By Anand K. Sahay
While the result of the Lok Sabha election of 2024 – which Prime Minister Narendra Modi lost but still managed to find his way to office- was a shock to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership as its propagandistic claims lay scattered, it is evident that much has changed in the eighteen months that have since elapsed.
This change has principally allowed for the disruption of processes and institutions which emanate from the Constitution of India devised through a lengthy consultative process by those who defeated colonial rule principally through Mahatma Gandhi’s mantra of non-violence – in the process rejecting appeals for the use of violent methods advanced by some, including Savarkarite protagonists, activists and propagandists, and their intimates – the ‘one- soul- in- two- bodies comrades’ of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), for whom Savarkar remains the great preceptor.
Modi is now right on top, it is clear to see. More, his opponents appear to have been pushed into the shade. In the overall political scheme, the loose glue that held up the INDIA bloc around election times earlier has begun to look oozy, if the recent Bihar election is any guide. Within the Congress party – the centrepiece of the opposition bloc – its inner cohesion in the states raises questions, to wit the unprepossessing sight of the long-drawn internal power struggle in Karnataka.
This impacts public perceptions negatively even among those who recognise that the Savarkar-lineage BJP is not a normal political party; that it is indeed an entity that seeks to envelope and overwhelm state and society through force, if necessary, in order to perpetuate itself in what might essentially turn out to be a one-party system, whatever the trappings.
A regime and ideological ecosystem asserting totalitarian control over state and civil society
It’s clear the Congress cannot endlessly delay the firming up of its organisational basis. Influential interventions in Parliament by its leaders on occasion, their occasional public speeches that cut ice and routine regime denunciations (although on viable grounds), smart video clips by the party’s spokespersons, and even the very impressive and positively received long marches of its most dynamic leader, Rahul Gandhi, are far from enough in getting the party over the finishing line in elections in most states since the party now exists in these only as a faint memory.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
