Why BJP’s Loss in J&K is More Problematic Than its Haryana Win

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won Haryana Assembly elections for the third time consecutively. The most striking fact is that the party’s campaign in the state never centered around Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his much trumpeted ‘Modi Ki Guarantee’. Therefore, to say that BJP would once again rely on Modi as a vote-catcher in the elections to be held in Maharashtra and Jharkhand this year, and Bihar and Delhi next year, does not sound convincing.

Of course, one gets an impression from Modi’s speech delivered on Tuesday following the victory of BJP in Haryana by defeating Congress, that the party’s triumph is on account of his leadership and that it is he who would take the party forward in registering many more successes in the forthcoming elections.

But, more than the election victory in Haryana, BJP’s defeat in Jammu and Kashmir at the hands of the National Conference (NC) and Congress alliance is more scathing, because people in the Valley have rejected BJP in toto. Its success in winning 29 of 43 seats in the Jammu region looks only a face-saving mechanism.

The much vaunted and unstated objective of the Modi-Shah (Home Minister Amit Shah) duo to usher in the first Hindu Chief Minister of J&K, after they abrogated the state’s special status and reduced it to a Union Territory, without factoring in the wishes of the people of the region, has met with utter failure. The implications of BJP’s defeat in J&K for the party, therefore, are much huger than those of it winning Haryana for the third time.

The manner in which J&K has been harshly treated by the BJP regime led by Modi and the punitive measures adopted by it against media and dissenters there, negates the PM’s claim that India is the ‘mother of democracy’. Modi, Shah and other BJP leaders asked people in the rest of India to vote for BJP on the ground that special status provided in Article 370 to J&K had been repealed. They also claimed that what they did to J&K had ushered in “unprecedented peace and progress” for the people. Yet, BJP did not field candidates in 28 seats in the Valley.

Such an electoral abandonment of the Valley and its people by BJP clearly shows its lingering fear that the party would be rejected by the people. The defeat of BJP in J&K, therefore, is a clear signal that it is not acceptable to people, who, with the power of vote clearly indicted the party and its measures to humiliate them by downgrading the state to a Union Territory and not conducting elections for several years.

It was only on the orders of the Supreme Court that elections were conducted in J&K. Possibly, without explicit directions from the apex court, the elections might not have been organised for a longer period.

By rejecting BJP, the people of J&K have sent a signal to the entire nation and the world at large, conveying the crucial point that they suffered immensely by the harsh policies adopted to deal with them, without in any way containing terrorism and addressing their livelihood issues. In addition, more military and police measures were taken, compromising their rights and dignity as citizens.

In an article in The Wire, ‘A Local Victory for BJP in Haryana Can't Compensate Modi for His National-Level Setback in Kashmir,’ columnist Harish Khare observed, “It should be obvious that the outcome in J&K is of much greater consequence than the Haryana vote. In Haryana, the election results are reflective of the dynamics of social cleavages, while the post-‘370 abrogation’ vote in Jammu and Kashmir saw a contestation over continuing national arguments. The Haryana electoral victory for the BJP is mostly a local affair, the re-organized state of Jammu and Kashmir was clearly the electoral theatre for a national and global audience. No one in the BJP or in the larger Sangh parivar is entitled to any kind of satisfaction over the Kashmir vote”.

So, the manner in which BJP’s victory in Haryana is being projected as a “booster dose” for the party after it lost majority in the Lok Sabha elections held in May this year, need to be tempered by the party’s rejection in the Union Territory of J&K.

There is no doubt that the success of the party in Haryana will be used by its top leadership to promote its electoral prospects in Maharashtra and other states going to polls soon. But it is unlikely that voters of those states will be influenced by BJP forming the government for the third time in Haryana.

It is quite likely that BJP’s electoral success in Haryana will drive its leadership to accentuate its communal agenda to seek votes. It is feared that there could be accelerated polarisation on religious lines to consolidate votes. Prime Minister Modi, who spewed venom against Muslims while campaigning for his party during the 18th Lok Sabha elections, is likely to step up the tone and tenor of that toxic campaign following the party’s victory in Haryana. Divisive narratives were integral to the poll strategy and speeches by Modi while appealing for votes.

The Haryana elections was devoid of a Modi-centric campaign. With the BJP’s victory in the state, Modi would like to throw himself into centre of campaign strategy in the forthcoming Assembly elections. It would be instructive to see if such an approach would help BJP in doing well in Maharashtra, where the party and its alliance partners performed poorly in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections.  

S N Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India K R Narayanan. The views are personal.