BJP-SP- A WIN WIN ATTEMPT!! outlookindia/article.aspx?287803 In the last one year, Uttar Pradesh has seen a spurt in communal riots incidents. Data from IB reports for the first eight months of the year till August 31 pegs the figure at 80. So it’s no coincidence that the politics of projecting Modi as future prime minister by the RSS and BJP also gained momentum during this period. That matters were moving in such a direction became obvious on August 25 itself, during the VHP’s aborted chaurasi kosi parikrama (CKP) yatra. Around 10 days before the CKP, senior VHP leaders had a two-hour-long closed door meeting with Mulayam Singh Yadav. No one knows exactly what transpired, but it can be safely speculated that there was consensus on some enacted rivalry between the two. The events thereafter prove the theory, one could say. The effect of that strategy was evident in the happenings in Muzaffarnagar and the small communal clashes in other parts of eastern and western Uttar Pradesh. The political ramifications of the CKP are much larger, a double-pronged approach polarising the rightist Hindutva votebank while also helping the ‘minority politics’ card of the Samajwadi Party (SP). As Hindu votes unite, its opposite number, the Muslims, too will come together. The posturing of the Hindutva forces is bound to see a counter, triggering a fear psychosis all around. Echoes of this are already reverberating across the state. BJP and SP: win-win situation In all this, two political parties, the BJP and the SP, stand to gain the most. As chaos prevails, both get a chance to fish in troubled waters, a win-win situation—‘match-fixing’ if you will. For the BJP, the dynamics of the communal rage being whipped up by fringe saffron outfits will bring the party centrestage after a long political oblivion. As a natural corollary, Muslims will rally around Mulayam who they see as their protector in UP. Piquantly, both parties have a common political enemy here, the Congress. The BJP’s favourite exhibit—Modi’s ‘development plus’ image—is even now fairly blunt in UP and Bihar. People here still see him more as Gujarat’s saviour rather than that of the nation. The party also knows that while Modi is their main strength in many places, he is also their “terrible weakness”. Their fear is that as a reaction to Modi, Muslim votes will shift to the Congress en bloc. At whatever cost, this they have to stop. For them, the SP is a “lesser evil”. Meanwhile, the SP is afraid of losing its votebank to the Congress, given its record of bad governance in UP. But with the communal polarisation, the Muslim votebank has nowhere else to go.
Posted on: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 04:58:09 +0000
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