By Sushil Kutty
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in for a couple of 2024 surprises when the country goes for yet another general election. The surprises will come courtesy the hardcore cache of the Hindu electorate that the BJP and the Modi government have been taking for granted during the course of Prime Minister Modi’s second term. There is a silent retaliation waiting to blow the BJP’s chances of a cool third-time majority in a row. Those who have spread their tentacles wide and deep into the sanatani Hindu’s psyche have felt the BJP’s slide from grace.
The long and short is, the sanatani Hindus have had enough of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s grandstanding from the election-pulpit. The elasticity of Modi’s slippery tongue has had its say and it couldn’t have been a more slippery slope for the Hindus ever since they fell for Modi’s wiles and guiles, and poll promises, and found themselves stripped of the last vestiges of dignity.
Modi the other day “asserted” the BJP will win the 2024 general elections but that the BJP workers should not get complacent. If anything, and if anybody is talking of “stop the complacency”, it is the electorate who trusted Prime Minister Narendra Modi with their religion and found they had committed a blunder beyond belief. Modi turned out to be the last man standing in the defence of the Indian Muslim’s first right on India’s national resources.
A couple of weeks earlier, the Prime minister spoke of how the Modi-led BJP government didn’t happen because of “YouTube channels and Twitter”. This from the man who brags he doesn’t need the mainstream media because there’s social media. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has more than 80 million followers on Twitter. Today, a host of YouTube channels have taken it upon themselves to cut BJP to size in 2024. The majority of these social media channels and handles were till a couple of weeks ago singing paeans for the Prime Minister. Except for those with direct links with the BJP’s IT Cell, the rest have all become bitter critics of Modi, and his party BJP.
Therefore, Modi’s advice to party workers to stop being complacent carries a load of meanings. The BJP IT Cell is already tagging and trolling the men and women behind the YouTube channels running down Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is being upbraided for acquiring all sorts of airs in the nine years he has taken his core Hindutva voters for a ride. If a 31-37 percent electorate can place him on the throne, the same 31-37 percent can also consign him to the dustbin of history. In 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet his Waterloo at the hands of the once loyal Hindutva electorate.
Chances are the BJP may not even get a simple majority. That, if the EVMs don’t start behaving like they have a mind of their own. The reason for such talk is because with Modi-Shah at the helm all sorts of unconventional methods could be used to stick to power. If people haven’t noticed, for all practical purposes, the BJP and the Modi government act and behave like they are here for the long stay and anybody who thinks otherwise can take an all-expenses paid trip to ‘Nowhere’.
For those who haven’t kept tabs, the BJP IT Cell has already taken note of the “Hindu angst” against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The IT Cell has initiated appropriate action against the “YouTube ringleaders”, one of whom is a journalist-turned-Youtuber who has a specific dislike for RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat because Bhagwat spoke freely about the rights of the LGBTQ+ but linked the rights to the Mahabharata.
If no one else, the BJP IT Cell knows what it faces in this penultimate year of Modi’s second term, with Modi poised to be crowned ‘Vishwaguru’. The BJP wins in the “minority Christian-dominated” northeast was fine, but the Hindu-dominated North India could rob Prime Minister Narendra Modi a convincing victory in 2024.
Chances for another “Shining India” debacle lurks in the shadows of 2024. The majority Hindus did not vote Modi in 2014 for “achche din”, or for the Rs 15 lakh cut per person from the promise to unearth black money. The BJP and Modi were elected to serve the interests of the Hindutva including a ‘Hindu Rashtra’. Today, Modi is seen as a failure; and/or as a traitor, Jaichand and Mir Jaffer rolled in one.
The BJP kept the Hindu-Muslim issue burning throughout the 2014 and 2019 election campaigns, but once the BJP won, the Modi government went one way and the voters who elected it tossed and turned where they stood. If anything, the Modi government has watched unmoved six ‘sar tan se juda’ killings. The Modi government has given scores of hints to its core voters that they will have to fend for themselves in tight situations. And if BJP state governments arrest BJP activists and put them in jail it was only to save their petty lives. The BJP will have to scrounge for Hindu votes in key states. Even the Hindutva among the Hindus are deserting the Bharatiya Janata Party. This is almost oracular! (IPA Service)
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