By Aakar Patel
If you are normal, you have any number of parties you can support and vote for. There is the DMK, ADMK, TDP, NCP, PDP, TMC, INC, JD (S) and JD (U), there is NCP, TRS, the new TVK, CPM, CPI and so on. There is no shortage of parties with different platforms. But if your interest list primarily in the bullying and harassment of Indian minorities, particularly Muslims, there is only one party for you and that is BJP. Fortunately, it is on offer nationally and in most states. It unites prejudiced Indians in the same way as cricket and the English language do in the way it is able to cut through regions.
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In a recent media interaction, an analyst put the same thing in a different way. He said of the BJP’s appeal that: “Anybody who has a right-wing ideology has one party. On the other side, there is so much competition and that vote gets split.”
Let us try and understand why this is the case, because it is true: the BJP has no competition when it comes to what it does. The words ‘right-wing’ are a euphemism for hate-based, and we shall see why in a moment. First, after accepting that there is no rival to the BJP, we have to also accept that it offers a simple and easy to understand formula.
‘I hate Muslims’ does not require further elaboration. It is clear, direct and effective. The voter does not need to examine the manifesto to understand what the party represents. The distilled essence of the BJP ideology is anti minority.
If you are in the market for a party that does this, you have one at hand with a national presence and with decades of proven delivery on this issue. So why look for another? There is no need.
A question arises: Can the BJP not face competition from another party whose position is: “But I hate Muslims more!”?
It could and it might, but that position can also be legitimately taken within the BJP, as we shall likely see when the succession struggles commence. The acceptable spectrum of the BJP’s ideology, such that it is, ranges from dislike minorities to detest minorities and all of the sentiments contained within this spectrum are acceptable.
This is the first and most important reason why the BJP has no rival in what it does: it is genuinely anti-minority. The second reason is that other parties either choose not to do what the BJP focusses on, or they do it episodically, and come across as inauthentic. Many parties in India have dabbled in communalism as we know. But communalism is not at the centre of their politics or their identity. The BJP is not the only party that has profited from division and hate but it is the only one to have made this their platform.
The list of issues that made the BJP what it has, our largest party, remained unchanged for years. First, Muslims must give up their mosque in Ayodhya; Second, Muslims must give up their constitutional autonomy in Kashmir; third, Muslim must give up their personal law. Note that there is nothing for Hindus in this ideology, for instance, private second reservations for Dalits and Adivasis. The focus is on minorities, which is why one can conclude what one does about the party and what it stands for.
Having achieved most of what it sought to achieve, it has remained on the same path as we have seen: Muslims must give up their diet; give up their agency on who to fall in love with and marry; give up agency on where to stay, where to pray; whether Muslims can vote; whether they can seek asylum and so on and on. And on. There is no end to this and there will never be an end to this because harassment is the intent and bullying is the only ultimate end.
This bigotry is referred to as ‘right wing’ ideology and politics which is a slur on the term. Conservatism, as generally understood in politics, has a long and noble tradition. It seeks continuity. It values stability. Abolishing currency, for instance, is a radical idea not a conservative one. None of the arbitrary tinkering, renaming, chopping and changing, and decapitation of institutions we are witnessing is conservative. What is portrayed right wing here is just intense prejudice cloaking itself in something else.
It is for this reason that the BJP manifestos over the decades have experimented with and taken up and cast away many things. They were socialist in the 1960s and 1970s. Under Vajpayee, the party declared it would cap the incomes and home sizes of all Indians. This was given up. It demanded that mechanisation would not be allowed to replace labour in factories. This was given up too. It wanted farmers to use bullocks instead of tractors. This also was given up. None of these things were taken up or discarded with any explanation, because no explanation to voters was needed. The primary product that the BJP/Jana Sangh was offering was always on display and that was its genuine, authentic, unchanging hate of minorities. The rest was irrelevant. As long as they delivered on this when taking office (and they have done so, one must concede), the rest was unimportant.
That is why we have only one BJP and will not have a challenger.
