Just eight months ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP is facing the same organisational and political crisis that the Congress faced before the 2014 general elections. However, there’s one very significant difference. While in 2014 the Congress had no support mechanism to fall back upon, this time the BJP has a big helping hand behind it in the RSS.
The ensuing election has more at stake for the RSS than the BJP. A defeat would pull down the BJP from the seat of power. But for the RSS, it would seriously imperil its survival. A similarity could be traced between what Govindacharya had said of Atal Behri Vajpayee — a mukhota or mask for the RSS for attracting the masses and retaining allies — and Narendra Modi, who, over the last ten years, has been precisely acting as a mask for the RSS expanding its tentacular hold on the Indian society.
RSS had its next man in L K Advani to show Atal his place. But in the existing scenario, RSS is yet to zero in an alternative to Modi. Had it been some other time, the RSS might have taken the risk to install another head. But since the 2024 elections are knocking at the door, it has little time left. It has to act fast. RSS has made its urgency and compulsion known through the editorial of Organiser which the paper carried in the last week of May; Modi has lost his charm and appeal.
RSS is forced to go to the polls with Modi as the leader, but instead of relying on him to deliver the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Sangh has taken recourse to its long tried and tested mechanism of fueling communal clashes for consolidating the Hindu votes, who in recent past, had started distancing themselves from Modi and Amit Shah for their high-handed and vindictive approach to every political issue. Operational history of RSS will make it amply clear that it chose the path of hatred and violence to spread its wings. Obviously, the Sangh is not opposed to Modi and Shah’s tactics of coercive devices. But what has caused concern to RSS is the erosion of the base.
RSS does not intend to lose the base assiduously built over the years. In the prevailing situation, it is left with no other alternative to intensify its policy and programme of communal divide and hate politics for polarising the Hindu votes. As the first step in this direction, it turned Manipur into the latest laboratory of hate, reactivating divisive politics and polarising the voters.
Next stop has been Haryana, with the northern state plunging into uncharacteristic communal violence, alongside a broader rise in hate crimes against minority groups. Violence erupted in Haryana on Monday after a right-wing Hindu organization led a religious procession in the Muslim dominated region of Nuh. Clashes spread to Gurugram, the home to hundreds of global firms, where violent mobs precisely targeted Muslim-owned properties, setting buildings ablaze and smashing shops and restaurants. At least six people died, including two police personnel and a cleric who was inside a mosque that was set alight. On Wednesday, hundreds of members from the Hindu extremist right-wing Bajrang Dal group took to the streets in several cities, including Delhi, burning effigies and chanting slogans against Muslims in protest against what they called “Islamic jihad and terrorism.”
It would be wrong to construe that the Nuh violence is exception. No, it is certainly not. It is just one of the instances in the ongoing chain of violence. Bihar has been quite vulnerable. During the last couple of months, clashes have taken place in Sasaram, Bihar Shariff, Siwan, Bettiah and Kaimur. With the Home ministry determined to turn the police into dysfunctional spectators if not open enablers, the situation is getting complicated.
A study by the economist Deepankar Basu noted a 786% increase in hate crimes against minorities between 2014 and 2018, during Modi’s rule. India has one of the largest Muslim populations in the world with an estimated 170 million, roughly 15 percent of its 1.4 billion population.
Sources also point out that the situation in Uttar Pradesh is not congenial. Monu Manesar, the notorious Hindutva goon belonging to the Bajrang Dal, has his network in the state. Besides, the situation in central and western regions of the state is quite vulnerable. The systematic reign of torture being perpetrated by the rightist forces, under the aegis of the Yogi Adityanath administration, with an increasingly scared and scarred minority population, has encouraged the upper-caste goons belonging to VHP and Bajrang Dal to further victimise them. Already an atmosphere is being created by these elements to convey the message to the Muslims that fall in line or get ready to face the consequences.
