The general elections of 2024 were supposed to be a very predictable election season just three months ago, a done deal perhaps. Post the pran pratishtha of Shri Ram Lalla Temple in Ayodhya, even the harshest of Modi critics had accepted the finality of his electoral victory in the Lok Sabha elections 2024. A supposed ‘development economist’ from the hegemonic academic ecosystem even prematurely labelled the elections “as good as rigged”. Fast forward to June 4, the election results have left every political Pundit in the country hiding behind bits and pieces of their political narratives and, with some, their I-told-you-so stories. The Indian voter may have dealt a perceived setback to the incumbent government and the apparent invincibility of BJP’s electioneering juggernaut, and after two successive strong governments, a new era of coalition politics has begun. The power and potency of the electorate and the deep-rootedness of democracy and its institutions in India have offered everyone a few lessons to ponder over.
As with every well-run organisation, the BJP is also expected to undergo a thorough introspection and analysis into this election’s results. The BJP should equally take stock of the latent gains that it has acquired in the election campaign. Some of them may not have yielded a significant political currency in this election, but do carry the transformative potential to propel the organisation’s ambitions and growth, keeping the future challenges in mind.
BJP’s Southern Push
With Prime Minister Modi’s performance of dharmic rituals in the temple during the Ram Lalla Pran Pratishtha ceremony, the local BJP units and the central leadership made a committed outreach to the voters in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The idea to establish the BJP as a legitimate political alternative in these states despite several roadblocks is very appreciative indeed. At a time when political campaigns have been increasingly fashioned as grandiose events and have a catchy afterlife lasting longer in social media optics than in reality, K. Annamalai’s ability to successfully perform a padayatra throughout Tamil Nadu days before the elections and establish an emotional connection with the masses illustrates an appetite for pure politics and conviction of thought. The Prime Minister’s celebration of Tamil ethos and culture, and Annamalai’s resilience in running a campaign with nationalist overtones against the Dravidian parties will hopefully translate into electoral results in the near future.
The voters of Tamil Nadu have been provided with an alternative political thought challenging the dominance of linguistic-cum-separatist politics and Dravidianism since 1967, and a significant rise in the BJP vote share creates a space for nationalist and progressive politics. The upcoming State Assembly elections in 2026 will present another opportunity to dislodge the entrenched Dravidian power structures. Similarly, apart from his stardom, Suresh Gopi’s victory in the Thrissur Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala is also a testimony to the selfless grassroots work done across generations by BJP and RSS cadres. The literal blooming of the lotus in Kerala will provide moral courage to the average BJP worker. Furthermore, the electoral success of the party in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh should also be met with a clear roadmap to expand the political reach and propagate BJP’s message of welfare and developmental thought while acknowledging regional aspirations. The local BJP units should be appreciated for gauging the mood of the electorate in these states.
The BJP has enhanced its understanding of the southern states in recent years and accordingly mobilized its resources as well. The southern states offer 130 Lok Sabha seats and the BJP must continue to expand its southern tally beyond the current 29 which forms approximately 22 percent of the seats on offer. While its performance in Karnataka may have been a partial setback, the BJP must consider this consistent southern push in Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala as one of the hallmarks of the 2024 election campaign and a vision that will soon translate into reality.
Generational Change
At the height of the Prime Minister’s popularity and in the backdrop of winning three Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh with significant margins, the BJP Central Election Committee opted for an experimental ticket distribution system where leaders who had served two terms were replaced with others, and in some cases, younger candidates were put up to address anti-incumbency and even signal a continuous search for dynamic faces. Against a spirited campaign by AAP in Delhi, the changes made in nearly all the Lok Sabha constituencies helped the BJP sweep Delhi with decisive margins.
The nature of the Chief Ministerial appointments also adheres to the logic of creating a newer pool of party leadership, adding to the bench strength. The BJP has employed the formula of appointing two deputy Chief Ministers along with a Chief Minister in each of these states which not only shows the scope for the political rise of a common karyakarta but also brings material credibility to the BJP’s vision of social justice and enhances the political representation of diverse, and often marginalized, communities. After the election outcome, some aspects of the ticket distribution may seem debatable but the principle of experimenting while the organization has the confidence and capacity to deal with uncertain results should serve the BJP well. What’s more, this trend of grooming fresh leadership shouldn’t be restricted just to electoral and governance positions but should also deeply reflect in the responsibilities distributed within the BJP, alongside longitudinal disbursement of decision-making opportunities.
