The 1991 election held under the emotionally charged atmosphere of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination at Sriperumbudur, brought Congress back into power with 36 percent vote share, though still short of an absolute majority. But Congress under Narasimha Rao lost in the next election. BJP with 25 percent vote share, aided by powerful regional allies and led by Atal Bihari Vajapaye, who had all India appeal, could form the government in 1999 and subsequently Congress with 25 percent vote share and with regional allies under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh could form two successive governments in 2004 and 2009.

So, what went wrong with BJP's calculations and strategy in the just concluded 2024 national election? 
Indian elections are still based on casteist, regional and religious identities. India continues to be a fractious, pluralistic and contentious country. Amartya Sen captured this nature of Indians in his book, "The Argumentative Indian”. At the same time Indians show remarkable maturity in crisis times to unite against the enemy, behind their leader. As a result Indian elections become a sea-saw between centripetal and centrifugal forces.

Indira Gandhi after the Bangladesh victory, and Rajiv Gandhi after his mother's assassination could score spectacular general election victories riding on a wave of emotional outpourings. But in subsequent elections they had to bite dust. It is like the old Panchatantra story of small animals hanging together to trap the big animal.

A Devi Lal or a V.P Singh from the North or a N.T Rama Rao from the South could put together a ragtag front of small parties and snatch power from the dominant party at the center. But soon, in a year or two, they fall apart paving the way for the dominant party to come back to power. This has happened every ten years after Jawahar Lal Nehru's unchallenged reign for 17 years from 1947 to 1964.

In 1977 Jayaprakash Narayan's total revolution unseated Indira Gandhi and brought the Janata Dal to power under Morarji Desai and in 1989 V.P Singh's anti-corruption Jan Morcha against then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi brought a coalition government to power which did not last even for a year. Again 1996 June H.D Deva Gowda became a compromise Prime Minister heading an unwieldy coalition which was sabotaged from within in less than one year.

There is a visible pattern that every ten years India goes back to coalition politics. The same happened in 2024, after ten years of stable one party rule, India elected a coalition government.

The above account does not ignore the fact that India had a succession of coalition governments for almost twenty years, from 1991 to 1996, 1998 to 2004 and 2004 to 2014 under P.V Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpaye and then under Dr. Mamohan Singh respectively breaking the ten year rule. But these governments had a dominant pole party, though without absolute majority, around which small parties gravitated. The ragtag coalition of V.P Singh and Deva Gouwda also enjoyed backing of either BJP or congress.

Actually it is a miracle that BJP under Narendra Modi could remain the pole party in Indian politics and continue to be in power heading a coalition government, even after ten years of uninterrupted rule. It has never happened after the 1967 elections which Indira Gandhi won with a reduced majority compared to the 1962 elections under the redoubtable Jawahar Lal Nehru. In 1977 Indira Gandhi was out of power, and she even lost her pocket borough Rai Berreli.

So it is not surprising that Narendra Modi lost his single party majority in the 2024 elections, in spite of his wide popularity, the Ayodhya temple hype, the G-20 drum beat and the psychological bravado of “abki bar 400 par” posture.

Yet it can be reasonably surmised that BJP will remain the pole party in Indian politics for the foreseeable future. That doesn't preclude a winning coalition under a resurgent congress with Rahul Gandhi at the head after the charismatic Modi retires. Rahul is only 54 years old, whereas Modi is 20 years his senior. There is no leader of all India stature and appeal than Rahul Gandhi, even in BJP, after the plausible departure of Narendra Modi from office in 2029.

The three main ingredients for winning Indian elections are 1) A leader with all India recognition and appeal 2) Regional partners 3) 25 to 30 percent vote share for the pole party.

The 1991 election held under the emotionally charged atmosphere of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination at Sriperumbudur, brought Congress back into power with 36 percent vote share, though still short of an absolute majority. But Congress under Narasimha Rao lost in the next election. BJP with 25 percent vote share, aided by powerful regional allies and led by Atal Bihari Vajapaye, who had all India appeal, could form the government in 1999 and subsequently Congress with 25 percent vote share and with regional allies under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh could form two successive governments in 2004 and 2009.

What is the chemistry of BJP's popularity and pole position in Indian electoral politics, especially in the northern Hindi belt and western India? Though Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Kerala and Punjab remain forbidden fruit for the Hindutva party. The ethnic pride of Tamils, 27 percent Muslim presence in Bengal and Kerala and the Sikh's need for a non Hindu identity will keep BJP which is evidently a Hindu, Hindi party permanently occluded from these states. But BJP is making inroads into Bengal and Kerala and has a history of making alliances with DMK/ADMK and Akali Dal. BJP is already in power in Assam which has over 30 percent Muslim population.

