Daily Times

The Part I of this column had discussed the rise of Narinder Modi, his charismatic personality, and the overwhelming support he received from Indian public during recent election that left many political analysts and observers wondering and questioning themselves as to why they couldn’t foresee this upcoming victory of BJP. Another mind-boggling question for them is the future of Indian National Congress (INC) that had ruled India for many decades as an unchallengeable democratic force favoring inclusivity and liberalism. I call it an elite’s democracy and I have some good reasons for that.

To elaborate what I mean by the elite’s democracy, allow me to go back into the history. During the British Raj, we had one elite class of British rulers on top of all other elite classes that existed in the Indian society at that time; the rulers of the princely states, feudal lords, and industrial and mercantile businessmen. During the struggle for freedom, a new class of leadership emerged who were mostly foreign literates with knowledge of British political system. Gandhi, for example, belonged to the Bania caste from Gujrat. Jinnah’s forefathers were from Gujrat but his parents had migrated to Karachi long before he was born. His first wife was from Gujrat while his father had a hide merchant business in Karachi.

Both of these great men of India, having no inborn titles, carried some common backgrounds; they studied law in England and after coming back to India they took part in local politics and became the leaders of two major political parties, Indian National Congress (INC) and All India Muslim League (AIML). As is known to all, AIML represented the Muslim community of India while INC claimed to be the representative of all religious communities living in India. The political agenda of these parties differed with each other too; while INC fought against British rule, AIML fought against INC’s agenda of having the whole India under its rule once the Britishers leave. To rule the whole India, INC had no choice but to rally all communities of the society under one platform irrespective of their religion, caste and creed. As against INC, AIML sought the unity of the Muslim community under one umbrella separate from all other communities living in India. Ultimately, the tools to achieve their goals were separate too; secularism and inclusivity for INC, fundamentalism and exclusivity for AIML.

BJP’s rule will be a new opportunity for the Indian society to test and examine the outcome of a policy that differs from their predecessors and make assessment of their past to understand how they took and mistook the advantage of secularism and what fundamental mistakes the secularists had committed in denying the benefits of their system to the vast majority of the Indian society

With the demise of British Raj in India, a new class of elites replaced the old elites of the British descent and their cohort – the local rulers of the princely states, feudal lords, and businessmen. The new elites were the rulers of the newly emerged independent country – India. Reigning India for more than five decades, the ruling dynasty of Gandhi family began witnessing new challengers to their authority who were invading them with the tools that were different from those that INC used. As against secularism and inclusivity, they chose the tools that were once used by AIML – fundamentalism and exclusivity of Hindu community. The reason they had for these policies was the outcome of INC’s long trusted secular policies that they claimed to have failed to keep India safe from partition and separatist movements of Kashmiris, Sikhs, and Tamils.

Those who supported these new entrants in Indian politics were the emerging masses from the middle and lower classes who were able to break out of the bondage of dire poverty thanks to the market reforms and foreign direct investments by the multi-national corporations in India. To represent them nobody was more suitable than Modi. He was a right man at the right moment. He has his roots in the poor classes of the country, speaks the way the common people speak, and never shies away from admitting that he was once a chai-wala (tea seller). Not only that, Modi also calls himself “kamdar” (worker) who’s fighting against the “naamdar” (elite) referring to Rahul Gandhi of INC and all those who are foreign literates and distinguishable by their English-dominating culture.

The landslide victory of BJP should be seen in this contextual perspective. It’s a victory of the majority of Indian middle-class-oriented politics that is going to replace the old politics of the elite-class minority irrespective of what negative or positive change it will bring to the country. The biggest losers of this new change in the Indian society are the minorities, free-thinking intellectuals produced by the secularist policies, and the protagonists of separatism. Yet, BJP’s rule will be a new opportunity for the Indian society to test and examine the outcome of a policy that differs from their predecessors and make assessment of their past to understand how they took and mistook the advantage of secularism and what fundamental mistakes the secularists had committed in denying the benefits of their system to the vast majority of the Indian society. The challenges for BJP aren’t over either. The genie of extremism that they have brought out to achieve their electoral goals is not going to be back easily as has been experienced in Pakistan’s case. The basic task for both, the ruling and the opposition parties in India, would be to keep the menace of extremism under control if they don’t want to see a repeat of what Pakistan has suffered during last three decades.

The writer is snior research fellow at the Centre for Research and Security Studies