Intellectual Capital
The rise of the BJP in the last decade has facilitated the rise of cultural nationalist thought. It is reflected in the writings and ideas emanating from the intellectual and thinking classes who are making forays into strongholds of the left and left-of-the-centre traditional academia. Hinduism and its facets, India’s cultural intricacies, unbiased historiography, nationalistic defence and international relations perspectives, have received significant scholarly attention. In addition to the academic spaces, the neo-visual-aural media spaces replete with talk shows, podcasts and literary festivals have enabled the furthering of nationalist thought and nurturing of a progressive Hindutva narrative. However, as the 2024 election season passed by, the electoral and thought machinery of the BJP faced issues in smoothly mobilizing their own agendas and embarking upon a flawless counter-offensive to the ill-informed and ill-intentioned narratives of alleged fascism, dictatorship and even fear-mongering about changing the constitution, that were exploited by the opposition. For the first time in a decade or so, BJP’s social media campaign also faced some difficulties in establishing a dominant narrative and had to regularly targeting the INDI alliance in a catch-up game, which diverted a lot of time and energy from their attempts to popularize positive trends of development. The BJP should further leverage its own intellectual capital as the entrenched structures of academia, mainstream media and thought politics still consider nationalist narratives as an unsavoury thought category. The younger voters from colleges and universities are not adequately familiar with the pre-Modi era of despondency and corruption of Congress rule and therefore are the biggest victims of the disinformation campaigns and woke politics. Intellectual presence in traditional roles and the new media must be further encouraged to decisively settle the war of cultural narratives, and establish cultural and civilizational nationalism as legitimate and desired political categories.
One may also add here that the new era of coalition politics under Modi 3.0 opens up an arena of immense possibilities, particularly in enhancing dialogues across the political spectrum for a larger democratic consensus over the primacy of our civilizational ethos and the need for the flourishing of our cultural practices and traditions. These dialogues can be visualized as a reality only when the concerned intellectual stakeholders come together to arrive at a holistic agreement over the broad fundamentals of righteous cultural and identity politics, notwithstanding their current political specificities.
Caste and Freebie Economy
In the entire election campaign of the INDI alliance, a unitary theme of exposing and exploiting every possible social, cultural, and geographical fault line of Indian society was mobilized by the entire spectrum of their leadership. Casteism, regionalism, language, Muslim appeasement, and fearmongering about the status of reservations formed the core of the divisive campaign of the INDI alliance. The BJP, on the other hand, relied on the narrative of social cohesion articulated in the Prime Minister’s principles of Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, Sabka Prayaas. The BJP spoke of the nation and the people as a whole, irrespective of their caste, religion or regional identities. Beyond the neo-feudal and anarchist model of wealth distribution and taka-tak freebie economy, the party narrated the tales of a new welfare model around Garib (poor), Yuva (youth), Annadata (farmers) and Narishakti (women empowerment), where mechanisms of development, technology and social justice come together to transform the country. A casteless and socially cohesive campaign that appeals to the entire citizenry is fundamentally progressive as it speaks of a shared present and future. The BJP can only be blamed for being too idealistic in a campaign where Mandal politics made a significant return. The progressive politics offered by the BJP must be further substantiated by a political imagination that is informed by social cohesion as a non-negotiable political principle.
Conclusion
The journey of a political party or even a political idea in a vibrant democracy such as Bharat is very difficult to predict. Notwithstanding the ebb and flow of political fortune, the BJP’s contributions should be widely acknowledged for enriching the country’s cultural, social and political imagination. The BJP’s strategists must revisit the above-discussed latent gains of the most recent election campaign and transform them into the party’s core strength areas for a re-energized mandate. The complex verdict of the Indian voter must be respected and accepted wholeheartedly to get rid of any budding complacency and to prepare for a longer tenure to reshape Bharat’s political trajectory.
