Why the Opposition needs its own Vajpayee to win back voter's confidence

One of the puzzles for critics of the ruling BJP – often influential intellectuals – is why the party is having an enduring tryst with success in one election after another across India.

They haven’t been able to crack the puzzle for seven years, try as they might. They shuffle between talking of livelihood issues and mounting bitter attacks on Hindutva. But nothing seems to be working for them when election time comes. The reason: they have failed to fathom the shift in mass political consciousness and the path towards reversing that shift. As a result, they end up riling common voters.

What the Opposition needs is a Atal Bihari Vajpayee-like figure, but the key Opposition party, the Congress, has no such figure.

Striking a balance

Why Vajpayee-like, one may ask? The answer: I am situating Vajpayee as someone who could appeal to secularism, the hegemonic discourse of his times, despite being in a party that was seen as the Other of it. He would not be absorbed into Nehruvian secularism and stayed autonomous. And yet, this deft play gave him the image of the “right man in the wrong party”. This image eventually helped the BJP shed its “political untouchability”, as LK Advani would call it.

Also read: Congress has hit nadir; it needs a gargantuan reboot to take on BJP

In times when close-to-two-decades of Jawaharlal Nehru had firmly entrenched secularism as the only national path and Hindu concerns were quietly addressed by a host of second-rung Congress leaders in the states – with Congress governments in North India banning cow slaughter in many states in the late 1950s-early 60s or pushing for Hindi – the Congress had occupied the entire cultural mind space of the country in one way or another.

The Jana Sangh first tried core Hindutva and then electoral arrangements with opposition parties in the name of anti-Congressism and stayed afloat as a marginal player. Anti-Congressism gave it its first brush with power after its merger into the Janata Party in 1977. Yet, the experiment soon came apart as ‘secular’ leaders in the Janata Party objected to ‘dual membership’ – Vajpayee and Advani being both ministers and members of the RSS – and the experiment came apart within years.

Then, Vajpayee became the founder president of the BJP in 1980, wedding a softened Hindutva to accommodative slogans like Gandhian secularism that were compatible with hegemonic secularism. Failure beckoned at first, as Indira Gandhi occupied the entire political space, including the right-wing space, when she took on Khalistani militancy.

The BJP installed Advani as party chief after the 1984 electoral debale, when it won just two seats. Within years, Advani latched on to the VHP’s Ram temple campaign, taking out a Rath Yatra that not only offered a critical electoral base to the BJP but also deepened its “political untouchability” at a time when secularism was still hegemonic as a discourse.

Wedding ideologies

However, the BJP had an established popular leader who could both win Lok Sabha elections and talk in a language that was more ‘secular’ than that of his party, or more in sync with the hegemonic discourse set by Nehru. This was Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He could also wed his ideology of Hindutva to what he saw as the national culture, by pronouncing the Hindu mainstream of India as ‘naturally’ secular in its own way.

This – apart from smart alliances with other political parties and attacking the Congress on corruption – helped the BJP continue its forward march.

Vajpayee’s not visiting Ayodhya in 1990-92 and keeping himself away from the polarisation was the key to the creation of the NDA soon afterwards.

Announcing Vajpayee as the prime ministerial candidate in 1995 did the trick for the BJP: it had already breached a critical mass and ‘secular’ allies willing to do business only with Vajpayee brought the BJP stably to power within three years.

Change in discourse

With the rise of Modi at the national stage, the dominant discourse on the ground has changed. Hindutva, and not secularism, is now the dominant idea of India for a significantly large number of Hindus. And this makes Muslim votes being cast against the BJP become almost irrelevant in many states of India.

Also read: Was it aimed at reining in hardliners? Decoding Mohan Bhagwat’s speech

How does the Opposition confront such a dominant idea? Does it pitch an idea exactly opposite to it? If it does so, large sections of common voters would see it as their enemy. There are many trying so, but none is successful. The reason: today’s ‘secularism’ has many people challenging the present hegemonic discourse – like Advani challenged secularism in 1990 – but none trying to walk the Vajpayee path of being able to converse with the hegemonic discourse without being absorbed into it.

This opening – an old template of counter-hegemony – is what the Opposition today lacks.

Let us not forget that the rise of Mahatma Gandhi, who rejected European modernity in his 1908 text Hind Swaraj, was preceded by the rise of social reform movements in the 19th century that sought to address the colonial charge of India being a land of caste and gender discrimination, thus addressing the hegemonic colonial view without either being absorbed by it or being dismissive of it.

From Ram Mohan Roy to Dayanand Saraswati, reformers sought to show India as not intrinsically anti-modern through a spate of social reforms. They did not dismiss the hegemonic colonial discourse, but addressed it. And they addressed it without being absorbed by it, also arguing that ancient India was a progressive space. This ground work done earlier helped Gandhiji reverse the colonial logic and also seek to challenge the third colonial charge: that India was about a fundamental rift between Hinduism and Islam. Here, the Mahatma wasn’t entirely successful, as the later Partition proved.

Rapprochement is the way forward

Effective counter-hegemony is not about annoying common people and calling them fools and ‘bhakts’. It is about addressing even their concerns and yet not being absorbed by the hegemonic idea of the times. This opens a window to rapprochement, which, if kept open for a long time, can begin to reverse the hegemony of the mainstream idea.

However, anti-BJP intellectuals are doing exactly the opposite. If a sense of Hindu hurt and desire to further Hindu causes actuates the masses today, intellectuals are behaving in ways that make common people see them as “anti-Hindu”.

Mocking the Shiv Linga at Gyanvapi mosque was the latest example. A case was registered against an associate professor of Delhi University for his insulting remarks on the Shiv Linga. Mohua Moitra of the TMC said mockingly, ‘Baba Mil Gaye’, riling many.

Some ‘secular’ voices came out in support of people who got into trouble for remarks that were clearly distasteful. The same ‘secular’ voices, however, had exactly the opposite take on similarly distasteful comments on Islam by Nupur Sharma, who got suspended from the BJP for the same close on the heels of protests from Islamic countries.

The only way that the Opposition can claw back to a relevant position is for ‘secular’ voices to begin to address some concerns of Hindus while keeping their distance from the BJP. Just like Vajpayee could address some secular concerns without joining the Congress. Such a nuanced strategy alone will gradually undo the ‘political untouchablity’ of being ‘anti-Hindu’ that has got associated with the opposition, much like a similar ‘political untouchability’ of being ‘anti-secular’ once damaged the prospects of the BJP.

Once common voters stop seeing the opposition parties as ‘anti-Hindu’, their prospects will begin to brighten and the voice of the opposition will gradually start acquiring some heft.

Also read: Using court cases, Hindutva forces plan to keep communal pot simmering

The AAP example

An example of this was the last Delhi election, when Aam Admi Party leaders visited temples and prayed to Lord Hanuman. This ensured that there was no polarisation. They also kept themselves away from Shaheen Bagh, the site of the anti-CAA protests, much like Vajpayee had kept himself away from Ayodhya.

However, the main Opposition party, the Congress, has completely lost sight of any useful strategy under Rahul Gandhi. It is trying to change the thought process of voters, much like a professor does with students, instead of trying to find an entry point into their mind space. Trying to tutor people into Hinduism and Hindutva, or telling them India is a Union of States and not a nation, are strategies that can only boomerang and further damage the prospects of the Congress.

Who will be the Vajpayee of the Indian opposition is the moot question. One can’t see an obvious candidate just yet.

(The writer is a political journalist and media educator)

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal)