It’s time Modi shears his beard

For long Prime Minister Narendra Modi occupied the proscenium of the Great Indian Theatre of Democracy with his flowing beard resembling an archetypical ancient sage or as some thought Rabindranath Tagore Modirsquos conduct was neither sage nor poetlike He promised Asol Parivartan or real change for West Bengal but also catcalled Mamata Banerjee with his ldquoDidiODidirdquo cry and allowed his party to communalise the Assembly election campaignOn May 2 the ledger was tallied The Bharatiya Janata Party failed to conquer West Bengal retained Assam and could not breach the South Puducherry is a consolation victory for it scarcely counts in the national election These results will have even hardboiled BJP supporters agree that a monthlong polling perceived to have been scheduled at the Union governmentrsquos behest had Modi take his eyes off the rising COVID19 graphThey will also know that the queues of bodies at crematoriums will have the Opposition to popularise the narrative that Modi led India into a viral apocalypse as The Australian newspaper claimed This is bad news for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh where Chief Minister Adityanathrsquos yogic pretensions have not saved its populace from the ravages of COVID19 They will unlikely forget their torment when early next year they elect a new Assembly for Uttar Pradesh which sends 80 MPs to the Lok SabhaLosses in big states will put the skids under the BJP Past trends show the party ruling Kolkata wins the largest chunk of West Bengalrsquos 42 Lok Sabha seats On top of it the DMK snatched the throne from the AIADMK a BJP ally in Tamil Nadu which elects 39 MPs The Left Hindutvarsquos diehard ideological foe defied history to retain power in Kerala which has a kitty of 20 MPsThe results underscore the limitation of Hindutva a national politicoreligious ideology to subsume regional identities anchored in language Against Banerjeersquos campaign of insider versus outsider the BJP offered development and Hindutva which demonises Muslims for uniting the socially diverse Hindu community Banerjeersquos appeal to West Bengalrsquos exceptionalism asking its voters to not let the State become a communal cauldron triggered a secular consolidation It saw the coming together of segments of the muchmaligned bhadralok or gentlefolk with lower classes and castes many of whom are beneficiaries of Banerjeersquos welfare policiesHindutva has always coveted Tamil Nadu where the BJP sought to project the DMK as antiHindu It failed not least because demonising Muslims seems a lie in a state where they are just six per cent Muslims are also an element of the inclusive Dravidian identity which is predicated upon subaltern assertion against the BrahminicalSanskritHindi imposition of the BJP With the AIADMK performing better than expected the BJP will find it hard to gobble up that party for masquerading as a significant political poleHindutvarsquos strategy to communalise regional identity was successful in Assam where the BJP overcame the fury over the Citizenship Amendment Act by portraying the alliance between the Congress and Badruddin Ajmalrsquos party as an invitation to Muslims from Bangladesh to flood the State The BJPrsquos task was made easier as the Congress reneged on its promise of aligning with the two parties spawned by the social movement there the Raijor Dal and the Assam Jatiya Parishad Congress also lacks a local leader with spunkWhat must sting the Congress is its failure to wrest Kerala where power alternates between the United Democratic Front that it leads and the ruling Left Democratic Front A segment of the Congress could now switch to the BJP which has been attracting the uppercaste base of the former It was to appease the conservative upper castes that the Congress softpedalled on Hindutva mdash and lost a percentage of minority and progressive votes By contrast Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan forged a social coalition of the Other Backward Classes Dalits Muslims and Christians evident from the allocation of party ticketsThe Congress has become a worry for the Opposition From 1989 to 2019 as independent researcher Vignesh Karthik KR has shown regional parties together accounted for 44 per cent or more of the national voteshare in the Lok Sabha elections During the same period the Congressrsquos share plummeted from 40 per cent to 19 per cent and the BJPrsquos grew from 11 per cent to 37 per cent These figures show the BJPrsquos rise has been at the expense of the Congress which has more or less lost its upper caste base to its national rivalThe upper caste leadership of the Congress needs to acquire a more subaltern identity Or it should strive to win its erstwhile middle classupper caste supporters whose privileges could not shield them from the misery arising out of the mishandling of the COVID19 crisis Rahul Gandhi must grow from being the nationrsquos consciencekeeper to an Opposition leader whose politics is successful beyond TwitterAs for the prime minister it is time he sheared his beard before he steps again into the proscenium of the Great Indian Theatre of Democracy for COVID19 has taught the nation that elections and governance are serious business not just a drama for entertaining and communalising Indians His beard unfortunately has come to symbolise precisely thatThe writer is a senior journalist Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper