Opposition leaders have managed to create the impression that Mrs. Gandhi is almost certain to order an early election to the Lok Sabha and that she is likely to win even if by a smaller margin than in 1971 or in 1980. They have rendered this invaluable service to her in two ways.
First, they have made some wholly inept and unsuccessful moves to forge a united front against the Congress (I) and in the process reminded the Indian people once again that they are in capable of coming together and challenging of ruling party effectively.
Secondly, some of the opposition leaders have worked overtime – to spread the view that Mrs. Gandhi has wilfully adopted a “communal” platform, and that this has strengthened her popular base among caste Hindus throughout the Hindi-speaking belt. A number of commentators have joined in this campaign. Indeed, some of them have gone so far as to say that the RSS leadership headed by Balasaheb Deoras has decided to dump the BJP in favour of Mrs. Gandhi and her party.
It is not possible to say whether or not Mrs. Gandhi is in fact planning an early poll to the Lok Sabha. But assuming that she is, it would not necessarily follow that she is being guided by the calculation that her detractors (or are they covertly her allies?) attribute to her. She could decide to go in for an early poll in late 1983 or early 1984, out of the fear that she might be less well placed to face the electorate in December 1984-January 1985.
These uncertainties apart, one can say with some confidence that Mrs. Gandhi is too experienced and shrewd to conclude on the basis of the publicly available evidence that there has been a significant shift in the caste Hindu attitude in her favour in the whole of the Hindi-speaking region.
Perverse Arguments
Before reviewing the publicly available evidence, let us examine whether Mrs. Gandhi has in fact adopted a platform which can be said to favour the Hindus. To the best of our knowledge, no one other than Mr. Rajeshwara Rao, general secretary of the Communist Party of India, has cited any evidence in support of this proposition. And his evidence is weak. In any case, it relates only to Jammu and Kashmir, it does not refer to the Union territory of Delhi, though it was first there last February that we witnessed the supposed shift in the caste Hindu vote in Mrs. Gandhi’s favour.
The arguments in support of the proposition that Mrs. Gandhi has deliberately adopted a “communal” platform are in fact so perverse that one must be rather naïve to accept them. Mrs. Gandhi does not settle the Akali issue because she wants to frighten the Hindus in Punjab into moving towards her party, so the argument runs. But ask anyone of the gentlemen and ladies advancing this proposition how they would settle the Akali problem if they were in authority and you will invariably find that they would not wish to answer this question. There is and can be no way out of the impasse in Punjab unless the Akalis see reason which does not appear likely in the near future.
Mrs. Gandhi’s critics have, of course, no doubt that the Congress (I)-National Conference contest in Jammu and Kashmir was against the national interest and that Mrs. Gandhi opted for it solely to impress the Hindu voters in the rest of the country. They are not even willing to pause and examine whether she had in fact another choice once Dr. Farooq Abdullah had taken the stand that the Congress (I) should keep out of the valley and confine itself to Jammu, thereby reducing itself to the status of a Hindu party. And, needless to add, they would not mention Assam where only recently she imposed an election in the face of resistance by almost all Assamese Hindus in the Brahmaputra valley. That would be too inconvenient for them. That would show Mrs. Gandhi’s solicitude for linguistic (Bengalis) and religious (Muslim) minorities and the lengths to which she is prepared to go to protect them.
Let us now look at the facts in respect of the recent elections in the Union territory of Delhi and the Jammu region. As for Delhi, we can make some points with a measure of certainty. We can say that compared with January 1980, the Congress (I) vote in percentage terms rose sharply, that happened despite a shift in the Muslim vote in the opposite direction, and that the RSS cadres did not work enthusiastically for the BJP candidates in several constituencies. Beyond this we enter the area of speculation.
Shift in Hindu Vote
It has been assumed that the Punjabi Hindu voters in Delhi have moved towards the Congress (I) in significant numbers in response to the Akali agitation in Punjab. But if that were so, how would one account for the impressive BJP vote of around 37 per cent? And almost the solid Sikh vote for the Congress (I)? The issue here is not so much how Mrs. Gandhi got the two supposedly antagonistic communities to support her party as whether the shift in the Hindu vote was as significant as it has come to be believed. It was there but how significant was it, especially among the BJP’s traditional supporters?
The composition of the population of Delhi has also been changing with the vast influx of labourers and small businessmen from UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and Haryana in recent years. Though it continues to be dominated by the better educated, more dynamic and prosperous Punjabis, it is somewhat less of a Punjabi town than a decade ago. Both the RSS and the Jana Sangh have had less influence among the Hindu-speaking migrants than among the Punjabi refugees from Pakistan.
The history of the Jana Sangh, now renamed the Bharatiya Janata Party, bears testimony to the fact that it has never been a monolith. It has consisted from the very beginning of RSS and non-RSS elements and they have clashed from time to time. It follows that the relations between the Jana Sangh as a body and the RSS could not have been always smooth. They have not been. In its new incarnation as the BJP, it has sought to acquire secularist credentials and to reshape its approach in order to be able to claim the Gandhian heritage. This means that if it ever was just a front for the RSS it has ceased to be one. And the RSS cannot be at its beck and call. The relationship between the BJP and the RSS is not as simple as it has been made out to be by some ill-informed individuals. The chances are that if the marriage is far from happy, divorce has also not taken place.
Jammu is different from Delhi. There, unlike in Delhi, the BJP has suffered a severe setback, a majority of its nominees having forfeited their security deposits in the recent poll. But should this not be seen in the specific context of the state’s politics and the Congress party’s willingness for the first time to confront the Muslim-dominated National Conference? The implication is that the Hindu voters in the Jammu region could have been influenced more by considerations of power politics than by Mrs. Gandhi’s platform (except inasmuch as it was anti-NC) or developments in the adjoining Punjab.
Segmentary Society
In any case, however one interprets the results of the recent elections in the Union territory of Delhi and the Jammu region, one cannot ignore the fact that the Hindus are a segmentary society, which in simple words means that they are a kind of society in which developments in one segment (in this case area) need not have much impact on developments in others. When, for instance, an agitation developed in Gujarat against the reservation of seats in professional colleges for scheduled castes and tribes in 1981, some commentators rushed to the conclusion that it would spread to other states. It did not. Indeed, it is because of this nature of the Hindu society that two distinguished scholars, Anil Seal and Gallagher, have argued that the Indian freedom struggle itself was also an aggregation of local grievances and not a unified movement inspired by the concept of nationalism.
The line of reasoning goes against the wave theory which has been validated by the results of the elections in 1971, 1977 and 1980. The wave was a fact in north India in all these elections. But none of these waves can be attributed to a communal factor. The issue was socio-economic changes (garibi hatao) in 1971, civil liberties in 1977, and order (a government that works) in 1980. If the caste Hindus in north India have in fact begun to vote as a bloc to a significant extent, that would constitute a radical departure from their performance in their 5,000-year-old history. It will suggest that the Hindu society has acquired the ability to overcome its divisions and act as a political community, which is another name for a nation or a nationality. There is not much evidence in support for this proposition yet.
Whatever her other failings, Mrs. Gandhi is still India’s most credible ruler by virtue of her skills and courage. Assam and Punjab have tested her courage even more than personal power crises in 1969, 1975 and 1977-79. So the people may still give her a majority when she goes to the polls. But this is quite different from saying that she possesses a recipe for sure victory. She does not. On the contrary, she has to cope with a number of drags on her, the most burdensome being the performance of several of her state governments and the state and image of her party. It may be necessary for her to do something about them before she seeks a fresh mandate.
The Times of India, 3 August 1983