 21st-century India on both sides, we are really back to basics. This campaign has focused on evoking old tribal, sectarian loyalties. The Prime Minister has worked out that he does not need the Muslim vote. The path to victory lies in energising the Hindu vote and playing the traditional Sangh songs of Hindu victimhood.
Rahul Gandhi does not focus on religion, but he is appealing to another identity-based loyalty: caste. He is combining that with the old style politics of envy and the promise of wealth redistribution.
None of this matches how most analysts had expected the election campaign to go. Nor is any of it at all contemporary or modern. If this battle had been fought 50 years ago, the same issues—religion, caste, class-welfare —would have seemed just as topical.
What does all this tell us about the election? Two things seem obvious. As proud as Narendra Modi is of his record in office, he believes it is not enough to get him the mandate he thinks he deserves. He feels the need to use emotive, identity-based issues and to caricature the Congress’s agenda. Many thought that given his massive popularity, his ten years in office, and the Congress’s increasingly dismal general election performances, he would scornfully ignore the Congress. Instead, the party turns up in his speeches all the time.
And it tells us that Rahul Gandhi, having tried everything in the ten years that he has been opposing Narendra Modi, has decided that his kind of politics does not work. He is much better off going back to ancient family tradition, to Indira Gandhi-style rhetoric.
As of now, it seems almost certain that the BJP is far ahead and that Narendra Modi will form the next government. But will he be able to rule with the same authority he has exhibited in ten years in office after he has set out to deliberately alienate around 15 per cent of India’s population?
And should, by some accident of fate, the opposition form the government, then does Rahul remember what happened to previous caste-opportunists like VP Singh? Does he recall how Indira Gandhi’s squeeze-the-rich politics seriously damaged India’s economy?
It is only after the election is over and done with that India will have to cope with the consequences of both campaigns.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)