Soroor Ahmed cites examples which clearly show how the saffron party has failed in elections held after the communal violence. But this can happen only when the rival parties rise to the occasion.
There is a general perception that communal riots always helpBharatiya Janata Party consolidate its position in elections. Sinceseveral places across India recently witnessed Hindu-Muslim violencethis feeling once again started gaining ground. The November 1989Lok Sabha poll is often cited as an example to substantiate thisargument as the tally of the saffron party had jumped from two MPsin 1984 to 88. This is simply because the then BJP supremo LalKrishna Advani launched his Ram Janmabhoomi movement several monthsbefore the 1989 parliamentary poll.
But there are umpteen instances of BJP even failing to capitalise onthe communal violence. The most glaring example was of the 1993Assembly elections in the most crucial states of Uttar Pradesh andMadhya Pradesh. The polls were held several months after thedemolition of Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992. The BJP was in powerin UP, MP and Rajasthan but the then Narasimha Rao governmentimposed the President’s Rule after the demolition of 16th centurymosque and largescale killing of Muslims and destruction of theirproperty.
Even the Supreme Court justified the Centre’s action. When electionwas held again, the BJP lost in all important Uttar Pradesh andMadhya Pradesh. But at least in the case of Uttar Pradesh, thisresult was possible because of the formation of Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance. Those were the heydays of the Mandal-Mandir tussle and in the see-saw battle the Mandal factor prevailed.It is other thing that the alliance collapsed a couple of yearslater and thus provided the BJP with an opportunity to return to power in1997.
In Madhya Pradesh the saffron party lost to Congress. This wasnotwithstanding the fact that these states were always the bastionof the BJP. In Rajasthan too the BJP emerged as the largest singleparty and did not get majority on its own.
In the 1995 Assembly election in Bihar, the BJP was completelymarginalised and the then Janata Dal of Lalu Prasad managed to sweeppoll. Here one needs to examine the election result of Bhagalpurparliamentary seat in November 1989.Though the polling was held lessthan a month after the start of the infamous riots on October 24, itwas not the BJP which won. Chunchun Yadav of the V.P. Singh-ledJanata Dal grabbed the seat. This was the outcome three monthsbefore the advent of Lalu Prasad and about nine months prior to theimplementation of the Mandal Commission report by the beleaguered V.P. Singh government. So, the credit cannot be given to these twofactors.
Interestingly, Bhagalpur town Assembly seat has always beenconsidered a saffron party bastion ever since the Bharatiya JanSangh days. Not only that,Chunchun won from this Lok Sabha seathaving sizeable Muslim population notwithstanding the fact that hiscastemen, Yadavs, were largely blamed for the rioting.
Election verdicts need to be studied in a different perspective tooas sometimes communal riots are triggered in desperation and theyyield no fruit. But this is possible only when the Opposition parties form appropriate social alliance to challenge the BJP, whichhas never got more than 37.36 per cent votes nationally (in 2019).Otherwise, the latter often thrive on the political vacuum.
If riots are the only tool to come to power, why the BJP did notcome to power in the first 51 years between 1947 and 1998, when thecountry saw hundreds of big and small communal violence. TheBharatiya Jan Sangh, the earlier version of the BJP, was weak inPunjab and West Bengal, the two states which bore the brunt ofPartition and largescale bloodbath. Thus, the weakening of the mainruling party, Congress here, paved the way for its success.
No doubt, the BJP increased its tally in a big way in 1989 and thecredit for this is largely given to the massive mobilisation infavour of building Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. But it should also beunderstood that the saffron party fully capitalised on the anti-Rajiv Gandhi environment created after the resignation of hisdefence minister V.P. Singh in 1987 on the charge of corruption inBofors-gun purchase. In that way V.P. Singh succeeded more than thecadre-based BJP as his newly formed Janata Dal, along with partners,came to power at the Centre. Once again, it is other thing that thepower struggle within led to the split in Janata Dal in November1990 and the government collapsed.
Though the BJP intensified the Ram Mandir movement, it could increaseits figure from 88 to 120 in the mid-term election held in May-June1991. The Congress returned to power though after the first phase ofpolling, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on May 21, 1991.
In 1996 Lok Sabha poll, the BJP improved its performance furtherwinning 160-odd seats. In 1998 it bagged 183 seats when the overall communal environment was not as it was in early 1990s. It couldbetter its performance just because of the void created by theweakening of the Congress and self-engineered disintegration ofJanata Dal.
The BJP returned to power in 1999 with the same 183 seats though ittried to cash in on the Kargil War fought early the same year.
In all important state of Uttar Pradesh its tally came down to 29seats in 1999 from 58 (out of 85 then) in 1998 election. This wasthe result when the BJP was in power both at the Centre and in thestate.
Immediately after the Lok Sabha poll of 1999 Kalyan Singh wascompelled to resign from the post of chief minister. He had seriousdifferences with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The decline ofthe saffron brigade in UP, an epicentre of Ayodhya movement,continued further. In 2004 it ultimately lost power and in UP itcould win only 15 out of 80 seats.
It is true Narendra Modi fully capitalised the 2002 Gujarat riots toconsolidate the position of his party in the Assembly election heldin December of the same year. The BJP won 127 out of 182 seats. Buta close analysis of the whole phenomenon would reveal somethingelse. There is no dearth of experts who hold riots responsible forthe defeat of the BJP in Lok Sabha poll in 2004. Many of theNational Democratic Alliance constituents were upset over the waythe situation was made to go out of hand in Gujarat.
Though the BJP itself won the December 2002 Assembly poll in a bigway, in the 2004 Lok Sabha poll the Congress surprised everyone whenit won 12 out of 26 seats. The communal violence of 2002 failed toimprove the BJP’s poll prospect in the parliamentary poll, buthelped it in 2002 Assembly election.
In the same way the 2014 victory of the BJP at the national levelwas not preceded by largescale violence. Barring Muzaffarnagar inUttar Pradesh, in September 2013 no major riots were reported fromanywhere in the country. The BJP returned to power with the help ofmedia and anti-corruption movement of Anna Hazare. In fact, manyhardline anti-BJP personalities were in the forefront of themovement. They then failed to anticipate that the BJP would cash inon the anti-Congress sentiment. The Modi-led establishment, nodoubt, always keeps communal pot boiling. Yet it is also a fact thatit is the politics of the non-BJP opposition parties which helpedthe saffron parivar consolidate its position.
Besides, from the hindsight it can be said that the rabid anti-Congressism of the non-BJP regional satraps also helped the saffronparty in spreading its tentacles, even in the states where thecommunal polarisation was not so sharp. In democracy any party canexploit this opportunity whether riots take place or not. The BJP isblamed by many independent political observers for fomentingcommunal disturbances in the recent past. But one thing can be saidloud and clear: this strategy has its limitation. The examples citedabove clearly show how the saffron party has failed in electionsheld after the communal violence. But this can happen only when therival parties rise to the occasion.