As for the Mumbai terror attacks’ influence on the election outcome, two interlinked questions remain: how can the BJP actually be expected to benefit from the attacks? And why should it expect to benefit by publicly focussing on the attacks to the detriment of other issues? These questions can only be answered by taking into account some major trends concerning the nature of the political contest in India. In turn, these considerations will provide some information necessary to analyse the electoral prospects of the BJP in 2009.
By their very nature, large-scale terrorist attacks carried out by extremist Muslims can be expected to have two major implications on electoral outcomes. First, they give ordinary Indians increased doubts about physical security, and second, they arouse latent anti-Muslim sentiments among parts of the Indian electorate. The latter can lead to bloc voting among Muslim communities and may offend non-Muslim Indian voters who might otherwise decide to support the BJP. For the BJP, polarisation as a political strategy has always been a double-edged sword: at times highly beneficial, at other times damaging the party’s prospects. Polarisation on communal lines also tends to diminish the party’s acceptability among prospective allies, although a campaign centred on the terrorist attacks might have been calibrated with sufficient care to offset this possibility.
This interpretation of the effects of the Mumbai terror attacks is relevant if the cleavage in Indian politics between communalism and secular nationalism is perceived to have overarching importance, especially if this is combined with the frequent notion that the Indian electorate votes on emotional issues rather than individual or group interests. Both arguments are highly questionable. While the secular-communal cleavage certainly remains relevant, especially with regard to Muslim voting behaviour and the resulting positioning of various political parties, the defining issues of Indian politics have tend to be largely socio-economic in character, though this has, at times, been partially concealed by passionate debates centring on emotional issues.
Historically, the political contest in India centred on access by various politically organised social segments to public resources. Control over the allocation of these resources was initially in the hands of established middle class segments, often from the upper castes, and increasingly became contested in the up-and-coming social classes that were mostly on the centre-left spectrum of Indian politics. This contest constituted one of the defining characteristics of Indian politics from the 1960s to the early 1990s. The up-and-coming classes mobilised political support under the banner of social justice, while the established middle classes reacted with a political idiom that highlighted merit.
By the late 1980s, the up-and-coming classes could not no longer be excluded from political power to any significant extent
The commencement of economic liberalisation in the early 1990s marked a watershed in Indian politics: in essence, economic liberalisation partially removed the interventionist capacity of the Indian state in the economy, especially in those economic sectors that provided highly-paid employment and were thus coveted by the relatively prosperous parts of society. The removal of these economic sectors from political interference benefited those members of society who possessed competitive advantages in formal education, information, and communication skills. Politically, it served to partially transcend the conflict between established and up-and-coming members of the middle and lower-middle classes and led to the emergence of a distinct new middle class in India. Instead of a conflict between two political idioms – social justice and merit – the two political discourses increasingly co-existed separately, their relevance becoming more and more restricted to two separate socio-economic strata. While the discourse on social justice in contemporary India remains important for mobilising electoral support among the much more numerous castes that do not to a significant degree benefit from liberalisation, the discourse on merit remains highly relevant among the new middle classes that dominate the institutional framework of Indian politics and Indian publicised political opinion. Depending on the precise composition of their respective electoral support bases, Indian political parties have adapted to this paradigm change by propagating a combination of these two discourses tailored to the demands of their supporters.
This paradigm shift in Indian politics has had enormous consequences for the BJP, as the party has managed to emerge as one of the main representatives of the new middle classes, some of whom originated from the petty bourgeoisie that formed the traditional core constituency of the party. Members of these classes may not be averse to the issues of cultural identity that formed the largest part of the Hindu nationalist discourse or even to radical interpretations of these, but they can by and large be expected to base their voting decisions to a significant degree on issues that affect them more directly. Returning to the issue of the Mumbai terror attacks, and the questions raised at the outset, Indian voters are certainly directly affected by perceived threats to their physical security. However, it is questionable whether these perceptions outweigh other issues, especially economic ones. Urban middle-class voters are more likely to attribute high importance to this perceived threat than are members of other social classes, but the urban middle-class vote in India already offers significant support to the BJP, and the party has different avenues to appeal to this segment. Moreover, the party’s position on internal security is already well-known, especially among this segment of the Indian electorate.
Under these circumstances, the BJP has apparently decided to raise the issue of terrorism from time to time, but not to push the issue aggressively in its electoral campaign
If the perceived threat to physical security posed by terrorist attacks does not form a major issue in the strategic calculations of the BJP leadership, then how will the other main effect of the Mumbai terror attacks, the potential of the issue to rouse anti-Muslim sentiments, influence the party’s electoral prospects? As stated above, communal polarisation can work in the party’s favour – but it will not necessarily do so. By and large, communal polarisation can be expected to benefit the party in a number of constituencies, but in some it will be to a much lesser extent. At the pan-Indian level, communal polarisation tends to increase the motivation of hard liners in the party, both among the cadre base and among the leadership, even if it only takes place in some constituencies. It thus serves to increase party cohesion (and relations with some of the party’s sister organisations), unless placing emphasis on polarising issues affects the positioning of the party on other issues, since these changes would then be resisted by the moderates. Apart from its deterrent effect on some potential BJP supporters, polarisation is especially detrimental to alliance formation by the party. With some notable exceptions (especially during the state-level elections in Gujarat after the anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002), the BJP leadership decided against striving for communal polarisation after the mid-1990s, which indicates that party leadership perceives the disadvantages of this strategy to outweigh its benefits.
