Despite the BJP, alleged for its appalling strategies, is back in power, albeit with the support of allies, there is hope that the idea of a secular, pluralist India will not change in the near future.
Frankly, I was gobsmacked. For a few brief shining hours on the morning of June 4, as the results of the counting of votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were progressively announced on TV, I could not believe my eyes and ears. Was it really happening? Was the BJP really falling short of a simple majority?
TV channels, YouTube influencers and every other form of media had been expounding for the last several months that the BJP’s victory was a done deal. The only question mark was over how many seats it would win along with its allies – whether 350 or 370 or more than 400. The exit poll results on June 1 set the seal on this expectation. There were about a dozen, and all predicted that the NDA would get between 350 and 400 seats.
As the results unfolded, I feared: would early voting trends change by the evening? It had happened with past elections. They did not, making the 2024 election easily the most significant in the country’s history since 1977 – when too an arrogant, steamrolling dictatorship had been stopped in its tracks.
No doubt the BJP’s reverse has not been as comprehensive as Indira Gandhi’s defeat 47 years ago. It is back in power, albeit with the help of allies, and Narendra Modi is once again the country’s prime minister. No doubt there are states where there has been no dent in the BJP’s popularity, where it has won the same number of seats as in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections or even improved its tally – Odisha, in particular, where there seems to have been a wave in its favour, but also Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Assam, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh.
No doubt the urban, educated voter’s continuing love affair with the BJP – the party won all the seats in Delhi, Bangalore and (along with its Shiv Sena Shinde ally) Mumbai, as well as in some other major towns – is disturbing. No doubt there are major fault lines in the opposition INDIA alliance, which could widen into cracks and splits anytime, leading to defections and strengthening the BJP-NDA position. No doubt the BJP could rebound, having assessed and corrected tactical mistakes, but with its pernicious Hindutva ideology as strong as ever.
But for the time, let us savour the moment. There is hope. There is hope that, hemmed in by its dependence on allies, the BJP’s demonising of Muslims – calling them infiltrators and terrorists, repeatedly recalling the alleged atrocities of Islamic rulers 300-800 years ago – will reduce. There is hope that the appalling tactic of using agencies like the CBI, the Enforcement Directorate, or the Income Tax Department to harass and indefinitely jail opposition party leaders, will stop. There is hope that the disgraceful targeting of activists, independent media and even autonomous think tanks with fabricated cases – think Bhima Koregaon, Newsclick, the Centre for Policy Research and many more instances – will see some restraint. There is even hope that sections of the godi media might course correct.
Above all, there is hope that the idea of a secular, pluralist India, as envisioned by our Constitution makers, will not change in the near future. I feel myself breathing a little more freely after June 4.
Veteran journalist and author of the book, The Disruptor: How Vishwanath Pratap Singh Shook India. He can be reached at debashish.mukherji@gmail.com
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