With the 2014 general elections nearing the midway mark, the leading contender, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s propensity to speak in multiple voices, is breeding confusion in the ranks of voters, party workers, and allies. Leaders have alternated between hardline and moderate stances making it tough to distinguish a clear party line on prickly issues. It is unclear whether this is a clever strategy of hedging to appeal to different sections, or is reflective of larger ideological and political differences. On one hand, the party has quietly dropped its poll anthem; an aggressive, hyper-nationalist composition featuring PM candidate Narendra Modi. But the RSS request to the “majority community to vote 100 per cent or risk becoming history” reveals the workings of an organisational machinery that thrives on communal polarisation.
Such doublespeak does no credit to a party that is claiming support from all sections of the population, riding on the back of a pro-Modi and anti-Congress wave. The BJP’s slogans promising jobs, good governance, zero-tolerance to anti-corruption, combating price rise, ensuring women’s security and saving the girl child, have found resonance among all sections. Top-ranking leaders have taken the cue and intensified the push for moderation. Former BJP president Nitin Gadkari’s clarification that abrogating Article 370 is on the BJP’s agenda and not the NDA’s and current president Rajnath Singh’s visit to a dargah in Lucknow appeared to be manifestations of this approach. But the message seems not to have percolated downwards.
For we have VHP leader Ashok Togadia raising the pitch in Gujarat against Muslims purchasing properties in “Hindu areas” and Bihar leader Giriraj Singh repeatedly warning that Modi’s critics would have no place in India but in Pakistan. Diverting from Amit Shah’s narrative of “badla” for the insult suffered by Jats in Western UP, his mentor, Narendra Modi, attacked Mulayam Singh for the death of infants in relief camps and being soft on rapists. Most of those housed in relief camps and the victims of rape belonged to the Muslim community. But Modi’s attempts at moderation have several rough edges. He is yet to rebuke Togadia, Singh or Shah for their divisive remarks that clearly fall within the ambit of hate speech. Modi’s hardline Hindu nationalist image is in no danger of being dented by putting a few lesser politicians in their places.
With such ambivalence, the BJP runs the risk of alienating allies and a significant section of voters, who have dissociated from the Congress-led UPA, but are equally averse to aggressive, intolerant and divisive tendencies in politics. If such voters repose their faith in parties organised on caste or regional lines or a nouveau political movement like the Aam Aadmi Party, the BJP will have only itself to blame. The BJP’s strategy is to achieve a consolidation of Hindu votes overriding caste, class and regional sentiments by alternatively harping development, nationalism and minority appeasement. Unlike the initial post-Babri years when Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s secular image was an ideal foil to the rabid persona of LK Advani and other Sangh Parivar leaders, Modi’s unwillingness to reveal how he intends to deal with Parivar elements, more hardline than himself, is a crucial void that the BJP has left unfilled at the top, in an, otherwise, well-executed election campaign. Between the conflicting signals to minorities, the references to Pakistan while targeting political rivals, and the more-patriotic-than-you stances lie thin lines between chaos, strategy and ideology.