The communalist election campaign by Varun Gandhi in Pilibhit this year illustrates the dilemma that the BJP encounters when faced with open attempts at communal polarisation. The national party leadership had clearly decided already to base its election campaign on economic issues. Confronted with the decision of Gandhi – hardly an important party leader – to invoke the communalist agenda in Pilibhit, however, the party could not decide to disown Gandhi, given the appeal of his agenda to some of the cadres and leadership of the party. The scope of media reportage on the incident has energised these sections within the party, and this has been much more beneficial to the BJP than an immediate electoral dividend, which would largely be constricted to a couple of parliamentary constituencies in a state where the BJP is relatively weak. At the same time, the issue has hijacked the party’s election campaign, one that was based on its economic and development agenda, and may have significantly reduced the chance of forming a post-election alliance.
The last aspect has enormous potential to diminish the party’s chances of forming a government at the centre. In the long term, a single incident involving a political leader of minor importance does not affect the party’s prospects of forming an alliance with secular nationalist parties. The rigid separation between secular and communal political parties, as the idea of a secular-communal cleavage suggests, does not exist in this way on the ground. Still, the media response to the controversy is likely to have an impact in the short term, including the immediate aftermath of the elections: the period in which the negotiating process is taking place that will determine the process of government formation
It is quite possible that the BJP will come to regret the Varun Gandhi episode at that time
Government formation in India has been unpredictable for some time already, even if the approximate strengths of the major parties are not. Relatively minor fluctuations in the number of parliamentary seats gained by the respective parties can have major implications for the eventual formation of governments. In terms of both seats and vote share, the BJP is likely to stagnate – losses in Rajasthan or Orissa can be offset by gains in Gujarat and Karnataka; the party may perform somewhat better in Bihar and Jharkhand but slightly worse in Chhattisgarh. The regional fluctuation does not impact its overall position in the Indian political contest to a large extent; the BJP generally failed to expand significantly after the mid-1990s. Its core constituency – the new middle classes – is certainly still growing, but the impact of this growth on Indian elections can be measured in decades, not between general elections.
The party’s ability to form two successive governments between 1998 and 2004 was mostly due to its acquisition of regional allies and not to significantly increased electoral support. Efforts by the BJP to strengthen its prospects in government formation by turning towards select regional parties had already collapsed in the run-up to the 2004 general elections. While the BJP has attempted to re-consolidate the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) with partial success, the recent termination of the alliance by the Biju Janata Dal in Orissa has wrecked this process of consolidation despite the return of the Asom Gana Parishad, the Indian National Lok Dal and the Rashtriya Lok Dal to the NDA fold.
The BJP's main rival, the Congress, has not fared much better in any respect
The gradual decline of the party in terms of vote shares is likely to continue. In 2004, the Congress leadership managed to partially offset this decline by emulating the BJP in reaching out to the regional parties, eventually leading to the creation of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). With the BJP failing to comprehensively revive the NDA, the Congress would have had a major competitive advantage but for the surprisingly rapid collapse of the Congress-led alliance system in recent months. The Congress also faces the predicament that a significant part of its parliamentary strength (and that of the UPA) after 2004 was based on its exceedingly good performance in a small number of states – especially Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Haryana and Delhi for the Congress; Bihar and Tamil Nadu for the UPA allies; and both West Bengal and Kerala for the Left Front, which provided outside support. Even if the Congress and its allies were able to win a large number of seats in these states, their performance is unlikely to match the 2004 election results. The Congress can hope to gain some seats in Rajasthan and possibly even in Maharashtra and a few in some other states, but overall its share of parliamentary seats is likely to come down.
The Left Front parties have attempted to form an alternative alliance, another Third Front experience, but this attempt has so far not been successful enough to offer an alternative to the alliances led by the two main national parties. In its present composition, the Third Front can emerge as a viable political player only if both the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) join the alliance and perform well in their respective areas of strength. Even in this case, the alliance would need to be expanded significantly in order to compel the Congress to support it from the outside. While recent developments indicate that the AIADMK will perform well in Tamil Nadu, the BSP prospects are much more difficult to ascertain. Most of the BSP parliamentary seats will be from Uttar Pradesh (UP) and the contest there between the BSP and the Samajwadi Party (SP) is much more balanced than it has often been made out to be by the media. The very low electoral turnout in 2007 meant that the electoral success of the BSP in the 2007 state elections in UP rested more on the commitment of the party’s core constituency than on a shift of Brahmin votes to the BSP. Higher turnout in the national elections in 2009, combined with even minor fluctuations in voters’ preferences, could have large-scale implications for the electoral contest in UP.
The SP, in turn, has recently emerged as one of the most likely leaders of a group of regional parties from the centre-left political spectrum. This group could either support a Congress-led coalition government or align with the Third Front to compel the Congress to support a Third Front-led government. In the latter case, the Third Front would need to divest itself of the BSP. In general, the combined weight of the regional parties in government formation should increase, even if any Third Front government would still need outside support from either the BJP or the Congress, given the extent of the rivalry among several of the regional parties. The prospective stability of any such government has often been doubted, though the destabilising factors in the event are much more likely to stem from the ambitions of the two major national parties than from the regional constituents of such an alliance.
It is this flexibility among many of the regional parties in deciding on their respective alliance partners that makes the Indian elections of 2009 so unpredictable. At present, none of the four main options in government formation – a Congress- or BJP-led coalition government or a government by an alliance of regional parties with support from either the Congress or the BJP – can be ruled out. Media attention on the communalist campaign in Pilibhit may drastically reduce the chances of the BJP to find new allies post-election. Now that the party has decided in favour of political moderation, it would be ironic indeed if the prime ministerial ambitions of L. K. Advani were thwarted in the autumn of his political career by the communalist campaign of Varun Gandhi in an out-of-the-way constituency along the Nepali border.
Sebastian Schwecke teaches Asian politics at the Department of International Relations, Institute of Political Science, University of Leipzig. His book “New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements: The Bharatiya Janata Party between Cultural Identity and Middle Class Interests” is likely to be published in 2009.