Ethnic violence has been raging in the north eastern state of Manipur for the last three months, but neither RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat nor Modi have taken out time to visit the state and console the people. Modi even not condemning the ongoing genocide unravels the RSS plot. India is heading into a dark path where morality, ethics, human rights and socio-political ethos have been rendered meaningless. Modi even did think it proper enough to caution Manipur chief minister Biren Singh to follow ‘Raj Dharma’, as he himself was advised by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2002.
With BJP losing the assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka, and Bharat Jodo Yatra of Rahul Gandhi showing its positive impact in the Hindi belt, the RSS is seriously worried about losing the Lok Sabha elections. It has no alternative but to revive its longstanding malicious design. VHP and the Bajrang Dal are being resuscitated in Haryana as RSS needs every Lok Sabha seat it won in the state in 2024. Though Haryana chief minister ML Khattar is a RSS protégé, the Sangh is not ready to bet on him.
The BJP had won 24 out of 25 Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan, 28 out of 29 in Madhya Pradesh and nine out of 11 in Chhattisgarh. These states will have assembly elections in December 2023. The BJP would like to build the momentum for the 2024 general election by winning all of them. Haryana sends 10 MPs to the Lok Sabha. The BJP had won all 10 seats in the 2019 general election. It is unlikely to repeat the feat in April-May 2024, without the consolidation of Hindu votes. To achieve that, the RSS is back to resorting to communal polarisation. More than 5000 cases of communal or religious rioting have taken place in the country between 2016 and 2023. Overall, there were over 2.76 lakh cases of rioting during 2015-20.
Under Modi’s governance India has embraced a communal and authoritarian regime. With eye on 2024 elections, Haryana BJP in mission mode to train grassroots workers. The BJP has called nearly 3,000 active workers of the party, called Shakti Kendra Pramukhs, for a training camp to be organised at village Patti Kalyana of Panipat district on March 19 this year. To connect with the voters at ground level, the party has appointed panna pramukhs — each of them in-charge of a page of the voters’ list at a booth — to campaign during elections.
After defeat in Himachal and Karnataka, the RSS has come to nurse the impression that Muslims would rally behind the Congress. Which is why they have let loose reign of terror on Muslims. The saffron brigade has also been taking the help of history-sheeter criminals to achieve its mission. In Nuh of Haryana, the task was carried out by one of the notorious gangsters, Monu Manesar. In fact, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot only two days back questioned his Haryana counterpart’s non-cooperation in arresting Bajrang Dal member Monu Manesar.
The alleged cow vigilante been accused in the case of the murder of two Muslim traders, Nasir and Junaid, who were burned alive in a vehicle. A video shared by Manesar (whose real name is Mohit Yadav), ahead of the Brijmandal Jalabhishek Yatra in Haryana’s Nuh, was among the factors that purportedly flared tempers in the region. “I will be in the yatra in person and my whole team will also be present,” he had said in a video posted as his WhatsApp status on July 29.
Incidentally, a team of the Communist Party of India, which visited Haryana only a couple of days back, has come to access a letter of panchayat sarpanch which “exposes bitter reality of organised discrimination against minorities under BJP rule”. Written on the letterhead of a sarpanch it reads: “Muslims or miscreants should not be allowed to do any business or hawking activity in the panchayat area”. The CPI team shared the Haryana police information that similar letters from sarpanchs of over 15 villages in Haryana’s Mahendragarh had been sent to the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) over the past few days saying the decisions were taken following the “violence and atrocities on our Hindu brothers in Nuh”.
The CPI statement added: “The growth of hatred and divisions in the entire region is systematic and artificial seeds of strife are being sown among both the communities. The CPI delegation met all sections of society, till they were stopped by the police at the Nuh border.”
A former Intelligence Bureau director held that the violence in Nuh “clearly points to some short of complicity on the part of administration and police”. He even questioned the rationale behind giving permission to Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad to take out the procession despite enough indications that it will turn into a major law-and-order issue. Allowing the rally to be taken out simply underscores it is the part of the deep design to polarise the Hindus ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. (IPA Service)
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