BJP's strength is pivoted on the Hindi heartland comprising Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat, the land of Gandhi and Modi. Together these states send 140 members to the parliament. And BJP seems to have an absolute electoral lock on these states. If BJP can cobble up winning alliances in swing states like Maharashtra, Bihar, Telangana, Karnataka, Odisha and Assam and continue to keep small states like Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi on their side, it will be able to rule India in the normal course of events.

BJP's main plank in electoral politics is the Hindutva ideology. The Hindutva ideology is based on two principles:

1) love for the motherland, (Matriotism) Bharat Mata and 2) Political and cultural unity of all Hindus, including OBCs, SCs and STs and if possible adherents of religions that are part of the Dharma tradition like Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism in exclusion of alien semitic religious followers like Muslims and Christains. This identity description of Hindus also excludes all ideas and ideologies coming from the colonial west including communism, feminism, postmodernism, existentialism, secularism, Freudianism, Market capitalism, consumerism and scientific atheism and its ilk.

It was V.D Savarkar, the Maharashtra revolutionary, who defined Hindutva succinctly in his seminal book, “Hindutva” which he wrote while incarcerated in Andaman jail for his robust resistance to British rule in India. In this, sort of, manifesto of Hindus, Savarkar defined a Hindu, not in terms of supernatural beliefs, but in matter of fact secular terms, as one who considers Bharat as their homeland and holy land. Infact, Savarkar, an orthodox Chitpavan Brahmin, was an atheist, and promoted inter-caste dining and marriage.

Bharat, according to Svarkar, is the landmass protected by the mighty Himalayas in the north, caressed by the two rivers Sindhu in the west and Airavada in the east and flanked by the two oceans, Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. Bharat is not only Hindu's homeland but also their holy land.

Therefore Christians and Muslims are not Hindus because they don't consider Bharat as their holy land though they may consider Bharat as their land of birth. And according to Savarkar's logic Bharat is exclusively for Hindus. Christians and Muslims can live in Bharat as honored guests, but following the laws of the land based on Sanatana Dharma and Varnashrama Dharma.

The Hindutva fundamentalists argue that the west inspired ideas and ideologies are childish prattlings, the superficialities of a relatively young civilization, compared to the time tested and time honored age old civilization of Bharat. Bharat has nothing to learn from Europe or America, though their technology and FDI are welcome.

The Bharatiya system of medicine (ayurveda), psychology ( yoga) and social organization (varna-ashrama dharma), philosophy (vedanta) and leadership model (raja-rshi) are far superior than anything that the west can offer.

Bharat doesn't need the west, but they need Bharat and its visions, values and priorities. Especially as the west is slowly hurtling towards an environmental catastrophe, unacceptable levels of income disparity, and wars for territorial gains. On the contrary, Bharat with its vision of “one God but many paths”, “world as one family”, and “let noble thoughts come from all sides” is poised to regain its position as Vishva Guru, such is the dream of the Hindutva zealots.

It is jokingly said, though there is a large dose of truth in it, that ancient India and Hinduism is an invention of the Indologists and British educated Indians. Raja Ram Mohan Roy (Brahmo samaj), M.K Gandhi (Hind Swaraj), Jawaharlal Nehru (Discovery of India), B.G Tilak (Gita Rahasya) and Rabindra Nath Tagore (Independent India’s national anthem) et.al played big roles in crafting the idea of independent India.

Swami Dayananda Saraswati of Arya Samaj (Satyartha Prakash) was the only exception to this trend.

The Hindutva concept of Bharat Mata or Akhand Bharat is based on Hindu mythology ( if not on strong historical facts) drawn from the Vedas, Mahabharata and Ramayana.

According to this myth, Akhanda Bharatam stretches from Afghanistan to Myanmar and from Sri Lanka to Mount Kailash in Tibet. This ambitious claim is based on the belief that Gandhari, Chanakya and Panini came from Gandhara, modern Afghanistan and Airavata, the river on the banks of which the dominant Burman (ref. Yamayana, their national epic) tribes flourished, is the name of the Vedic God Indra's mount, the white elephant. Sri Lanka was part of Rama's empire and Mount Kailah is the seat of Hindu God Shiva.

