Latest Assembly and By-Poll Elections and
In the latest Assembly and by-poll elections in India along with the election to Delhi Municipal Council, though the BJP had an apparent sweeping win only in Gujarat, closer analysis reveals a further consolidation of the Hindutva votes across the States.
Among them, the most striking is BJP’s 7th consecutive victory in Gujarat, the biggest win in a State election with 156 seats out of 182, and 57 more seats compared to the 2017 Assembly election. Grabbing more than 52 percent of the polled votes in Gujarat, Modi, who was the star campaigner for the election, has declared it as the launching pad for its campaign for the 2024 general election. The election campaign saw all-out effort on the part of BJP/RSS to bring maximum Hindutva votes to be polled on the one hand, and utmost care to divide anti-BJP votes on the other. No doubt, the reactionary corporate-saffron Gujarat model, the foundation of which was laid by Modi two decades back is going to be the victory symbol of RSS in its no holds barred offensive towards the goal of establishing a Hindurashtra by 2025, the centenary year of RSS formation.
On the other hand, the 2022 Gujarat election witnessed one of the biggest falls in the entire history of the congress, a steep fall from 77 seats in 2017 to just 16 in 2022 and a decline in vote share by more than 14 percent. Here the entry of AAP with its ‘more loyal than the king’ approach to Hindutva through such demands as Uniform Civil Code, stamping currency notes with the pictures of Lakshmi and Ganesh, free government-sponsored pilgrimage to Hindu temples, etc., turned out to be one of the decisive factors in isolating the Muslim minority and consolidating majoritarian Hindutva votes. Thus the hard-Hindutva campaigns across the entire Muslim-dominated areas of Gujarat by both BJP and AAP, while immobilised the soft-Hindutva Congress, enabled BJP to reap maximum gains. In the process, AAP also increased its vote share by more than 12 percent, leading to Congress’ biggest fall in Gujarat. Along with Muslim majority areas, AAP’s concerted campaigns in tribal areas, while swept aside the Congress also helped BJP to win 23 out of 27 Scheduled tribe seats in Gujarat. Altogether, the vicious communal polarisation unleashed by both the Hindutva twins, the BJP and AAP, resulted in the total consolidation of majoritarian votes more with the BJP, even as the same helped AAP to emerge as a national party too.
However, the communal polarisation engineered against Muslims comprising around 10 percent in Gujarat was not workable in Himachal Pradesh where their percent was only around 2 percent. This objective situation in Himachal Pradesh where an aggressive and polarising Gujarat model campaign has limited scope forced both the saffron parties, BJP and AAP to keep a low profile regarding Hindutva in spite of Himachal being the home state of BJP president Nadda. Thus, while the AAP almost turned its attention away from Himachal, the absence of Gujarat-like communal polarisation by RSS-BJP leadership enabled Congress to utilise the anti-incumbency factor against BJP highlighting the problems of apple farmers, the Agnipath scheme of army recruitment, together with the assurance of restoration of old pension scheme of government employees, etc. As a result, though the Congress won the election, still the difference in vote percentage between Congress and BJP was less than one percent, indicating the strong undercurrents of Hindutva in the state.
Meanwhile, the true colour of Hindutva fascism had its concrete expression in the UP’s Rampur Assembly constituency where Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan and his associates have won continuously for the last two decades. This stronghold of the Samajwadi Party where Muslim voters are relatively larger has won by the BJP for the first time. As the polling average in the recent bypolls in UP was 55 percent, that in Rampur was only 33.94 percent, while it recorded 56.61 percent in the 2019 polls. Now according to reports, which the corporate-saffron media seldom give priority, while the entire state election machinery being merged with fascist regime, police and administration had used every means to prevent voters in Muslim-majority areas from exercising their franchise on the one hand, and facilitating the consolidation of Hindutva votes on the other. This is may also be a test rehearsal on the part of RSS fascists in the coming elections.
Along with the Assembly and by-poll elections, the victory of post-ideological, urban middle-class oriented AAP in Delhi Municipal elections also belongs to the Hindutva bandwagon. Along with AAP’s win in Delhi Municipal Council, the growth in BJP’s vote share from 36 percent in 2017 to 39 percent in 2022 is also a reflection of the advance of fascist forces. Obviously, the AAP which, in spite of an anti-corruption plank, has the same wavelength as that of the BJP in its approach to the minorities and Dalits as manifested in the case of EWS, abrogation of Article 370, the CAA and NRC, Uniform Civil Code, etc., is now competing with BJP as another political tool of RSS, the biggest and longest-running fascist organisation in the world. Of course, BJP, as the biggest political party with 18 crore membership and an accumulated wealth much larger than the combined wealth of the next biggest seven political parties in India, is the acclaimed political tool of RSS. At the same time, as its leadership has claimed, the RSS can use any party as its political tool, and in that sense, AAP’s role in the recent elections is fully in conformity with this RSS agenda.
To be precise, during the recent Assembly and by-elections none of the grave issues such as skyrocketing prices of fuel and essential items, unprecedented unemployment, intensifying poverty and destitution, corruption, falling standard of living, crisis in the agricultural sector, sell-out of the remaining public sector, gobbling up of national assets by billionaires and increasing corporate plunder of nature and consequent ecological catastrophe, dismantling of democratic rights, imposition of draconian UAPA and sedition charges on political dissidents, etc., was the main issue in the election campaign. In Gujarat, for instance, corporate media went on projecting Modi as the one who “can take strong decisions”, BJP as a party having “conviction and courage to take bold and tough decisions”, and so on and diverted the whole issue towards celebrating elections as “festival of democracy”. No doubt, in the coming days and in view of the 2024 general election, with the backing of corporate billionaires and their saffron media managers, the fascist forces will definitely enter into an intensified phase of an all-out offensive by resorting to a series of Hindutva moves which are already in the offing and thereby whipping up pseudo-nationalism, spreading hatred among people on the basis of religion and in gross disregard of diversities, and unleashing all kinds of divisive forces.
However, as the election results have shown, the ruling class parties including the congress are on the defensive and incapable to take a political offensive against RSS neo-fascism. Therefore, as clearly outlined in the Political Resolution adopted by the 12th Congress of CPI (ML) Red Star, upholding the class interests of the working class and all oppressed and, at the same time, exposing Manuvadi-Hindutva, the ideology of RSS, the revolutionary-democratic forces, uniting with all like-minded forces and joining with non-fascist sections, have to come forward for building up the broadest possible anti-fascist front according to the concrete situation in the States.
(Editorial, Red Star December 2022)
