Some basic political facts remain unchanged in the aftermath of the protest that began over a month ago at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, spread to other cities and resulted in the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as Union education minister on July 25. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was, before Saturday and remains today, the single-largest party in the parliament of the world’s largest democracy. Seventeen states have BJP chief ministers and four more are from partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
This electoral dominance, however, is only part of a broader political success story. Unlike the Congress and other mass parties, the BJP has been, since its inception, the political vehicle for a larger ideological goal and just one scion of a massive parivar. From the fountainhead of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh emerge several organisations which, together, have an imprint in practically every aspect of social, cultural and political life. A national trade union (Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh), farmers’ organisation (Bharatiya Kisan Sangh), educational institutions, a student union (ABVP) and a youth organisation (Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha) are just some prominent examples. Then there are think tanks, academics, researchers, NGOs, a host of ideological fellow travellers and, after 12 years of state power, hangers-on that form the many nodes of this vast “ecosystem”.
A missing diagnosis
Arguably, it is this all-of-society approach, and the broad sense of “cultural nationalism” that animates it, that has helped the BJP gain and maintain its pole position.
In the current moment, then, some questions arise: Why was this vast, diffuse parivar unable to gauge the level of disaffection among the youth, and many other sections of society?
For over a month — even as student leaders and Sonam Wangchuk were on hunger strike demanding Pradhan’s resignation — there was not a single credible interlocutor that could simply walk to Jantar Mantar and have a conversation with the agitators. It would be perhaps naive, ill-advised and unprecedented for senior cabinet members to go to the protest site without assurances of a “deal”. But what about the “young” that support the government or are part of it?
Not Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, barely heard or seen as the city centre became the epicentre of the national conversation, who came up in student politics in the ABVP. Not MP Tejasvi Surya, national president of the BJYM. Not the host of professors, teachers and young leaders who for the better part of a decade have championed the Narendra Modi government, double-engine sarkar, New India, “decolonisation” and all but said that centuries of “slavery” ended in 2014.
The answer to this lack of political ability — the seeming lack of credibility of those connected with the ruling dispensation with the protesters — can be traced to the general entropy that accompanies being in power and the very particular nature in which the Modi-Shah BJP has exercised it.
How the BJP and Sangh Parivar got here
First, after 12 years as a ruling party, the BJP’s most valuable asset has eroded. A cadre-based party relies on two-way communication between the karyakarta and the leadership, with the former serving as the conduit to deliver the party’s message to the people and the feedback from the general public to the leadership. As the cadre becomes part of the state machinery, its ability to gauge the public mood diminishes. And a centralised high command that directs the political message without enough consultation — and criticism — means too many messengers worry they will get shot.
An extension of the first factor is the flattening of power within the Sangh Parivar itself. For long, the PM’s popularity, his ability to win election after election, meant that there were no major alternate power centres within the party or the broader Hindutva fold. Leaders like Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for example, were kicked upstairs — in essence, success was punished. Many of the people in party and parivar now enjoy only a derived credibility that lives and dies with the PM, Home Minister and government.
Third, polarisation and the demonisation of vast swathes of people for political and ideological ends cuts both ways. Minorities, students, farmers, dissenters of every stripe have been branded everything from “anti-national” to “urban Naxals”. Sharpening divides may have yielded — and perhaps may continue to — electoral results. But they have also shrunk the middle ground that enables conversation and negotiation in good faith.
Then there is, to use an Americanism, the danger of “drinking your own Kool-Aid”. For years, the current dispensation has framed 2014 not merely as a change in government but a Second Coming of the Republic. Crises in education and employment, structural inequalities of caste, tribe and religion — the problems of a vast and still poor country where a plurality receive free ration — were barely acknowledged. Instead, a focus on centralisation (One Nation, One “fill in the blank”), hagiographies of a leader and fantastical claims of being a vishwaguru were pushed. Propaganda has its place in politics. The propagandist, though, should not believe it. If she does, brewing discontent becomes invisible to her.
Street as playground for democracy
Finally, the usual system of checks and balances, the pressure valves of institutional democracy, has long ceased to function adequately. The political Opposition is a shadow of itself — the 2024 general election result was a fillip, though — partly because it has failed to adapt to BJP dominance but also as a result of the pressures from agencies, parties being broken, “washing machine” politics, etc. Statutory bodies like the Election Commission appear increasingly partisan. In such a situation, the street becomes among the few available arenas for democratic expression.
There is a temptation for the Opposition to view this moment as the “turning of the tide”, as the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. That would be woefully premature. One thing, however, is clear: Even if the government continues to believe in its invincibility, there are enough people who don’t. That’s a disjunction “parivar” might not like.
The writer is deputy associate editor, The Indian Express. aakash.joshi@expressindia.com
. As the cadre becomes part of the state machinery, its ability to gauge the public mood diminishes. And a centralised high command that directs the political message without enough consultation — and criticism — means too many messengers worry they will get shot (File photo) 
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