BJP is back to its favourite bogey: ‘The Other’

The measured campaign in Haryana was an aberration. In Jharkhand, the BJP has reverted to its radical right-wing playbook.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a rally in West Singhbhum before the Jharkhand Assembly election, on November 4.  | Photo Credit: PTI

Right-wing political parties and populist leaders across the world thrive on the Us vs Them narrative. In the US, President-elect Donald Trump spoke darkly about the enemies within (those who oppose him) and the immigrants (“who eat pet cats and dogs”). In Europe, all parties on the right of the ideological spectrum view immigrants with suspicion and turn people against people on the basis of race, ethnicity, and religion. In Israel, the right wing privileges its right to land and livelihood and does not lose sleep over the lost lives of Palestinian children.

In India too, the BJP has thrived by positioning itself against the Other, constantly targeting the country’s largest minority (Muslims) and the smaller ones too. Now, after its disappointing show in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the nation’s pre-eminent party is back to the kernel of its ideological existence with a vengeance. No matter what the future holds, it is clear that political plot lines that hinge on the existence of Muslims will continue to be scripted in this country. In other words, the numerical setback has not translated into an ideological defeat of the RSS/BJP.

Today, the Us vs Them messaging is a brutal reality across the world, and as an electoral ploy, it seeks to unite the majority by demonising others. The emotional and intellectual kernel of this strategy comes from low-level grievances and prejudices but is spread through cutting-edge technologies, particularly the algorithm of social media that amplifies false news and catches eyeballs by providing a platform for base prejudices.

The world is hooked onto mobile phones and seems to frequently respond to politics that divides people into silos of identity, hate, envy, and resentment. From the US to India, the hollowing out of forces that seek to oppose right-wing demagogues without significant moral postures of their own has only made it easier to change realities by first coming up with a thousand falsehoods. Grand visions of liberation, revolution, social and economic transformation, or just plain justice are drowned in this din of Twitter (now X) threads and visual derangements.

Some extraordinary things are being said in the election-bound State of Jharkhand, but it is received as routine coverage, as par for the course. It has generated no real outrage in the legacy media. In a State where tribal people constitute a quarter of the population as per the last Census (2011), and 28 of the 81 Assembly seats are reserved for Scheduled Tribes, the BJP’s pitch is centred on creating a narrative that Muslims pose a threat to Adivasis. The repeated campaign rhetoric of BJP leaders is about ghuspaithiyas (infiltrators) taking over tribal lands and marrying Adivasi girls.

In the Lok Sabha election, the BJP got no seats in the tribal-dominated parts of Jharkhand. The strategy behind the nasty rhetoric is obviously designed to counter this failure, even as the BJP seeks to hold on to the non-tribal pockets. The ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha government, led by Chief Minister Hemant Soren, is believed to be strong in the tribal areas while its principal alliance partner, the Congress, is in an organisational mess in the State. All of them constitute an “alliance of infiltrators” is what Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at his first election rally in Jharkhand. What he went on to say was quite shocking: “If they come to power, they will steal your roti, beti, and maati [livelihood, daughter, land].”

Modi is one among a pantheon of authoritarian populists who have come to power through the ballot box. But his current rhetoric marks a return to the traits he displayed during the Lok Sabha election when he made outlandish and wild statements that were not only ridiculous, but coming from a Prime Minister, potentially dangerous. To refresh memory, Modi had then said that should the Congress come to power, it would snatch away the mangalsutras of Hindu women and give them to their chosen people (read Muslims). Statements were also made about a Muslim reservation looming on the horizon even though faith-based reservation is not legally possible. And, historical Muslim rulers were frequently remembered for their atrocities.

Post-election analysis found that in places where the Prime Minister made the most extreme statements, the BJP actually lost. It could be argued that it was other factors and not Modi’s speeches per se that caused the setback for the BJP. But it did make the point that such rhetoric was not having the desired result. Subsequently, as seen during the recent Haryana election, Modi did not make himself central to the campaign, which was micromanaged by the BJP and the RSS. There were no extreme speeches by the Prime Minister because he kept himself out of the main frame of the campaign.

In Jharkhand, however, it is back to the old speeches full of communal tropes and outright insults that should ideally be called out by the Election Commission. The Jharkhand election-in-charge for the BJP is Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. A late entrant to the national party, he is trying to stand out by resorting to even more vicious rhetoric and spouting grave insults against Muslims. It does, however, seem that occasionally, he faces stiff competition from both the Prime Minister and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

The latter is facing nine crucial byelections in a State where the BJP lost many seats in the Lok Sabha election, including Faizabad where Ayodhya is located. Since then, the State leader—who is reportedly at odds with the party’s national leadership—has repeatedly focussed on the Muslim question. The subtle difference is that while in Jharkhand the BJP is seeking to evoke a fear of Muslims, in Uttar Pradesh, the Adityanath regime seeks to create a sense of pride with actions seen as “putting the minorities in their place”.

Apart from multiple cases that have been lodged against Muslim politicians, properties belonging to the minorities are bulldozed with impunity (despite Supreme Court admonitions), and laws have been brought in against religious conversion that actually give legal cover for vigilante actions by Hindutva stormtroopers. Terms such as “love jehad” (Muslims take away your daughters), “thook jehad” (Muslims spit in your food), and “land jehad” (Muslims take away your land) are promoted to communalise people’s minds with the administration’s approval.

This is, after all, the central ideological theme of the BJP and the RSS. Therefore, from Jharkhand to Uttar Pradesh to parts of Maharashtra, the BJP’s slogan now is “Batenge To Katenge” (“If we are divided, we will be cut down”). It has a raw elemental idiom to it, as the Hindi word “katenge” evokes the trope of Muslims as butchers. Within the spectrum of the Hindu Right, this is quite a journey away from the 2014 slogan “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas” (with everyone, for everyone) that was posited when Modi’s national journey began just over a decade ago.

It is intriguing that the Hindu-Muslim pitch is being amplified at a time when the NDA at the Centre survives on the support of regional parties that do not necessarily share its ideological vision, especially now that the BJP is no longer in an era of single-party dominance. It is the tone of the recent Haryana campaign that one thought the party would prefer going forward. But its reversion to the communal pitch could be a response to the demands for a caste census and the social justice plank that the opposition is busy constructing. Yet, the same opposition with the same plank faced a big setback in Haryana, where the BJP triumphed on its organisational strength alone. Or it could be that just as Donald Trump is who he is, this is also just who Modi is.

Saba Naqvi is a Delhi-based journalist and author of four books who writes on politics and identity issues.