Resistance to CAA shows how to deal with BJP’s Gujarat model of conflict

Chinese philosopher and strategist Sun Tzu famously advised that to know your enemy, become the enemy. He meant that to beat an adversary, you have to get inside his mind, understand his strategy, read his moves and then come up an effective counter.

For those opposing the BJP today, both ideologically and politically, this advice could be the key to evolving a strategy for countering its communal agendas and electoral success. So, let’s start with the simple question: What’s the BJP’s game?

The answer, for those who follow the BJP, is simple. The BJP’s electoral politics relies heavily on the Gujarat model of conflict. The model, first tested during the Ram Temple stir and then perfected in Gujarat, is premised on three basic laws. A) Elections can be won
through massive communalisation (E=mc2). B) This polarisation can be achieved through action that’s guaranteed to provoke a reaction (A=R). C) The greater the number of masses provoked into action, the greater would be the force of the electoral impact (F=ma).

As you can see, this strategy is physics meets psychology, even if the philosophy is perverted.

There is a bit of history too about the BJP science. The BJP inherited this model from the Hindutva-brigade active in the pre-Partition days.

Also Read: Madras University closed till Dec 23 due to anti-Citizenship Act stir

Before Independence, as some witnesses told the Justice Jeevan Lal Kapur Commission that looked into the conspiracy to kill Mahatma Gandhi, some Hindu organisations were trying to raise militias to grab power through an armed uprising once the British left.

According to these witnesses, the plan involved killing Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru,
Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad and some Sikh leaders, and then stepping into the anarchy and bloodshed. Since then, the BJP has practised and fine-tuned it, though not through political assassinations but societal divisions.

If you bear in mind the BJP’s conflict theory, the recent brouhaha over the new citizenship law fits into a nice pattern. It is, like many others, a ploy to create a binary, stoke fear and bigotry, and win elections –Jharkhand, Delhi, Bihar, West Bengal and finally 2024—through polarisation that’s inevitable. It may sully India’s image as a liberal country based on secular ethos, lead to massive protests and persecution of its minorities, but as long as the polarisation helps it, the BJP doesn’t really care about the non-electoral consequences.

The ploy succeeds because of many reasons. One, the majoritarian appeal of its divisive agenda. Indians, like almost everywhere in the world, vote on the basis of their emotions—their decisions are based not on what they think but on what they feel. A huge chunk of the
BJP vote-bank is the Indian middle class—a self-serving, hypocritical and communal entity that lives in cities and towns. Apart from being numerically significant in elections, it also serves as the BJP’s propaganda machinery by consistently consuming and purveying its
divisive agenda.

Two, the BJP manages to discredit the opposition through a variety of stratagems—collective denunciation as anti-nationals/ Pakistanis; selective and relentless persecution of leaders of the opposition through agencies under its control; through distortions of history and facts and by making constitutional checks and balances ineffective.

As the New Yorker says in a scathing critique of the new citizenship law, the BJP “neuters the judiciary, bullies his critics and smothers the free press.”

So, how does one deal with this behemoth and its divisive agenda? The BJP and its Gujarat model can be countered by not letting the party set the rules of the game. Its opponents have to learn that there is nothing the BJP loves more than making Indians discuss two things: Muslims and Pakistan. To beat the BJP back, its adversaries have to avoid this trap.

There is a famous couplet in Urdu by Shahab Jafri. For the benefit of those who are interested in poetry, it goes like this: Tu idhar, udhar ki na baat kar ye bata ki qafila kyuun luta, mujhe rahazanon se gila nahin teri rahbari ka sawal hai. Loosely translated, it means do not talk about irrelevant things and answer just one question, how were we betrayed/looted? We do not have any grouse against the robber, but it is your leadership that’s at stake.

Also Read: Peaceful protest outside Jamia varsity against Citizenship Amendment Act

Here is the point: The BJP can be countered today only through a sustained attack on its policies that have derailed the economy. Its opponents have to be relentless in talking about the fall in GDP—at 4.5 per cent, it has been sliding for eight quarters. They have to ask tough questions about unemployment, rural distress and the general gloom and doom in the economy.

Its opponents have to remember that the BJP’s core support—the middle class—is self-serving and pusillanimous. In spite of its hypocritical embrace of vacuous slogans about patriotism, it cares much more about its own income, savings, health and children than about the country or Pakistan. Also, since it can fight only keyboard battles, it fears anarchy and real-life conflict. Once the middle class finds out that its core interests are being hit by the BJP’s politics of slogans and distractions, it will take no time to flip. After all, there is only so much you can scream and shout when your bank balance is
disappearing.

India’s recent political history shows this strategy works. The Congress was able to wrest Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh a year ago only by talking about the mess the BJP had created in the country in the post-demonetisation, post-GST phase. It almost walked away with its other stronghold Gujarat by highlighting the problems of the youth and farmers. Also, the BJP would have probably struggled in the general elections if the Pulwama attack had not diverted attention from failures on the economic front—this assumption is supported by the turnaround in the party’s fortunes in Haryana and the setback in Maharashtra. In all likelihood, results of elections in Jharkhand and Delhi would further vindicate the hypothesis.

There is, of course, the question of political morality. In a democracy, it can be argued, letting an opponent get away with its divisive ploys—like the Citizenship Amendement Act and National Registry of Citizens—is akin to cowardice and opportunism. But, as they say,
discretion is the better part of valour. To win the war against the BJP, some battles will have to be ignored, or fought tactfully.

With the kind of majority the BJP has, the opposition can do very little about the agendas the government gets passed through the parliamentary route. Unfortunately, once cleared by Parliament, they can be struck down only by the Supreme Court. So, the opposition has
to be smart about the whole thing, it has to find a way to separate the legal fight from the political.

Also Read: Twitter ‘finds’ ABVP men amid police team assaulting anti-CAA protesters

Fortunately, the BJP’s haste in ramming the citizenship law throughParliament has shown that there is another way to fight it—through non-political resistance groups and the civil society. For pragmatic reasons, the task of taking on the BJP’s communal agenda, its Gujarat model will have to be assigned by them through a tactical alliance that
targets two fronts.

The political opponents will have to meanwhile find ways to stay out of the Hindu-Muslim debate and expose the BJP for what it is: a failure on the economic front, an unmitigated disaster. Whether the opposition is capable of this is a question that Sun Tzu may be able to answer another day.