Out of My Mind: About Time
Writing for The Indian Express, Meghnad Desai briefly analyses the results of the recent by-elections, with some handy advice for the Election Commission (EC). He opines that while the tide is definitely turning against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), there is a long way to go for the Opposition to figure out their brass tacks like who will be their prime ministerial candidate and their seat-sharing arrangements with their allies in various states.
As far as the EC goes, Desai explains why it should ensure that in every voting booth in the 2019 elections, the temperature is tolerable for the EVMs as well as for voters. Any machines malfunctioning due to the heat could literally lead to riots, Desai thinks.
The by-elections confirm what has been clear for a while. There is a revival of the Opposition. Predictably the BJP lost in Uttar Pradesh, as it did in the last round of by-elections. Yogi Adityanath may be a great ideologue but he has failed as Chief Minister. People want delivery of essentials, above all law and order, good hospitals, not promises of Ram statue. Amit Shah needs to move fast and change the face at the top. Or the BJP will lose half of its UP seats in 2019.
Kairana as Canary
Mukul Kesavan analyses the significance of Tabassum Hasan’s victory in the recent bypolls to Kairana, Uttar Pradesh, in The Telegraph. He writes that when “majoritarianism becomes the political common sense of a country, the danger lies not in the bigotry of the majoritarian party but in the real possibility that it might remake the Opposition in its own image.”
That is to say, that in Kairana, the Opposition came together and said ‘no’ for reasons of self-preservation and unity of the country. By choosing a double minority candidate (a Muslim and a woman), they made the Kairana elections a landmark and hopefully a turning point in India’s majoritarian ascendancy.
For comparison’s sake, it’s worth noting that nine Muslims were elected to the Lok Sabha from UP in 2004 and seven in 2009. In a parliamentary democracy, Muslims don’t have to be represented by Muslims; nor do Muslim citizens have to be represented as Muslims. However, when an election is swept by an explicitly majoritarian party led by grandmasters of communal polarization who milked the dreadful communal violence in Muzaffarnagar for political advantage, it is a little precious not to look at the elephant in the room; UP as a dress rehearsal for the BJP’s ultimate goal: a Muslim- mukt politics.
Fifth Column: Bad News for the BJP
Tavleen Singh has called it in The Indian Express: the BJP losing in Kairana was a death knell for the party. She writes that unless Prime Minister Narendra Modi seriously starts paying attention to the voters in Uttar Pradesh, his chances of staying in power are dismal.
The writing is on the wall, there for Modi and the BJP to read and learn: when people voted for Yogi Aditynath, it wasn’t for Hindutva (even though they thought it was). It was for ‘parivartan’ and ‘vikas.’ Singh writes that the people have begun to realise that they can take away as many seats as they gave to the party in 2014; the majority are against this toxic form of Hindutva the party seems to push forward.
There is a kind of poetry in Tabassum Hasan having become the first Muslim MP to enter this Lok Sabha from UP, because her victory seems to be a victory for good in a constituency that has seen much evil in recent years. In the interviews she gave after winning Kairana she made it clear that in her view it was a vote against the ‘communal politics’ that had been played by the BJP. Perhaps the loss of Kairana will make the Prime Minister realise that Hindutva as it is practised by people like Yogi Adityanath is so corrosive that it separates not just Muslims from Hindus but upper-caste Hindus from lower-caste Hindus.
Math’s Fine, But it’s Chemistry That Wins Polls
SA Aiyar does the math behind the chances of Modi winning the 2019 elections for us (given its “traumatic” loss in Kairana), all while dismissing it as the only factor that matters. Writing for The Times of India, he reminds the reader of a time where the Congress beat splintered Oppositions in many states with just 35 percent of the vote.
While math suggested that if all the Opposition parties got together (as they eventually did) they could end the Nehru hegemony, but they forgot to account for the special chemistry Indira Gandhi had with voters. Aiyar believes India in 2019 will resemble 1971 where Modi’s chemistry with the voters could outshine a grand alliance.
Chemistry beat arithmetic. The arithmetical approach assumes that supporters of a party will transfer their votes to the candidate of any alliance the party joins. In fact, such transference is typically very incomplete, and many votes leak to the other side. Strong supporters of a party may reject an opportunistic alliance with parties they dislike. The more disparate the alliance, the less is the vote proportion transferred.
What Congress Stands For
Shashi Tharoor minces no words in his article for The Indian Express, which categorically compares the BJP and the Congress in terms of ideology, differences, and the number of acche din summoned for the country whilst in power. Sick of the argument that the Congress doesn’t stand for anything and they just attack the BJP with no narrative of their own, Tharoor puts pen to paper to clarify that red herring. Not only does he not feel the need to apologise for attacking the BJP (it is what the Opposition does), he explains that these attacks are based on decades of experience in formulating policies based on what is good and proper for India.
The Congress’ core beliefs reflect the values it has embodied since the freedom struggle — in particular inclusive growth, social justice, abolition of poverty and the protection of the marginalised, including minorities, women, Dalits and Adivasis. These have been distorted and portrayed as pandering to vote-banks rather than as the sincere, indeed visceral, convictions they are. Rahul Gandhi has begun speaking out for these sections of Indian society and he must do so with even more intensity. The Congress is the political embodiment of India’s pluralism and a strong, committed voice for the preservation of secularism as its fundamental reflection. We need to reaffirm our belief in these values and keep reiterating them at every opportunity. The BJP’s abandonment of Indian pluralism in pursuit of the folly of a Hindu Rashtra has made minorities insecure and foreign friends anxious.
