For the first time in a decade, BJP’s chokehold on the OBC imagination has been challenged at the national level.
By OMAR RASHID
In 2015, a year after Narendra Modi became prime minister, his party faced the challenge of a mahagathbandhan of backward caste leaders, Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav, in the Bihar Assembly election. The BJP’s campaign was strained after Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP’s ideological fountainhead, pitched for a review of the reservation policy.
To offset the damage caused by Bhagwat’s alarmist remarks, Modi communalised the issue and tried to project his opponents as pro-Muslim. He accused them of scripting a devious plan to snatch the share of reservations from Dalits, tribals and backward castes and give it away to Muslims. The BJP lost that election badly and a lot of water has flown down the Ganges since. But the Bihar episode reminds us that there is nothing novel about the way in which Modi is once again pitting marginalised Hindu communities against a religious minority through concerted amplification of manufactured insecurity and wilful distortion of the Opposition’s promises.
The BJP is Resorting to its Old Trick
The stakes are much higher in 2024.
Looking for a third term, Modi’s campaign showcased grand dreams of a Viksit Bharat, promising them Virasat bhi, Vikas bhi (a metaphor for Hindu cultural revivalism as well as modern development). However, with the onset of voting, the saffron party’s boisterous pitch about its wide range of achievements over the last decade has been condensed into desperately advertising its main national opponent as a villain out to loot the rights of OBC, Dalits and tribals to appease Muslims, their “vote bank.”
This story was originally published in thequint.com. Read the full story here.