Khalid Aftab Saudi Gazette India is all set to conduct world's biggest elections, staggered over six weeks with the first phase of the polling beginning on Monday. All pollsters have put their money on the country's main opposition — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — to lead a new government at the center. The embattled United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, headed by the Congress party, reeling from a series of corruption scandals and an unprecedented inflation, has been decimated even before the first ballot is cast at least at the perception level. The debate in the media and among general voters is not over any possibility of the Congress party leading the next government but how low it would sink when the votes would be counted on May 16. Never in the history the ruling party faced such bleak prospects in the national polls. Also, for the first time, Indian parliamentary elections have become a one-man show that is of Narendra Modi, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate. Former Indian Prime Ministers — Indira Gandhi of the Congress party and Atal Behari Vajpayee of the BJP — commanded immense respect and popularity among Indian voters cutting across caste and religious divide but they were catapulted to power mainly on the strength of their respective political parties. In these elections, all debates with regard to party policies have surprisingly taken a backseat with Modi grabbing the center stage. His anointment by the BJP has galvanized the right-wing forces in the country and polarized the polity. Modi is the only election agenda, other issues do not matter to anyone, neither for his supporters nor for his adversaries. Either one is with Modi or against him. Modi has assumed a larger-than-life image and has consumed his own party. There are no leaders in the BJP, all of them are merely his followers. So what is so unique in Modi's personality that others are not able to match it and why he has become a cult like figure for his backers and a demon for his bashers? Modi has led his party to victory three times consecutively in the western state of Gujarat and brought about development in his province. So has Prithviraj Chauhan, the BJP's chief minister of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, so has Raman Singh, Modi's counterpart in Chhattisgarh, also from the BJP. There is more to it than meets the eye in Modi's projection as PM candidate. Modi has become what he is today is not only because of his administrative skills and the development work that he claims to have done in Gujarat. The “brand Modi” has meticulously been crafted, designed and decorated over a period of time by the right-wing Hindu nationalist forces, particularly the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which aims to subjugate other religious, ethnic and cultural groups into a monolithic Hindu cultural identity. What makes the RSS think that the “brand Modi” will strike a chord with the voters at the hustings can be better understood in the light of two sociological theories — Westernization and Sanskritization — propounded by Professor M.N. Srinivas. His theories had only a few takers when he theorized them. According to Srinivas, there are two parallel sociological processes taking place in the Hindu community. The upper castes in general and the Brahmins in particular are increasingly attracted toward the Western value system and are abandoning the traditional Hindu way of living. He termed this development as Westernization. On the other hand, low-caste Hindus, particularly the other backward castes (OBCs), who are at the lower — if not the lowest — end of the Hindu social order, are taking up Brahmanical lifestyle which he called Sanskritization. The RSS ever since its inception has been dominated by upper caste Hindus, mainly Brahmins and always thought that only a high caste Hindu can be instrumental in getting its goals realized. In late 1980s, Indira Gandhi was seen by the RSS as an agent of a kind of change it has been yearning for long. But that was not to be. In 1990s, the Babri Masjid issue provided the RSS a platform to grab power at the center but it failed because of the Mandal movement led by the OBCs against upper caste Hindus in north India, mainly in Hindi belt. The Mandal movement challenged the hegemony of the upper caste Hindus and brought to the political centerstage many OBC leaders, like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Kalyan Singh and others. Though the RSS propelled some BJP's OBC faces — Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti — to the leadership position at the state level but it was reluctant to hand over the leadership to low-caste Hindus at the national level. The BJP continued to be led by L.K. Advani, a hard-line face of the RSS, and Atal Behari Vajpayee, the soft-liner, at the center. Both Advani and Vajpayee led the BJP to victory at the center in 1998 and in 1999. When the BJP-led government lost the 2004 elections at the peak of Vajpayee's popularity, the RSS grasped the effects of social churning in the Hindu society as advocated by Srinivas. It also realized that its Hindu-nation agenda can be more effectively and sincerely be pursued by an OBC leader. Gujarat riots in 2002 became the turning point in Modi's career graph. Modi had in fact been given a temporary role as a chief minister to lead the BJP to assembly elections as the party had found Keshubhai Patel government becoming unpopular. Modi's controversial role in the 2002 riots in which at least 2,000 Muslims lost their lives cemented his position in the state politics and drew the attention of the Hindu nationalist forces. The RSS found in Modi the potential to lead its campaign at the national level. But the RSS also knew that only the hard-liner image of its poster boy will not make him a popular choice for the country's top office. India being a strongly secular and multicultural society, the Hindutava agenda being on the forefront will not win over majority of voters and political allies. Meanwhile, the India politics was also witnessing a new trend where incumbent governments were being elected back to office both at the state as well as the federal level on the back of their performance, good governance and development work, they undertook for the general masses. The political grammar was also changing. Anti-incumbency factor had given way to pro-incumbency. In the era of globalization with India becoming a strong economy, the voters particularly from the middle class had become disillusioned with the sectarian politics of Mandir-Mandal. They wanted the development to be the main agenda. The change in voters mood forced the RSS and the BJP to put the Mandir and other divisive policies on the back burner and bring to the fore development agenda. Understanding the changing political discourse, the RSS went for an image makeover of Modi with the backing of industrialists and corporates. In the process the big corporates were also given opportunities to make big bucks with the help of the BJP governments in different states and especially in Gujarat. In the upcoming elections, top industrialists and corporate houses have thrown their might behind Modi, pumping billions of rupees into projecting him as the messiah of development and prosperity. Modi is being credited to have developed Gujarat in his decade-long rule and touted to replicate his developmental model in the rest of the country. In fact big business houses are disingenuous about the wider communal agenda since they have realized their interests would be better served under the BJP and Modi's rule than the Congress-led UPA government at the center. Another reason for corporates to turn away from the ruling Congress was the party's drift from its center-right position to left of the center approach with Sonia Gandhi championing the cause of the downtrodden. Piggybacking on the support of communal forces and corporate houses, Modi is riding the popularity wave with regional parties accepting him as the PM in-waiting. India's middle class also seems to be rallying behind him disenchanted with soaring food prices and endless corruption allegations against the UPA government. Despite all the advantages the BJP and RSS's poster boy have ahead of the general elections, the traditional Indian wisdom defies such divisive and Fascistic designs and can see through the benign mask of development an ugly grimace of Hindu nationalism. India's pluralistic polity has withstood the test of time ever since the bloody partition. India will hopefully overcome the recent threat to its unique identity as the country's secular foundations outweigh the might of the communal forces and business houses. The Congress may be trounced in these elections but the BJP-led alliance will not be able to have a cakewalk.
