Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeatit. You do not have to be a psephologistto predict the outcome of the critical General Election that India will holdtwo weeks from now if the opposition does not get its act together.
On the one hand, you have the ruling BJP and Narendra Modi,ably aided and supported by the various arms and front organisations of thepowerful RSS and India’s richest business houses and corporates and theirmedia, who are determined to hold on to power at any cost. They are sparing noeffort or expense to perpetuate the myth of an Indian superpower led by astrong leader who can rein in Pakistan to win these elections. They aredesperately courting regional players as if their very future depends on it.
On the other hand, you have assorted opposition parties andtheir leaders who notwithstanding their fervent desire to throw out the BJP andModi cannot bring themselves to sacrifice their Himalayan egos to act and speakin one voice for the sake of the nation and all that is at stake. They are all busy attacking each other,rather than put up a united front against the forces that have emerged as aclear and present danger to India and the Idea of India.
BSP’s Mayawati seems to detest Rahul and Priyanka Gandhimore than she hates Modi and Amit Shah. In Delhi, former chief minister Sheila Dikshit, the old warhorse who hasinexplicably been given the reins of the party in the capital, devotes all hertime and energy plotting against Arvind Kejriwal, the Delhi chief minister, andAam Aadmi Party leader. No wonder theattempts to forge an alliance between the two parties have failed to take off.
It is the same pathetic story everywhere. Except for Maharashtra, Bihar and Karnataka,where the Congress has managed to firm up electoral alliances with SharadPawar’s NCP, Lalu Yadav’s RJD and Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (S) respectively, thegrand old party has failed to form such coalitions anywhere else, partlybecause of the reservations of its state leadership and partly because of theambitions of leaders like Mayawati.
Apparently, the mercurial Dalit leader of the BSP is stillpeeved with the Congress because of its failure to join hands with her in theHindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. She also views Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi as achallenge to her own prime ministerial ambitions. Besides, the Gandhis’attempts to revive the moribund Congress in UP and their outreach to Dalits andMuslims also said to make the BSP supremo a little insecure. Priyanka’s recentvisit to the convalescing Dalit leader Chandra Shekhar Ravan of the Bhim Armywas also seen as a challenge to Mayawati.
Unlike his more persuasive and charming mother, Rahul Gandhihasn’t been too successful in rallying opposition forces under one banner.
Notwithstanding her political inexperience, Sonia Gandhideftly brought together diverse parties and leaders with competing interestsand agendas under the UPA flag. This when the BJP government had been helmed bythe immensely charismatic Atal Behari Vajpayee, known for his gravitas andincomparable oratory, and formidable Lal Krishna Advani, the original architectof the party’s growth and success.
Under Rahul, the Congress has failed to spawn such a grandalliance against the BJP despite his sincere and relentless efforts and evenwhen all opposition parties seemingly agree on the existential threat thisorder poses to the future and integrity of Indian democracy and how it hasmethodically destroyed all institutions.
However, it is unfair to single out Rahul and the Congressfor this failure to stitch such an alliance of secular parties. Regional parties such as Mayawati’s BSP andAkhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party must equally share the responsibility for thisfiasco.
The protection of Indian democracy and its democratic andsecular institutions is not the responsibility of the Congress alone. By repeatedly spurning the Congress’invitation for an electoral alliance, the BSP and SP have now ensured atriangular contest in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state that plays adefining role in the nature and character of the government in Delhi.
A triangular contest in the battleground state where theMuslims form nearly 20 per cent of the population is bound to benefit the BJPdirectly. While the Muslim vote islikely to be split between the three parties, the BJP is certain to use this toreligiously polarise the election and attract the Hindu voter. Which is, needless to add, a recipe fordisaster.
In 2014 too, at the peak of the so-called Modi wave, UPwitnessed a triangular contest with the SP, BSP being separately pitted againstthe BJP. As a result, the BJP wonhandsomely even from predominantly Muslim cities such as Rampur, Moradabad andeven Deoband, which is home to the Dar ul Uloom, the celebrated Islamicseminary.
This is likely to happen all over the country including instates such as West Bengal where the BJP is locked in a bitter fight with theregional party in power. Even chiefminister Mamata Banerjee, who first proposed the one-to-one contest against theBJP throughout the country – that is, one opposition candidate against the BJP— in order to avoid the division of anti-BJP votes, has herself failed to walkthe talk.
Mamata has been fighting the Congress, once her parentparty, on the one hand, and the Left parties on the other, poaching their MPsand MLAs. This even when the BJPgovernment in Delhi and its minions in the state are sparing no effort totopple her.
A similar drama is being staged in the two Telugu states ofTelangana and Andhra Pradesh with regional parties and the Congress allfighting each other to directly benefit the BJP.
In short, in the face of an aggressive BJP with its winningnarrative of “one strong leader and one disciplined party,” the oppositionpresents the sorry spectacle of a divided house whose inmates are busy fightingeach other, rather than brace for the coming storm.
Rather than confronting the BJP and its barefaced liesclaiming credit for every national feat — the latest being the circus overIndia’s entry into the elite space club with the Mission Shakti when thecountry had attained this capability way back in 2012 — not to mention the failure on every front,the opposition is busy plotting against each other. They failed to tell the nation that anticslike the strikes on Bagalkot in Pakistan and shooting down a satellite in spacecould not make amends for the disastrous governance.
Instead of supporting and complementing the efforts of theCongress led by Rahul Gandhi, who has managed to put the Modi government on themat over corruption, unemployment crisis and mismanagement of the economy, theopposition refused to look beyond their own nose and self-serving agendas,squandering the momentum and the historic opportunity it presented.
Whoever is to blame for this mess, the country will pay forthe criminal failure of the opposition.
India’s opposition has failed to learn from its own historythat every time it joined forces – in 1976, in 1989 and in 2004 – to avoidmultiple contests, it succeeded in bringing down the party in power. If the BJP has the last laugh, come May 23,notwithstanding its disastrous performance on all fronts, you know who tothank.
Aijaz Zaka Syed is a former newspaper editor