Why I’m inclined to vote for the BJP in 2024 but won’t
While on an excursion from Bangalore into the lap of the Nilgiris in South India last month, I drove down the freshly inaugurated, slick ten-lane Bengaluru-Mysuru Expressway, marvelling at the top quality of the infrastructure project which made my drive a breeze. On that same journey, I stopped twice at the toll booths of the expressway, only to realise that I wasn’t required to stop beyond a couple of seconds thanks to the impressive technology and policy of FASTag. For someone who remembers the soul-sucking queues at such toll plazas from the past, I was reminded of a pleasant epiphany which I’ve been getting a lot lately — the realisation that India seems to be headed in the right direction of progress.
This experience also reminded me of the political force which is behind India’s march towards progress — its ruling party which is running for re-election for a record third term in 2024.
Looking to 2024
With less than a year to go for India’s 18th general elections, the pan of politics is being slowly heated up by all major political parties. Congress first stirred the pot with its Bharat Jodo Yatra. Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) is turning on the heat with its push for caste census in Bihar. KCR’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi updated its name to Bharat Rashtra Samithi just to shine light on its national ambitions. And battered by the arrest of its ministers, AAP is trying to ignite its future by directly picking a fight with the PM. But, it is the BJP which is making the biggest splash with its relentless delegation of central agencies to scare and silence any opposition as well as its continued march of inaugurating development projects, including its most important one — the Ram Mandir — slated to be unveiled just before the elections.
For over a decade, BJP has witnessed an ever-increasing popularity among the people of India, legitimised by its stunning victories in the previous two Lok Sabha elections. In 2019, it received 37.36% of the votes, the highest by a political party since 1989. For full disclosure, I have never voted for the BJP in my life. In 2014, the first general election after I became eligible, I voted for an idealistic AAP hoping that the idealism would stick (it didn’t; I was thoroughly disappointed). In 2019, I didn’t cast my vote, distanced from my constituency due to work as well as due to a sense of exasperation at the available options.
But, as 2024 draws closer, I might be inclined to change my mind and do something I never thought I would: vote for the BJP.
Warming up to the BJP
Honestly, I’ve never been enthusiastic about the Bharatiya Janata Party as a political option. During 2013–14, as the nation was being swept into the euphoria of a strongman leader vowing to take India to new heights of progress and dominance, I remained fairly sceptical of that promise. I was aware not only of the shaky premises on which the much advertised Gujarat model was based, but also of the intensely communal history of the party’s origins and its subsequent role in major riots. But, as the newly elected government of Narendra Modi began to announce a slew of measures to tame inflation, salvage a dwindling economy and restore investor confidence, I started feeling a little better about the regime. Personally, Modi’s first Independence Day address — where he laid the foundations of Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, Digital India, Make in India and Jan-Dhan Yojana — was the moment I realised that things may not be as bad as I had thought.
Indeed, over the last nine years, the BJP government at the Centre has implemented a bunch of excellent policy measures which makes you feel proud as an Indian. The execution of important infrastructure projects like the Bengaluru-Mysuru Expressway, or the introduction of the faster Vande Bharat trains and the sprawling Vistadome coaches in Railways shows the government’s commitment to enhance the economy’s efficiency and boost productivity. In fact, the administration has been able to infuse innovation in almost every sector of the modern economy and industry: from using energy-efficient LED bulbs for streets to awarding production-linked incentives to industries like semiconductor manufacturing, from introducing the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code to solve the crippling crisis of bad loans, to digitising corruption-prone processes like coal blocks and telecom spectrum auctions, and the list goes on. The government has also been able to push through some long-awaited reforms on which Indians had almost given up all hope: like unifying the indirect tax structure under GST, and finally resolving the Air India conundrum by selling it to its original parent.
Compromises made
Among such achievements, however, there have been some misfires too. Managing a country as vast and diverse as India is obviously a gigantic ask from any administration, and hence, it’s generally a good idea to consult, discuss and incorporate feedback from various stakeholders before committing to important decisions, even if that process is slow and painful. But the BJP government, powered by the vision of a strongman, have often ignored the consultations altogether. The most glaring result of this approach was Demonetisation, an exercise so profound in its impact that India’s GDP growth rate decelerated in each successive year since 2016, and yet a decision on which the government sidestepped the warnings of everyone including the RBI Governor. In fact, the government’s inclination for uplifting the economy by majorly addressing the supply-side issues (through disbursal of business loans and ramping up infrastructure) while ignoring the weakness in demand (it reduced MNREGA spending), has often come under criticism by experts and Opposition, but the regime has bulldozed ahead with its policies.
