Bloody, weak and chaotic: Justice Markandey Katju on why he fears the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and what will follow
The 2019 Lok Sabha elections promises to be a nail-biter — a battle fought with unprecedented bitterness, hostility and caste and communal violence.
After half a century of Congress rule (broken intermittently), the BJP secured an absolute majority in the 2014 polls. It will not likely give up power, having secured it after sitting in Opposition for so long. On the other hand, many of its policies and practices have so strongly antagonised the opposition parties that they are determined to prevent the BJP from coming to power again at any cost.
So, the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, in all likelihood, will be like the battles to capture the Delhi Sultanate, marked by bloody wars of succession and invasion.
In the Mahabharata, even before the war began, the rules were decided by the two warring sides (for example, no fighting after sunset, no hitting below the navel, a soldier on horseback will only fight a enemy soldier who is also riding a horse, not a foot soldier, no attacks on any unarmed person, etc.).
But, during the course of the war, all these rules were broken, just as the Geneva Convention was flagrantly violated in the Second World War. So, in the coming elections as well, India is likely to witness devious methods being deployed. For instance, EVM tampering and organised caste or communal clashes cannot be ruled out. After all, for political parties, all is fair in love and war.
The BJP won the 2014 elections for three reasons:
1) The call for 'Vikas', which particularly attracted the Indian youth who thought 'Vikas' meant the creation of millions of jobs.
2) People were completely fed up with corruption — one of the main reasons that pulled down the Congress-led UPA government.
3) Modi's image of a strong Hindu leader, who had 'tackled' the Muslims in 2002 in Gujarat.
Of these, the first — Vikas — has proved to be a complete mirage. On the contrary, unemployment has increased in India.
The second has been forgotten, as public memory is short. So all that remains is the third factor, because of which Modi's upper caste Hindu base ( Brahmins, Rajputs, Banias, etc.) has remained largely intact.
But upper caste Hindus, in most parts of India, collectively comprise only about 20 per cent of the total population. This is not sufficient to win an election. In the UP Assembly election in 2017, the BJP swept the polls by winning over many non-Yadav OBCs by distributing about one-thirds of the tickets to them. But this experiment may not work every time.
As is well-known, in most of India, people vote on the basis of caste and religion.
The biggest problem for the BJP is its restricted base of 20 per cent upper caste Hindus. Unless it can garner the support of at least another 10 per cent-12 per cent from some other Hindu castes (since Muslims will not vote for it), the BJP seems unlikely to be winning the elections.
So, what can it do ?
One possiblity is political leaders stoking communal passions (as done during the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation because of which the strength of the BJP rose in the Lok Sabha from two seats in 1984 to 182 in 1998) and covertly organise large-scale communal riots. This often tends to unite Hindus, who are otherwise divided on caste lines.
Even though such tactics will be applied, one wonders how far these will be successful.
Opposition parties seem to have seen through the game, and will try their best to thwart such moves.
The prediction by some news organisations is that the BJP will lose many seats in the upcoming elections and will no longer have a majority in Parliament. That means a coalition government, and a coalition means a weak government.
The first thing which will, therefore, be witnessed after the 2019 elections will be a furious tussle for lucrative portfolios among the coalition partners (as was seen in Karnataka recently). We can also expect to see constant infighting, as happened during the Janata Party government formed after the Emergency in 1977.
In this coalition government, neither the BJP, nor the Congress are likely to play dominant roles.
Instead, regional satraps like Mamata Banerjee, Tejaswi Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati, N Chandrababu Naidu, KCR, Navin Patnaik and the DMK-AIADMK, will wield far more power, like Nizam ul Mulk and Safdar Jung during the reign of the later Mughals. The Prime Minister, in all likelihood, will be a weakling like the Mughal emperor, Muhammad Shah Rangila, who ruled from 1719 to 1749, and in whose reign Nadir Shah invaded India and plundered Delhi.
There is also no ruling-out of the possibility of frequently changing Prime Ministers, who will be nothing more than puppets at the hands of regional satraps, like the Mughal emperors who were installed and deposed from 1712 by the kingmakers, the Sayyid brothers.
The regional satraps will squabble among themselves for power and pelf, and a prolonged period of chaos will set in throughout India, like after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, or in China after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911.
I shudder at the thought of the days to come.