The Hindu Quotient

FIRST HARYANA, NOW MAHARASHTRA. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) triumphal blitz seems unfatigued and unstoppable. Both are splendid wins; the difference is only in the brilliance of the splendour.

Haryana showcased the classic instance of BJP thumping all odds, even odds posed by Congress itself. It wrested a successive third term in power for a party that had barely existed there 15 years ago. Today, the misrule and pervasive corruption of the Hooda clan seems like a smoggy memory.

And after more than a month, BJP’s Maharashtra marathon has bedazzled the nation and bombed the Maha Vikas Agadi (MVA) into oblivion. Calling it a tsunami is an understatement.

The Shinde Sena alone has netted seven seats more than the combined tally of MVA. BJP has delivered its best-ever performance, sweeping 132 of the 145 seats it contested. That’s a strike rate of 91 per cent. It is also a massive a jump of 27 seats from 2019. Clearly, in these five years, the party was quietly climbing from strength to strength.

Overall, the BJP-led Mahayuti coalition now commands a three-fourths’ majority in the Maharashtra Assembly. With little exaggeration, this could well be a history-altering election in Maharashtra politics.

Until 2019, the state’s political arena witnessed a largely quad­rangular contest fought among BJP, Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and Congress. Barring two occasions, it was ruled by the Congress-NCP coalition after Sharad Pawar abandoned his mothership. One is reminded of a 1988-89 proph­ecy foretold by a Nehru-era Congressman of how “Rajiv Gandhi and his computer boys” would destroy the party in Maharashtra. And in 1999, Sharad Pawar walked out.

Cut to the present elections. In terms of its political configura­tion, the most charitable way to describe it is khichdi. No party apart from BJP had crossed 100 seats even in the 2019 polls.

The current verdict, one hopes, might spell the gradual death of the Sharad Pawar brand of divisive politics, which he had honed and mastered during his decadal stint in Congress, which has now been reduced to a non-entity. A popular cartoon is doing the rounds on social media. It depicts Sonia Gandhi asking Rahul the full form of EVM. Rahul’s reply: Everyone Votes for Modi.

The overwhelming consolidation of votes in favour of the BJP-led Mahayuti needs some unpacking.

In his preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, George Orwell makes a memorable observation that has univer­sal validity: “In a [democracy], the man in the street has no real understanding of things like concentration camps, mass depor­tations, arrests without trial, press censorship, etc. Everything he reads about a country like the USSR is automatically translated into English terms, and he quite innocently accepts the lies of totalitarian propaganda.”

The history of Congress and its clone-parties shows that it sustained power for decades precisely through such quasi-totali­tarian propaganda. Its apogee was Emergency, which transformed Indian prisons into diluted versions of concentration camps. How­ever, because Congress habitually fails to learn anything from its blunders, itunleashedafreshroundoftoxicpropagandaagainstSikhs, which eventually caused their pogrom in 1984 at the hands of Congress goons.

A similar propaganda campaign cost BJP dearly in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra. This time, MVA disinformation centred on fear-mongering about how BJP would change the Constitution and rob Dalits of their rights.

When we place all this in a historical and sociological context, several insights emerge.

The success of every mass movement that India witnessed after Independence shares a common theme. The armed Naxal ‘move­ment’ (which is politespeak for waging an internal war against the Indian sovereign state), the Lohia movement, the Samajwadi brand of politics, Kanshi Ram’s agitation or various ‘social justice’ movements, have all come at the cost of further fraying the Hindu social cohesion that had withstood tremendous pressures for nearly a millennium.

In an insightful 1996 article, the late Ram Swarup, an original thinker, supplied perhaps the best evaluation of this style of politics: “Caste in old India was a cooperative and cultural principle; but it is now being turned into a principle of social conflict. In the old dispensation, castes followed dharma and its restraints; they knew how far they could go. But now a caste is a law unto itself; it knows no self-restraint except the restraint put on it by another class engaged in similar self-aggrandisement. The new self-styled social justice intellectuals and parties do not want an India without castes, they want castes without dharma.” [Emphases added]

Likewise, in his November 15 essay (‘Defender of the Faith’, Open, November 25, 2024), PR Ramesh underscores the same point: “It is one thing to argue that underprivileged and downtrodden individuals and communities be given justice but something en­tirely sinister to claim that India can remain democratic only if it remains divided. There is no consideration of the consequences of such divisions…”

And then we have that other obvious elephant in the room: un­ending appeasement of the most fanatical elements of the Muslim clergy. Its lethal consequences are visible most recently in the Waqf controversy, which if not con­tained with an iron hand, has all the makings of a civil war.

All these and other ingredients have played varying roles in the outcome of the Maharashtra polls.

The BJP-led Mahayuti’s out­standing victory is the result of several learnings. It appears that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has learned the bitter lesson bit­terly after the shock loss in the 2024 General Election: Sabka Saath Sabka Vikaas is a slogan that can emanate only from the Hindu side. BJP’s 2024 humiliation in Ayodhya itself is the surest proof of this. Another proof is available on a broader canvas: almost every non-BJP formation pointedly and unfailingly derides BJP as a ‘Hindu party’. There is no ambiguity in the opponent’s mind.

The Hindu consolidation, which led to Mahayuti’s triumph, once again underscores the same civilisational imperative—that BJP as a Hindu party must keep winning in order to keep the global nexus of anti-Hindu forces at bay

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In this light, it seems BJP got its act together. Its Maharashtra cam­paign was almost exclusively de­signed and implemented around Hindu consolidation. The pas­sionate invocations of Chhatra­pati Shivaji, Sambhaji, and the Jai Bhavani trumpet-call, power­fully resonated with the voter. Added to this vigorous mix was a plainly worded slogan that really decimated the MVA: Ek hai to safe hai (a variant of Yogi Adityanath’s batenge to katenge).

