Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar taking objection to BJP’s slogan of “batenge toh katenge” and then BJP toning the slogan down to “Ek hai to safe hai”, became a big talking point this week in the state. As the campaign for assembly election heats up in the last stage, leaders and parties of Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) and the BJP led Mahayuti are seen using all types of tactics and strategies to get an edge over each other.
For example, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis used the term “Vote Jihad” in some of his rallies in the state. A lot of discussion happened in the regional media about how suddenly the BJP was pitching Hindutva aggressively in the last phase of the poll campaign. Since the beginning of the campaign, the tone has been more based on development and economic issues and campaigning about various direct benefit transfers schemes given to the weaker sections of society such as farmers and women from economically backward classes. But now in the later stages it is seen that the campaign has moved to a Hindutva pitch. Why does the BJP feel the need to bring in the Hindutva narrative during the Maharashtra Assembly polls, is the question that many are asking.
It is interesting that Fadnavis has been using “Vote Jihad”, to describe the so-called strategic voting that happened by the minority community during the recent Lok Sabha polls. In a district like Dhule it was seen that in four Assembly constituencies the BJP had a huge lead but but just the voting that happened in Malegaon turned the tide totally in favour of the MVA. Malegaon is a hub of the minority communities and it is believed that they voted en bloc in favour of the MVA alliance.
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In his rallies Devendra Fadnavis has been describing to the people how the BJP lost many Lok Sabha seats with a margin of less than 1% votes. In Beed the party lost by just 6,000 votes. In many places in Vidarbha the party lost by inputs to the rival MVA candidate. The feeling among BJP leadership is that party activists perhaps did not come out in as many numbers as they would have liked during the last days of the campaign during the Lok Sabha polls. Those who had the responsibility of booth management and bringing out voters in large numbers did not put in as much effort as was required according to the top BJP leadership of Maharashtra. Some complacency or lethargy set in because the activists took it for granted that the BJP was going to sweep the Lok Sabha polls.
Now in order to not repeat the mistakes of the Lok Sabha polls the challenge the BJP leadership has is to charge up the grassroot activities of the BJP and friendly organisations such as ABVP and others. The party feels that setting in the Hindutva narrative at the stage of the campaign would be the best bet to ensure this. And that’s the reason one sees this narrative getting louder and louder in the last phase of the campaign. Historically it has been seen that the BJP-led alliance has sometimes benefited politically when they took a hard Hindutva line in their campaign. The first time the BJP came to power in Maharashtra and it shared power with Balasaheb Thackeray’s Shiv Sena was in 1995. The Assembly elections at that time were clearly influenced by the incidents of 1992 and 1993 which caused large scale religious polarisation in Maharashtra.
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However, the other big question is whether the Hindutva narrative will really help the BJP in these Assembly elections. Many political observers ask this question because in the recently held Lok Sabha polls the party had focused mainly on the Hindutva agenda itself and that clearly did not work for the BJP in Maharashtra as well as Uttar Pradesh, the two big states that mattered the most. In Maharashtra the BJP came down from the previous tally in Lok Sabha of 23 to 09. In Maharashtra, just like Uttar Pradesh, the party campaigned hard on the issue of building the Ram temple in Ayodhya and other issues that surrounded the Hindutva agenda but that somehow did not get translated into votes as desired by the BJP. It is not that the BJP is pushing only the Hindutva narrative as its polls strategy, They have been working on a multi-pronged strategy which is to campaign about various schemes that they have introduced including the Mukhyamantri Ladki Bahin Yojana and financial schemes for the farmers and students, as well as infrastructural projects such as Samruddhi highway and other projects. But they feel that bringing in Hindutva narrative will give them a special boost in the campaign in the last stages of the campaign.
The Opposition MVA is again focusing on caste-related issues. They have been talking about the agitation over the demand of reservation for the Maratha community and the same narrative that they used during the Lok Sabha polls about the fear of changes being proposed to the Constitution of India. Will this work among the voters, is a question nobody has the answer to. It is peculiar how in Maharashtra and some other states alliances on two sides of the political divide use Hindutva to counter caste polarisation or vice versa depending on whichever ideology is pitched in the campaign first. In this debate the economic issues and poll strategies of rolling out financial benefit schemes always gets sidelined.
Rohit Chandavarkar is a senior journalist who has worked for 31 years with various leading newspaper brands and television channels in Mumbai and Pune
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