It was the alien Islamic and British marauders who polluted and corrupted the pristine Hindu culture and traditions and sowed the seeds of division and dissension in the varna-ashrama system of social and political organization in Bharat. According to , V.D. Savarkar, and his cohort the R.S.S, India being a Hindu nation, has to get rid of all foreign religious and secular ideologies. The hotchpotch of a composite secular, socialist, democratic federal republic is anathema to R.S.S who considers such a humbug the result of artificially combining the DNA of three cultures (Hindu, Islam and European) of irreconcilable contradictions.

This part of the Hindutva ideology may not get much traction in India beyond a point. The fact of the matter is that a considerable number of Hindus and their leaders are a product of these diverse streams of cultures and their present political practices and institutions are products of this amalgam of cultures.

Sixty percent of Hindus are undecided voters as against almost hundred percent of Muslims and Christians vote bank. Significant numbers of Hindus will most probably remain secular and often wedded to their regional and linguistic affiliations. They, with help from Christian and Muslim minorities and disaffected regional parties and chunks from OBC and SC/ST segments can continue to give heartburns to BJP in their electoral calculations.

The saving grace of the Hindutva ideology is its emphasis on Hindu unity. They have, to a certain extent, been successful in bringing disparate units of Hindu people, belonging to different castes, linguistic groups and regions into the Hindutva fold, where varna-ashrama dharma is defined very loosely. Emphasis has shifted from Sanskrit and Sanskritization to Hindi and assimilation of local customs and caste leaders. This is in spite of the resistance of scheduled caste leaders like Ambedkar (ref. “Annihilation of Caste”), Ramaswami Naicker, Kanshi Ram and Kancha Ilaiah (ref. “Why I am not a HIndu”).

The dominant Lingayats in Karnataka and Patels in Gujarat have already been brought into the Hindutva fold by this kind of co-option. BJP has also co-opted Dalit spiritual and social leaders like Narayana Guru of Kerala and Mahatma Phule of Maharashtra. It will not be surprising that no longer than a decade or so the Khammas or Reddys of Andhra and Telangana, the Ezhavas of Kerala and Marathas of Maharashtra migrate to the BJP camp. BJP has already made inroads into Telangana whipping the scare of Muslim bogey and slowly getting a foothold in Andhra on the coattails of TDP. After Sharad Pawar who is already past eighty and has almost quit electoral politics, there is every chance of Maharashtra falling easily into the BJP kitty. Shiv Sena of Uddhav Thakre is not ideologically different from BJP and can come back to the BJP tent anytime.

The only poison pills for BJP are the ideologically grounded, and Muslim supported Yadav parties led by young leaders like Akhilesh Yadav and Tejaswi Yadav. These parties are mainly socio- political movements on the casteist platform. But BJP can effectively outmaneuver them by splitting their support base on subcaste lines and making alliances with smaller caste parties as they did in the last two U.P and Bihar elections.

The future Indian elections will be fought with secular parties on one side and Hindutva parties on the other. Congress and BJP being pole parties. This scenario will be good for Indian parliamentary democracy. It may be difficult for Congress to get absolute majority on its own until there is a significant shift in demographics from village to cities and India becomes a middle income ( $21 trillion) economy. Which can happen only by 2050.

Till such time it seems that BJP and its religion based upper caste dominated caste coalition will rule the roost.

What is the future of Hindutva’s Akhanda Bharat agenda?

Does RSS have the intellectual vision, emotional brandwidth, military and geopolitical strategy to follow through this ambitious agenda? BJP and R.S.S seem to have settled for the truncated Bharat - for just the torso of Bharat Mata - both her hands chopped off (Afghanistan/Pakistan on one side and Bangladesh and Myanmar on the other) her head cut off (Mt. Kailash/ Tibet) and her feet amputated (Sri Lanka). Chanakya’s dream of “chakravarthy kshetra” where Hindu samrat’s white sacrificial horse roamed about unchallenged is a vanishing dream in the contemporary geo-political situation where China, who is India’s strategic enemy, is ruling the roost in Asia. India is no match for China’s strategic, economic and global heft. R.S.S and BJP have no viable strategic, economic, military or diplomatic plan or expansive vision to unite the Indian subcontinent and capture Asian leadership from China. India’s half hearted and ambiguous alignment (QUAD) with other democratic nations led by the United States is neutralized by its dalliance with Russia and Iran and membership in BRICS and SCO led by China. So India’s claim for Vishwa Guru status without matching economic and military might and global alliances is an empty boast.