The dealbreaker
Still, given the list of successful policy implementations by the government, I am willing to accept the occasional misfires or its adamancy to stick to the supply-side school of macroeconomics. After all, in a post-COVID world which is battling inflation, war and disease, India has managed to remain fairly stable. I am also willing to give some benefit of doubt to the government for its handling of the pandemic — whether it is the sudden clamping of lockdown which left millions in the lurch, or the delays in shoring up medical infrastructure before the deadly second wave — since the pandemic was quite unprecedented and since no other country did a good job either. But then, there have been other, more notorious misdeeds of the government which are even harder to ignore, like the illegal snooping on Opposition leaders and activists using Israel’s Pegasus spyware, the suspension of Internet services in Kashmir following the Abrogation of Article 370 (they remained suspended for more than a year), or its blatant protection of Gautam Adani after credible reports accused his group of companies of stock manipulation, accounting fraud and spiralling debt.
And still, these are not the most sinister or permanently damaging actions of this government. Given enough time, the nation can recover from a pandemic, boost demand in its economy, or bring a corrupt crony capitalist to justice.
By far, the most unforgiving and consequential policy direction which the ruling party has been championing is its push to make India a Hindu nation. And that is the final nail in the coffin of my hopes that I would, one day, vote for the BJP.
The Hindutva push
A cursory look at the origins of the BJP is enough to understand its ideology which, at present, is transforming the nation beyond recognition and repair. BJP’s ancestor in British India was Hindu Mahasabha, an organisation which identified India as a Hindu rashtra and whose leader, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, developed the principles of the Hindu nationalist ideology called Hindutva. After Independence, a section broke away from the Hindu Mahasabha and formed a political party called Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) under the aegis of the RSS. The BJS continued to bat for the ideas of Hindutva, including a nationwide ban on cow slaughter, removal of the special status of Jammu & Kashmir under Article 370, and an end to the overall appeasement of Muslims and minorities in a country which always belonged to the Hindus. The BJS later became the BJP, which burst into national consciousness in late 1980s during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. It spearheaded the demand to construct a Ram Mandir in place of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, effectively calling for a demolition of the centuries old Islamic structure. Amidst unprecedented bloodshed unleashed across the country due to intense communal polarisation, the structure did come down in 1992, but the fortunes of the BJP went up as it formed a government at the Centre for the first time in 1996.
Since then, the party has been working tirelessly to implement its agenda — Article 370 was removed in 2019, the construction of the Ram Mandir started in 2020, and multiple state governments have enacted laws to ban cow slaughter, forbid religious conversions and prohibit marriages between Muslim boys and Hindu girls. Perhaps the most far-reaching law passed by the current government is the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the accompanying exercise of NRC, which on paper refuses to accept Muslim refugees in a country founded on the ideals of secularism, but which in practice can be weaponised to render Muslims stateless. Outside the purview of the Parliament, an entire ecosystem of echo chambers and propagandists has been established — much like a mirror image of the Leftist ecosystem under Congress — which fuels communal hatred, maligns political leaders from the Opposition and exaggerates the achievements of the BJP government under the leadership of Narendra Modi. The clarion calls for declaring India a Hindu nation now emerge not from the fringe elements but from the elected representatives who have the silent, and sometimes vocal, backing of the government.
The question of the ‘vote’
When faced with such criticism of the current regime, some of the more pragmatic supporters of the BJP put forward a very valid argument that our options as voters are severely limited. In spite of being a multi-party democracy, we almost always have to vote for the lesser of the two evils. So if BJP doesn’t win elections in 2024 (a scenario extremely far-fetched), the current government will most likely be replaced by a Congress-led alliance with support from communist and extreme Left parties, which will certainly be a tragedy. Such a regime will be corrupt, inefficient and minority-appeasing at best, and might even fuel Islamist and Maoist tendencies at worst, thereby taking the country to the other extreme of a theocratic, illiberal state.
But the fact is, with the impeccable organisational efficiency the BJP is famous for, the incredible money and muscle power it has accumulated, and the thriving right-wing ecosystem that it has nurtured in the last decade, BJP’s chances of success in making India a Hindu nation are presently much greater than a new hotchpotch government succeeding in its own vicious agenda. India doesn’t deserve to be a Hindu nation or an Islamic state or a communist, oligarchic state. And that is the reason I do not want to vote for the BJP or any party which seeks to take my country towards theocracy and autocracy.
What can we do?
Speak up. Speak against the divisive policies, the inciting speeches, the open display of communal hatred and arrogant repression of dissent by ALL political parties. India’s politics will change only when all of us realign our priorities as a nation and start holding our representatives accountable for their promises of development and peace. Most of us remain ignorant or comfortably oblivious of the extremist tendencies of the party we like, which allows the politicians to consistently push the envelope without the worry of repercussions. This sheer arrogance needs to be kept under check, which can only be done by an aware and enlightened electorate.
So, who knows, if enough number of BJP supporters start demanding that the party focused more on its policies of economic progress and peaceful cultural development, then maybe one day the party will be forced to tone down its communally-charged politics. The path towards that day will open only when we decide to change.
(If you want to understand BJP’s insane popularity in a country known for peace and brotherhood, do check out my article Understanding the modern aggressive Hindu)
