To begin with, the locale was a message. At the BJP’s National Executive meeting that concluded in Hyderabad on Sunday, there was an emphasis on the party’s programme of expanding in the country’s south and a bid to project the BJP as the main opponent of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi – Telangana is scheduled to go to polls next year. At the “Vijay Sankalp” rally held afterwards, PM Narendra Modi spoke of Hyderabad, “Bhagyanagar” as he called it, as the fitting home for the idea of “Aatma Nirbhar” or self-reliant India, and held aloft the promise to fulfil Telangana’s needs and aspirations (“aavashyaktaon aur aakankshaon ki purti”) under a “double engine sarkar”. But there were other messages too, beyond Telangana. For one, the repeated reference to “dynasty” and “dynastic parties” was politically pointed. Of course, the BJP has spoken of dynasty before — much of its attack on the Congress, down the years, has centred on the institutionalisation of family rule in that party. Yet in Hyderabad, dynasty was spoken of as an overarching theme that folded in a host of other political ills, from casteism and regionalism to appeasement and radicalisation.
At the national executive meet, there was also an attempt to broaden the dynasty-centric attack to bring into its range the regional parties, which are mostly family-ruled – that’s the second discernible shift in the rhetoric in Hyderabad. It may come from a recognition that, as in Telangana, in its next phase of political-electoral spread, the BJP will need to primarily take on, not the Congress, but the regional party. And the political record so far shows that, as a general rule, the BJP performs far better against the Congress than it does against the regional parties. The prime minister’s reported nudge to his partymen to pitch the tent wider was significant too – reach out to deprived and downtrodden sections in communities other than Hindus, he said. The prime ministerial exhortation may be read as a bid to appropriate rather than to include, but it may also be that the PM realises that from here on, the BJP’s growth can only come from a softening of its edges.
The BJP was meeting in Hyderabad in the shadow of grim events — Nupur Sharma’s remarks against the Prophet had forced the BJP-led government on to the backfoot, and the anxieties that raised their head in the aftermath of the murder of a tailor in Udaipur have pointed to the need for a communal calm less fragile. Meanwhile, in Maharashtra, the BJP has wreaked revenge on erstwhile ally Shiv Sena, and acquired a government, but the long drawn out toppling has also touched off concerns about a will-to-conquer that stops at nothing, including the weaponisation of central agencies. Even as the BJP recalibrates its political emphases and makes strategic shifts, therefore, it must take on board some notes of caution. The politics of majoritarianism and polarisation endangers the nation’s resilience. The BJP needs to understand that communities are larger than a conglomeration of beneficiaries and Direct Benefit Transfer isn’t a magic wand that can dispel all deepening anxieties. Two, pursuit of electoral victory at all costs can come back to haunt a party that aims for “sabka saath” and, newly heard in Hyderabad, lays claim to “P2G2”, pro-people good governance.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on July 5, 2022, under the title, ‘Spreading the tent’.
