Mr. Narendra Modi has been in the Election Mode since 2013, and has delivered consistently so far, barring a minor hiccup in Bihar and Delhi. The NCT is but a glorified municipality, and Bihar’s OBC coalition remains very tendentious as Mr Nitish Kumar, the chief minister, and Mr Laloo Yadav, the powerhouse who himself is barred from contesting elections, wrestle in mock battles for the turf. At times, Mr Kumar sounds more an ally of Mr Modi than of Mr Yadav.
It is in this context that the Assembly elections of 2017 need to be seen, both by the people at large and by the religious minorities who are the sharpest observers of results as seemingly their future prospects are hinged on them more than their neighbours’.
Punjab’s results will shock the Aam Admi Party, but not the political observer who had secerned very early that the Sikhs of the state were deeply suspicious of Mr Arvind Kerjiwal foisting himself or some other outsider on the state where identities are sharply defined. The Sikh community, battered through the 1980s in unrest, communal violence and military action and then targeted mass violence in 1984, will not have anyone from anther community to head the state. The BJP, which had seen itself as a bulwark of the Hindus who had been targeted by the Khalistani militants and carried a shadow of Sangh involvement in the 1984 pogrom, wisely chose to pay second fiddle to the Akali Dal’s Mr Prakash Singh Badal in the ten years of his rule. The people sacked Mr Badal and his family for their blatant abuse of power, failure to check the rise of druglords, and their own massive corruption. Although the AAP has emerged as the second largest group in the Assembly, there is little possibility of it winning the faith of the Sikhs unless it revamps its party structure in the state.
For a 400,000 Christian population in the Amritsar-Gurdaspur region, most of them Dalits, the election has not meant any empowerment at all. They remain at the bottom rung of the development process.
Christians may have played a small role in the embarrassment that the BJP has faced with its sitting chief minister and almost his entire cabinet losing, and the party very short of the midway mark. Heavy horse-trading remains its last resort. The Manipur result shows the discord between the Meities of the valley, mostly vaishnavs, who have voted either for the Congress or the BJP, and the Naga communities of the hills. The BJP’s entry does not really mean any sharper religious polarisation, as the Congress has in recent years been seen erosion of its secular image. For the party, of course, it is an image boost as it is the first time it makes a major entry through the ballot rather than sitting MLAs changing their loyalties as has happened in Arunachal and elsewhere.
Uttar Pradesh’s massive BJP victory that humiliates all three other major parties, the ruling Samajwadi party, the Bahujan Party and the gasping Congress, may seem surprising at first, but does not entirely reflect the proportion of vote share. The first past the post system has thrown up such a result more than once in the past in several states.
But it is a definitive victory. The BJP outreach to non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits, and its continued hold on the so-called Upper Castes which were the base of the Congress all of the decades since Independence, has been successful.
It is the BJP victory in Muslim dominated constituencies that needs closer scrutiny and over a period of time it is in what such a study shows that there will be reason to decide if it is traced to a fear factor, a division of votes and especially of the women, or a genuine Muslim belief that Mr Modi’s development formula will benefit them more and that the absence of any BJP MLA and the lack of any assurance of security and equity can be ignored for the time being.
The hate campaigns of the Sadhus and Sadhvis in various positions of power may well continue in the lead up to the 2019 general elections. That seems certain. The bottom line has been polarisation.