Why Pranab Should Meet RSS, and Give Them a Lesson in Hinduness
Aakar Patel pens down in The Times of India why there is nothing wrong with Pranab Mukherjee accepting an invitation to an RSS event. Far from legitimising it (Patel says the Sangh is ruling the country and that ship has sailed), this is a chance to engage with them and interrupt the feedback loop that RSS members receive about who they are, what India needs, and the absolute futility and negativity of Hindutva as an ideology.
Some see this tolerance as Hindu weakness but they are wrong. We are strong because we are inclusive. And we are also many because we are open, supple and flexible. More reed than oak. My Leuva Patidar caste of Kunbi peasants worships Krishna by the name of Ranchhod, a word that means he-who-fled-from-battle. It refers to Krishna’s escape, when he ran away from Jarasandh’s powerful general Kalyavan (‘black Greek’) and thus avoided death. All the Patels of Charotar, including Hindutva favourite Vallabhbhai, celebrate this act of pragmatism by Krishna (jai Ranchhod!) though the trishul-wavers will not understand it. For them martyrdom is better than ‘cowardice’, especially when it’s someone else that’s being martyred. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s Marathi Brahmins found their ideal national spirit not in other Hindus but in the Italians. Savarkar’s text draws inspiration from Mazzini and Garibaldi, not the Patidars. That is why they prefer khaki shorts and black caps and un-Indian military-style salutes. And there are many great things in our culture that are ignored if not spat on, though they are unique and empowering, like Hindu flexibility. If there were one thing that needs to be communicated to the Sangh, it is this. I am hoping that Pranab Mukherjee does just this when he addresses the RSS’s jamboree in Nagpur on Thursday.
Unhappiest in South Asia
Khaled Ahmed disagrees with the United Nations’ sixth World Happiness Report which puts Pakistan ahead of India, China, Iran, and Afghanistan on the ranking table of happiness. Writing for The Indian Express, Ahmed elaborates on the struggles of the Pashtuns within Pakistan and how recent events like the murder of a South Waziristan shopkeeper in Karachi at the hands of a police officer in a “fake encounter” has only escalated the resentment of the “unhappiest community” against the country.
Till they are not brought into the mainstream of the society, the community will continue to represent the failure of Pakistan to become a normal state and its overwhelming lack of joy.
The Pashtun form the largest community of workers in Qatar and feature beyond their numerical strength in Pakistan in all the states of the UAE. They have migrated to Balochistan over centuries and now challenge the Baloch as the majority community. Instead of settling the tribal region, Pakistan’s foreign policy and geostrategic thinking has allowed millions of more unhappy Pashtuns from Afghanistan to seek shelter in areas where the local Pashtuns are already unsettled. Counted together, the Afghan and Pakistani Pashtuns form the largest refugee population in the world.
No Longer Distant Friends
Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, writes in The Indian Express about the increasing closeness of Europe in Asia, especially in areas of security.
She explains the various reasons why Asia looks towards the EU to be engaged in the region: its experience with cooperative security, regional approaches to crisis management, booming defence budget, investments in projects like innovative systems for maritime security and a European training centre for troops who intervene in case of natural disasters, history of partnering with ASEAN countries for security cooperation, and, most significantly, a shared interest in de-nuclearisation. For Mogherini, this kind of cooperation and multilateralism is the only way to go if world peace is to be achieved.
Going forward, the EU will expand its cooperation with Asian partners into areas such as capacity building, training programmes — including on UN peacekeeping — and joint exercises. The EU, after centuries of conflicts that ripped the continent apart, has realised that cooperation is essential for peace, and that peace brings prosperity. But in today’s world, too often unilateral instincts prevail over the search for common ground. Too many players seek confrontation to achieve their short-term goals, instead of building sustainable solutions through mediation. Against this background, those who believe in a multilateral global order have a duty to join forces. Europe and Asia, together, can be the engine of a more cooperative approach to world politics.
Inside Track: Not Overshadowed
To end your Sunday morning reading session on a lighter note, here is Coomi Kapoor with a report on the latest going-ons within the circles of the rich, the powerful and the famous in The Indian Express. Keep an eye out for PM Modi willingly sharing the limelight with Nitin Gadkari at a recent roadshow, a less cocky Amit Shah, and, most interestingly, a mysterious story about an unknown Indian politician who abused his now deceased first wife, a Pakistani woman so gorgeous that she was almost cast as Anarkali in Mughal-e-Azam!
When the results of the Karnataka poll first came, TV anchor Navika Kumar asked BJP general secretary Ram Madhav how the party planned to cobble together enough MLAs to form a majority. Madhav laughed, “Don’t worry, we have Amit Shah.” But after Karnataka and the recent defeat in the bypolls, Shah no longer appears invincible. Perhaps this is why Shah presented a different face at the BJP’s fourth year anniversary press lunch this year, compared to a year earlier. In 2017, Shah held forth regally without much interruption and snubbed the few scribes asking, what he considered, irreverent questions. This year Shah was noticeably more genial, joked and responded logically to all queries and did not imply contemptuously that the journalists were ignorant of politics.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)