Liberals are wrong: BJP is not the new Congress
The BJP has bared its fangs with the anointment of Yogi Adityanath as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. The head priest of Gorakhnath mutt who has his own private army and openly canvasses for a Hindu rashtra immediately got down to work setting loose vigilantes to moral police young couples in the name of women's security and shutting down slaughter houses.
Faced with abysmal development indicators, his two directives focus instead on conflating crime with the minority community. BJP chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat have followed suit in quick succession.
At the same time, flush with victory and with predictable disregard for institutions, Modi government amended 40 laws in one go by undermining parliamentary procedure and bypassing the Opposition.
The amendments inter alia allow the central government to take over some quasi-judicial functions through sole control over appointments, make mandatory Aadhaar (biometric ID) in contempt of six Supreme Court orders and give carte blanche to tax officials to raid and seize as they please without scrutiny or rationale.
Pro-establishment intellectuals no longer have the alibi of "development" now and must squarely acknowledge what the ascendance of the BJP represents - the establishment of an authoritarian Hindu majoritarian state.
For the liberals, it was the coming true of what they had predicted all along. Yet the ensuing fulmination was marked by another kind of denial: in bemoaning the threat to India's secular identity and diversity with the rise of the BJP, liberal after liberal felt the need to simultaneously kick the already beleaguered Congress party.
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| The difference between the Congress and the BJP is also reflected on the ground. Photo: PTI |
This need to draw equivalence between the imperfections of the Congress with the programmatic bigotry of the BJP requires explication. For some, it is a way of establishing their neutrality, to signal their equidistance from both the BJP and the Congress, never mind that the Congress is not even in power.
Others seek moral high ground of principle by equating alleged "pseudo-sickularism" of the Congress with overt communalism and bigotry of the BJP. For the rest, it is a matter of personal reputation to draw equivalence between the Congress and BJP to be able to justify their support for the latter on various other grounds.
This false equivalence has so permeated the discourse that the exceptional nature of BJP's contempt for democracy, diversity and social justice has been normalised.
The reality however is that there is no comparison between the Congress and the BJP. Immediately preceding Modi government, the Congress party-led UPA government at the Centre presided over the highest growth in India's history to pull 140 million people out of poverty.
In the entire 10-year period, no member of the Congress leadership in government or party was implicated in any kind of communal speech or incident.
Significantly, the head of the Congress government for the entire 10 years was a widely respected Sikh, a minority.
On the other hand, in just three years of Modi government at the Centre, the entire country is on communal boil.
The prime minister, union ministers, the national party president, various BJP chief ministers, MPs and MLAs have all made communal statements, some even being charged with instigating communal riots.
There is not a single minority MP in the 282 elected MPs of the party.
The difference between the Congress and the BJP is also reflected on the ground.
A study at Yale University has shown that the election of a single Congress MLA in a district reduced the probability of communal riots by 32 per cent.
Conversely the BJP gains vote share after every communal riot. Moreover, the ten years of UPA saw the enactment of a slew of progressive legislations, not least the Right to Information Act - all of which the Modi government is working overtime to dilute or destroy.
Still many liberals are loath to cast their lot with the Congress. However, the only way to dislodge the BJP from power is by electing another political party in its place, and at this point, Congress is the only party which can possibly take on the BJP in 2019.
For a while after BJP's defeat in Delhi and Bihar, liberal hopes were pinned on Arvind Kejriwal and Nitish Kumar.
Those hopes have dissipated now with Nitish Kumar sending mixed signals to theModi government and the AAP flailing after unexpectedly poor showing in both Punjab and Goa. It is evident that any opposition to the BJP without the Congress is not viable.
Liberal affinity for Nitish Kumar and Kejriwal also belies their apparently principled opposition to the Congress: Nitish Kumar has been a longstanding BJP ally both in his state and at the Centre; Kejriwal worked in active collaboration with the BJP, the RSS and its compatriots during his Lokpal agitation.
He also showed a willingness to consort with radical religious elements during the Punjab campaign.
It is also difficult to understand why the Congress of today should be judged not by its UPA years under the current leadership, but by the real or alleged (c) omissions of older governments under past leaders, especially when that same continuity of legacy is denied for its other contributions to nation-building.
It is true that Congress has committed mistakes. Yet it continues to be the only liberal party in the country. It is also true that there are opportunists among its ranks though most have jumped over to the BJP in the last four years.
In any case, this is true of all platforms, through which power is acquired and exercised. While the leadership is, of course, accountable for all things related to the party, civil society too must share some of the blame for the current state of affairs. Liberal civil society has by and large divorced itself from local level engagement with people and politics.
Engagement with political parties is shunned for fear of appearing partisan and even this engagement is limited to lobbying the leadership on issues of policy.
However, the ascendance of the illiberal right shows that public opinion is often used to override institutions and policy.
Right-wing forces on the other hand are assiduously working in communities shifting the ground to the right.
The Congress needs to do much to regain lost ground. Equally the liberals need to engage, if not with political parties but the polity.