Rage against privilege

Rajesh Ramachandran

As Yogi Adityanath gets sworn in for the second term, the BJP is not merely breaking electoral records but rewriting the terms of our electoral engagement. The BJP’s victory in four out of five Assembly elections was achieved by retaining these four states, a significant feat in the context of terrible Covid deaths, prolonged illness for a large section of the population, misery, job losses and overall economic gloom. How could the BJP achieve such a feat? Or rather, why could not the Opposition turn the people’s apathy into anger against the incumbent? It takes a deeper understanding of the people’s apathy to manage and channelise it to derive political dividends. The BJP has been getting better and better at the art of maximising the returns of the rage.

The BJP has dodged the trend as Modi has succeeded in portraying himself as an outsider trying to change things for the better, and the Opposition as the entitled establishment.

For a casual or even a serious observer, PM Modi’s obsession with Nehru and the BJP’s proclivity to blame Nehru for everything that still goes wrong with governance would seem absurd, bordering on the hilarious. Blaming the past for the present is a deeply thought-out ruse to absolve contemporary politicians or rulers of accountability. Just as blaming invaders for the greed and cowardice of our ancestors offers a fig leaf of respectability to their defeat, the shifting of the blame for all that still goes wrong on a person who died 58 years ago offers a national amnesty to our current leadership. But why is this blame game an essential — or rather, the central — prop of our political theatre? The answer could only be found in the simmering, sub-optimal wrath that offers huge political returns to the reaper.

The Indian anger against injustice never reaches the boiling point, to rise and flow over into an all-consuming revolution. Even when it seemingly did so during the Gandhian national movement, it was successful only because it was not an eruption, as in 1857, but a painfully protracted process of non-violent transfer of power. Yet, it was possible because of the anger reaching its criticality, though definitely not comparable with the French, Bolshevik or Chinese revolutions. The patient, long-suffering Indian is deceptive because he wants change and is always in search of a credible alternative. In the last century, the pace of political change was slower and the credibility of the establishment was greater in an era of slow-moving media cycles. Both have changed and those who have not caught on to this transformation are the ones getting dumped.

Arvind Kejriwal, Kisan Baburao Hazare and others tapped this discontent against the establishment, starting in 2011 and culminating in the overthrow of the Congress-led UPA government in 2014. The beneficiaries might have been Modi and the BJP, but the process was a people’s movement against political privilege. And Kejriwal’s AAP winning 92 seats in the 117-member Punjab Assembly proves that the impact of that 10-year-old agitation continues. Indians have had enough of the entitled, privileged establishment; they want change and they want it now. In fact, not merely change but also punishment for the privileged. Alternating with two parties or two fronts was one way of ensuring change, but even that is not enough now.

This process has scalded not just the Congress; it was this punishment of the elite that resulted in the demise of the CPI(M) in West Bengal, and now the decimation of the BSP in UP and the Akali Dal in Punjab. Dalit voters defeating their own party in an attempt to punish the elite might sound like a contradiction, but it is not. It was with great faith and hope that Dalits had been endorsing Mayawati’s leadership for three decades. Unfortunately, her lasting impact on governance was her own statues in Lucknow and her palatial mansions in Lutyens’ Delhi. Even her core voters, her fellow Jatavs, wanted to punish her for turning their political conviction into her privilege. According to the 2022 CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey, 22 per cent Jatavs moved away from the BSP and voted primarily for the BJP, which increased its Jatav votes from 8 to 21 per cent.

There cannot a greater example of voters punishing a leader’s sense of entitlement than the poor and hopeful Jatavs abandoning Mayawati and shifting toward Adityanath. Non-Jatav scheduled castes have considerably reposed their confidence in the Samajwadi Party, while marginally increasing their share in the BJP’s votes. Similar is the punishment for the SAD in Punjab. According to the same post-poll survey results, the SAD lost considerable votes from all four major sections of the Sikh populace — 12, 6, 17 and 15 percentage points from Jat, Khatri, Dalit and OBC Sikh sections, respectively (the BSP hardly contributed to the alliance). The gainer is the AAP.

The question that remains is this: Why does the fury of the enraged people leave the BJP unscathed? The BJP’s campaign against political dynasties has been successful in diverting the voters’ ire towards the Congress, Samajwadi Party and others, thereby transforming anti-incumbency into an anti-establishment wrath. Modi has been successful in continuously portraying himself as an outsider trying to change things for the better while tarring the Opposition as the elitist, entitled, permanent establishment.

Even Navjot Singh Sidhu had almost succeeded in turning anti-incumbency into anti-establishment sentiments against the SAD; but when he lost the chief ministership to Charanjit Singh Channi, he turned against his own party, thereby destroying the Congress’ opportunity to become a credible alternative. This forced the voters to choose the AAP. Yet, the Congress became the number two party. Similarly, Adityanath in comparison to Akhilesh Yadav is a man with no entitlement, patrimony or privilege.

Even what is being talked about as corruption in regular political parlance has now become a signalling towards privilege. And people are constantly revolting against privilege. Earlier, this revolt was simple and identity-driven — lower caste versus entitled caste or oppressed community against oppressor community. In fact, caste was an all-encompassing political universe that subsumed class, but no longer. Now, the Jat Sikhs of Punjab are willing to vote for Kejriwal’s party and Jatavs of UP can choose even Adityanath over Mayawati because the poor have stopped identifying with the rich, even though they belong to the same caste or community grouping.