The 2009 General Elections have concluded and the results are out. The Congress along with its allies has 262 seats, marginally short of a simple majority. In a country that has followed coalition politics for two decades that's as close to a mandate as you are going to get. Dr. Manmohan Singh became the first Prime Minister after Panditji to be reelected after completing a 5 year term. This is an extraordinary achievement for a man who in his own words is a politician by accident. The country has voted for stability and for continuity during a time when everyone feared a fractured verdict and post election horse trading. BJP in the meanwhile are despondent. They fared even worse than they did in the 2004 election when they lost power. In what was supposed to be a photo-finish the Congress led UPA ended with over a 100 seats more than the BJP lead NDA. The BJP's seat count was reduced by nearly 20 MPs.
This almost certainly means the end of the career of L.K Advani. By the time the next General Elections are held in 2014 he will be 85 years old. It would be unreasonable for anyone to expect him to be the party's Prime Ministerial candidate 5 years from now. It will be unreasonable to expect an increasingly young electorate to identity with him. After all, should he win in 2014 and last the full term, he will be in his 90s. Indications are that he wants to step down as the Leader of the Opposition. That should affectively bring curtains to the Vajpayee-Advani era in BJP's history. Where does the BJP go from here? Who among their next generation will be the face of the BJP? More crucially will the BJP further dilute their ideology in an attempt to appeal to a larger vote base or will they harden their stance, their core Hindutva beliefs and strengthen their current vote base?
The answers to these questions will start emerging in the months to come. To start with, if L.K Advani does not reconsider his decision to stand down as Leader of Opposition, then the BJP will need to fill that position with someone else. The current favorites will be Shushma Swaraj, Murli Manohar Joshi or even Rajnath Singh. Will Narendra Modi take centre stage? More importantly, will he be allowed to? Narendra Modi was one of the main campaigners of the BJP in this General Election. It's clear that his shrill rhetoric and personal attacks on his opponents does not resonate with the public outside Gujarat. It is also apparent that outside of Gujarat, he has not been able to translate his popularity into votes for the BJP. It is the state of Karnataka and not Gujarat that has sent most number of the BJP MPs to the Lok Sabha. The bottom line for Mr. Modi is that his state does not send substantially large number of MPs to the Lok Sabha and the myth of his nationwide appeal seems busted, at least for now. Given those permutations, it would be fascinating to see if the central leadership in the BJP gives Modi any elbow space and if Modi himself will risk relocating to Delhi.
Within the minority community, a suspicion lingers on that communal tension simmer when the BJP remains in opposition for long. Now that they are forced to wait another 5 years, the biggest fear of the minorities is that BJP might look to replicate its Gujarat model elsewhere across India. The consolation is that last time a saffron Delhi watched as mute spectators while Gujarat burnt. This time the hope remains that Delhi will react faster if such a situation arises.
It will be fascinating if the internal findings of political parties become public information. Public posturing of all political parties rarely reflects their internal assessments. What would the BJP attribute to its failure? Is their core constituency shrinking? Do more and more urban and rural voters disagree with the politics of divide and hate? Should the BJP adopt an inclusive model or should continue to concentrate on their core Hindu voters? M.J Akbar in the Times of India made a very interesting observation. He said India is not a secular country because that's how the Indian Muslims want it. It's a secular country because that's how the Indian Hindus want it. A large majority of the Hindus in this country do not believe in an exclusive model of politics. This election has also given resounding thumbs down to identity politics. The Hindus and the Muslims of this country, the Brahmins and the Dalits, the North and the South Indians, all of them want the politics want to be based on development and not on identity.
The BJP should be able to recognize this model themselves. Nitish Kumar, their ally in Bihar has had a spectacular victory. His governance since 2005 has been both progressive and inclusive. So successful was he that he has singlehandedly decimated Lalu's RJD and Paswan's LJP. For the first time in Bihar, the politics of development trumped over the politics of identity. The Yadavs, the Jats, the Muslims and the backward classes all voted for Nitish Kumar. That's a big lesson for all political parties to learn from. There are now state governments that are coming back to power on the basis of pro-incumbency. That includes BJP states like Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. That includes Congress states like Delhi and Andhra Pradesh.
The million dollar question is which way will the BJP go? Will they practice a more inclusive brand of politics? Will they succumb to the pressures of an ideology that sees the primacy of one community and culture in what is essentially a multi-cultural society?
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