The posterboy of MVA’s rout is undoubtedly Sharad Pawar who, for more than three decades, had an unchallengeable veto in Maharashtra’s politics. The manner in which he has been thor­oughly isolated now owes to Hindus who voted en masse as Hindus.

But the story really begins in 2019 with Uddhav Thackeray’s unseemly haste and vainglorious ambition to occupy a position he was thoroughly unfit for, and had no mandate to serve. In the process, he singlehandedly wrecked the Hindutva legacy that his larger-than-life father had so painstakingly built. Even worse was losing the original Shiv Sena party, lock, stock, and symbol. This is exactly how the pan-Indian, imperial Maratha Empire imploded: ego-driven quarrels for power climaxing in annihilation.

The Hindu consolidation, which led to the Mahayuti’s triumph, once again underscores the same civilisational imperative—that BJP as a Hindu party must keep winning in order to keep the global nexus of anti-Hindu forces at bay. Sans such unity, we are treated to the ongoing spectacle of lawlessness and soft jihad occurring in Karnataka. Or the scary phenomenon of how with just 2 per cent of population, an illegal mosque was raised in a state like Himachal Pradesh, which was so far immune from such things.

The unprecedented levels of Hindu unity displayed in Ma­harashtra should be replicated throughout India. Only this will eventually ensure a future in which cultural renewal and dharmic governance become the only concerns during election time, and not caste and group-based voting. The true savants of the freedom struggle and the luminaries of the modern Indian renais­sance had precisely this vision in mind when India became politically free. The ‘nation’ in truncated Bharatavarsha, known as India, is actually Hindu soci­ety. This society is what keeps the nation politically united even after suffering a cataclysm called Partition. The pathetic mess called Pakistan is the best proof of this reality.

The story of how BJP and its allies forged Hindu unity reads like a spiri­tual thriller. Its clue lies in the heartfelt thanks that Devendra Fadnavis offered to the Sant Samaj moments after victory was announced. He specifically lauded the selfless role played by warkaris, kirtankars, prabodhankars and kathavachaks who, since July, untiringly toured every village in Maharashtra and awakened Hindus to the existential danger they faced. The electoral result is the surest validation of how their mes­sage proved devastatingly effective. The message is breathtaking in its simplicity. In plain language, it is: You as Hindus can take pride in your caste only if you permanently remain within the Hindu fold.

But what they said is nothing new or original. They simply dipped into an ancient Parampara (tradition), which is what gave suchauthoritytotheirvoice. ItgoesstraightbacktotheBhaktimove­ment in which the whole Sant Samaj across Bharatavarsha, cutting across centuries, firmly held the fort for Hindu Dharma and Hindu society until Kshatriyas could recover and recoup their strength to launch physical wars of resistance against tyrannical Muslim rule. A central trait in this Bhakti-movement-propelled Hindu resurgence is especially noteworthy. It is rooted in the fundamental Sanatana notion of cyclical time. This belief infused the patience of the eons into the Bhakti movement. Thus, akin to how a river constantly refreshes itself through continuous flow, the sadhus and sages of the Bhakti movement birthed generations of disciples who car­ried the message forward. Its brilliant climax was the grand Hindu resurgence helmed by Chhatrapati Shivaji, a dwarfish force of na­ture who gave nightmares to Aurangzeb, and paved the way for the demolition of the Mughal Empire. And Chhatrapati Shivaji remains one of the proudest sculptures of Samartha Ramadas, his guru and an unparalleled icon of the Bhakti movement. The aforementioned warkaris, kirtankars, et al utilised this abundant but latent historical strength with aplomb. This reminds us of the late Nani Palkhivala’s perceptive remark that Hindus are like a donkey carrying a sack of gold on its back thinking it to be a burden. It appears that Hindus as a whole need to be constantly kept in a state of active awareness even on the most fundamental elements. That they are the inheritors of an inimitable philosophical and cultural heritage. And that today, they are living amidst the final battle for survival. The Maharashtra victory shows that this message, delivered by the Sant Samaj, reso­nated with them loud and clear.

In a complementary effort, the Rash­triya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) held a record 60,000 meetings throughout Maharashtra focussing on a simple slogan: Sajag Raho (stay vigilant).

In all this, the bigger loser, apart from MVA, was the academia-intelli­gentsia-media complex. Few had the proverbial pulse of the voter. Few even understood the fundamental nature of BJP’s campaign. And almost none had an idea that such things like warkaris, kirtankars, et al actually exist in their own country, forget the powerful role they play in Hindu society. The mem­bers of this complex are the seventh or eighth generation of Hindus whom Ananda Coomaraswamy hauntingly characterised as “intellectual pariahs” who “do not belong to the East or the West, the past or the future… not only has he no religion but he is as lacking in philosophy as the average Englishman… talk to him of Indian art—it is news to him that such a thing exists; ask him to translate… a letter written in his own mother tongue—he does not know it. He is indeed a stranger in his own land.”

Their election analyses show that their bankruptcy is absolute.

POSTSCRIPT

An elementary historical perspective offers much clarity with re­spect to the Maharashtra poll results. Maharashtra is the original motherland of Hindutva which, among other things, retains its reverence for one of its founding inspirations, Chhatrapati Shivaji.

If one were to use a historical parallel in a limited sense, Shivaji has trounced Afzal Khan in these elections.

About The Author

Sandeep Balakrishna

Sandeep Balakrishna is founder and chief editor of The Dharma Dispatch. He is the author of, among other titles, Tipu Sultan: the Tyrant of Mysore and Invaders and Infidels: From Sindh to Delhi: The 500-Year Journey of Islamic Invasions. He has also translated SL Bhyrappa’s Aavarana from Kannada to English

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