Indian democracy: Still a long way to maturity

Many analysts have hailed last weeks elections as a maturing of Indian democracy wherein development issues as against communal forces held sway during electoral campaigns. But, they could be jumping the gun. The big two, the BJP and Congress along with their regional partners will fight it out to form the union government for the next five years.

But, the subject that has come in for attention is that for the first time in years, the pro-Hindu BJP has managed to win a string of crucial elections without playing the communal card and Hindutva (a philosophy based on majority Hindu rule) which have been the cornerstones to its massive victory in Gujarat last year as well as explains the rise of the BJP as a political outfit over the past decade. Indeed, if there has been a consistent approach of the party towards the electorate, it has been a constant espousal of the construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya where the Babri Mosque once stood, an emotive issue aimed at coalescing the Hindu electorate on the basis of religious nationalism.

Last year, taking advantage of Hindu-Muslim riots following the Godhra train massacre that left more than 2,000 Muslims dead, the BJP played up its hard line Hindutva poster boy Narendra Modi to win elections that saw a complete polarization of votes on communal lines.

The elections last week, however, have been marked by the complete absence of any communal appeal by the BJP. Even Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who belongs to the BJP told the press that it was significant that the Ayodhya issue had not featured in the campaigns. Modi was pushed to the sidelines of election meetings, a far cry from the days when he was the prime campaigner in the Himachal Pradesh elections that the BJP lost earlier this year.

Various commentators have talked about the maturity of these election campaigns that were not emotional expressions of communal prejudice and the voters having voted on the basis of governance. Praise has been heaped as the issues that had dominated the campaign were, as has become popular usage now: 'BSP' or 'bijali, sadak aur paani', or electricity, roads and water.

But, the big question is, has Indian democracy turned a new leaf? Are the rabid communal divisions in this country a matter of the past? Is religion no longer going to be the basis of garnering votes? Will the BJP eschew communal campaigns? Has the Indian voter matured enough to transcend emotional appeals to view political parties through the spectrum of real achievements? One cannot be sure.

An interview to a national daily by BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan, one of the main campaign managers, expostulating his party's strategy is quite instructive. Armed with an army of laptop wielding party workers containing detailed data on each constituency, Mahajan and his team fanned across the states. Mahajan says that since anti-incumbency was a huge factor, with the Congress ruling in all four states, the BJP felt that highlighting the inadequacies of the governments was enough to win power. It is a clinical analysis by Mahajan wherein he talks about micro-management of campaigns to the extent of harnessing leaders of particular caste or community to visit key constituencies. For example, former actors and BJP Members of Parliament Dara Singh and Hema Malini were used to influence the powerful Jat voters in Rajasthan. Malini is married to actor Dharamendra who is a Jat.

One can easily deduce from the interview that the BJP did not think that Hindutva was needed to fuel the voters who were already showing signs of fatigue with the current establishment. The strategy was to highlight misgivings about the lack of power, water and blame the state government for the failures. It is obvious now that the Congress did not succeed in projecting the success of its state governments, except in Delhi, while the BJP flogged lack of development. The Congress also failed to convince the voter, irrespective of whether it was the truth or not, that the failure at the state level was due to the lack of co-operation by the BJP-led union government.

The BJP, on the other hand, got it bang on. Thus, Uma Bharti, who is the new chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and otherwise known as belonging to the hard line sections of the BJP exercised exemplary restraint; the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which forms the intellectual bedrock of the BJP was kept at bay and Praveen Togadia, the virulent pro-temple leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) was virtually boycotted.

In a twist, it was the Congress, for long seen as a party that looks to appease Muslim, which was accused of playing the soft Hindutva card. Bharti refused to be diverted by Digvijay Singh's soft Hindutva gauntlet in Madhya Pradesh and Vasundhara Raje stuck to plugging away at the growing dissatisfaction with the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan and rejected the VHP's Hindutva alternatives. In Chhattisgarh, where exit polls showed that Ajit Jogi was more unpopular than the Congress, the Chief Minister (not Hindutva) became the issue.

The key question then is: would the BJP still have not used the communal card if it felt that development issues were not enough to nail the various state governments. Or more importantly, will the BJP not play up the Hindutva agenda when the incumbent BJP government at the Center fights elections next year and will be faced with the same expression of voter fatigue as happened in the states to the Congress.

Vajpayee represents the moderate face of the BJP which often makes him at loggerheads with the hawks within the party as well others such as VHP, RSS and the Shiv Sena who espouse the Hindu cause. The VHP has even called for his resignation in the recent past. The next generation of BJP leaders such as Modi, Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu and Rajnath Singh owe their allegiance to Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, who has in the past led the most virulent campaign for the construction of the Ayodha temple that ultimately saw the destruction of the Babri Masjid.

Indeed, one does hope that the current round of elections is great news for Indian democracy, but then it may yet be too soon to reach a definite view.