India cannot be at par with the United States or China or even with the European Union. Russia with its vast land and oil and natural gas deposits and large arsenal of nuclear weapons is a class apart. The reality is that India will be forced to grow under the shadow of China, because of its unwillingness to totally align with the United States and its former colonial masters. India is only a second tier power along with Brazil, but slightly better than Indonesia, Iran and Turkey. This assessment is in spite of India becoming the fifth or even the third largest economy in the world surpassing Japan, but as long as the per capita annual income remains below a miserable 4000 dollars in the midst of extreme income inequality and rural poverty. Japan’s GDP which is a little over $ 5 tn will be only $ 4000 per capita income for Indians.

It is evident that the R.S.S- BJP dream of “Akhanda Bhrat”, “Bharat Mahan”, “Vishwa Guru” and “Vikasit Bharat” have shrunk to narrow political calculations and caste equations for holding on to power at any cost. Most of the arrows from its quiver, like removal of article 270, construction of Ram temple, have already been expended. BJP may not have the political stomach for picking up Mathura and Kashi issues as long as they rule the center with help of alliance partners. Common civil code may not be a convincing political weapon in India’s fractious society. BJP’s market oriented trickle down economic policies and R.S.S’s spartan religious half baked economic ideas are an unholy mix of befuddled thoughts.

The BJP-RSS parivar and their Hindutva ideology of recovering Hinduness from alien forces and colonial mindsets is only a pushback to British colonialism and its divisive policies. The Mughal rulers seamlessly merged with the Hindu society and left to themselves pre-British India would have remained united and successfully solved problems of religious and caste division and socio-economic problems. A united subcontinental India would have been much stronger politically, economically and much more influential internationally and a role model for managing diversity. It was religions, Islam and Hinduism, that united India more than the network of Railways, postal service, army and bureaucracy. Jinna’s insistence for a separate country for Muslims was partly due to the failure of Congress and Gandhi to address Muslim fear of Hindu majoritarian rule. Unless South Asian leaders, especially Indian leaders, find a way of uniting Hindus and Muslims on the one hand, and Pakistan and India on the other, Indians and India will have no chance of realizing their full potential. The Hindutva ideal of uniting all Hindus and building a resurgent Bharat from its pristine Vedic-classical past will remain a pipe dream until and unless these two unification happens. India may be better off than Pakistan and Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, or Bhutan or Maldives , but on the international stage India will continue to be a second rate power at the mercy of China and the United States.

BJP’s continued grip on power depends on several factors 1) its ability to develop national level leaders with mass appeal 2) its ability to craft alliances with regional parties 3) its ability to attract caste groups like Marathas and Yadavs.

Congress also has enough vote share to follow the same strategy to power. India is a country of disgruntled elements who constitute the majority who can anytime coalesce any which way to challenge the party in power. V.S Naipaul evocatively put it, “the site of a million mutinies” and Nikhil Khilnani as “India of Ideas”. A.K Ramanujam in his iconoclastic way compared Indian practice of pluralism to the various ways Hindus tie their doti-s.

India is the only country in the world which is pluralistic in the true sense of pluralism - incredibly diverse, with irreconcilable contradictions and paradoxes.

Other pluralistic countries like China is 93 percent Han with Mandarin , Indonesia is 93 percent Islam with a common lingua franca, and Brazil speaks one language, Portuguese. Even Russia, the largest country in the world spanning seven time zones, is united by one language. India speaks more than 16 languages and no common language in sight to bind the nation. University education is still imparted in English though only 2 percent of Indians understand English.

“Unity in diversity” is an innocuous slogan that supposedly binds India like a thread holding flowers of different sizes and hues together in a garland. This concept doesn’t give the punch India needs to assert its strength.

Maybe, even if not in the near future, the AGI algorithm that churns massive data can hold India into a meaningful mosaic where LLMs instantly in time translates speeches and weaponises its diversity and contradictions into innovative and competitive ideas. India could be a testing ground for the effectiveness of AI.

To conclude, India is heading for a pattern of 10 years of one party rule followed by an interregnum of coalition rule of shifting alliances. With the Congress heading the secular forces and BJP the Hindutva group, India, that is Bharat, is set for a see-saw between the liberal and conservative ideologies. Between them Indian democracy seems safe though not the Indian economy.

And hence India’s endemic problem!

Good politics and poor economics!!

articles, travelogues & memoirs

Modi- the Prime Minister” (Thoughts on the New Prime Minister of India - 26 May 2014)

• Impressions on the New President for the US - Black Family in the White House (4 Nov 2008)
• Vedanta, Yoga and Ayurveda
• The Yoga of Management
• Advaita Darsanam: Oneness Vision
• Tiger is thirty years behind the dragon 2007

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