December 12, 2023
A new voter sensibility emerges in the state election 2023
The grandeur of Prime Minister Modi has again branched out a pansy leaving the Congress Party in a panicle of delusions and desultory distress. Who thought that ‘anti-incumbency’ penultimate would shatter like a glass in a hailstorm, letting Shivraj Singh Chouhan pirouette in the hem of his political éclat? BJP’s win in Madhya Pradesh, one of the three ‘Hindi Heartlands’, aspires today that power restores responsibility through awakening to
‘what empowers a voter’ rather than binging on airy-fairy promises.
The soft cone of ‘Rajasthan’, splurging corruption and rising crimes against women melted to casuistry by the Ashok Gehlot government. Nothing seemed fine from the Congress craft! The veteran duo ‘Kamal Nath-Digvijaya Singh’ had nothing new to offer. Their expertise looked fragile to fight the turbulence on a ride by the rambunctious BJP.
Anyhow, the state elections of 2023 have changed the course of the wind. The political dystopic semblance has unleashed a progressive alliance of the voter with the ideological anthropomorphism. The preferred palanquin carrying the high falutin beliefs is no more a clanger.
Wasn’t it easy for BJP to ride on the ‘Hindutva’ gnomic and let the voters feel the impassioned ‘Bhartiya Sabhyata’ rowlock in the riley of ‘Hindu ashtra’? Voters believed in ‘Modi ki Guarantee’ even if it involved religious biases to be rectitude. The consecration of ‘Ram Mandir’ in Ayodhya on 22 nd January 2024 has been a fruit labored with punctilious politicization of religious convenience; and the voter has welcomed it with aplomb.
Congress tried hard to negate the ‘Hindutva’ card to disenfranchise the sensibility of the voter; ‘Caste Census’ came as a dropping of pearls but in the end it transitioned into a papilloma that nobody wanted to touch.
The voters definitely have religion on their mind albeit in recluse. The po-faced politicking can often draw a dagger in the religious consciousness buried as an accepted analogy. The voter thus becomes pensive and can sense a threat to the raison d’ etre of religious consanguinity. BJP was quick to press the barrel. Its accusation of the ‘Gehlot’ government in Rajasthan of indulging in appeasement politics did help the squirrel pass through the
crow’s feet. It’s not that the ‘appeasement’ rebarbative is new; the pliable voter lives in denial till the pouf of probity and reliability is cushioned behind the back.
This is exactly what PM Modi did during the state election 2023. He had his arpeggio ready sticking out the morally induced bonhomie with the ‘Hindu Civilization’ he is so proud of. We all are albeit in necessity; he makes it a profligate indulgence. Attacks on ‘Sanatana Dharma’ by the DMK leader Stalin received no mercy from the BJP and the very impenitent extrapolation by the Congress on the issue left it red-faced. Not to forget the prevaricate disorder so prevalent in Congress that left the mute to sing a prosody of whataboutery. Voters could sense the importance of hard-bitten ‘religious heuristic’ efficaciously boiled by the BJP leaving Rahul Gandhi to parboil the ‘Caste Census’ perfunctory; the same Congress that cocked a snook at the Mandal commission headed by the V.P. Singh Government in All these hurdy-gurdy battlements are a piquant touch-up to the election halberd; the arrow once out of the scabbard can either make you a king or a watchman finding faults vociferously in self-exclusivity.
Prime Minister Modi cut the hole right in the center of the slice to extend the vision for women in Indian letting the ‘Women warriors’ remove the edgerow to walk in the same field as men. Many would call it a political maneuver! A Charade! Or a burdock thud in the ground for a clean slate of soft power? Nothing bemuses me though; ‘Naya Bharat’ has serendipitously awakened to empower women. The daughters to ‘Bharat Mata’ have
become ‘Ladli Behnas’ and the beneficial partakers of the ‘Women Reservation Bill’.
‘Glory under the Mystic Modi’! No doubt the three Hindi Heartlands saw women voters in precipitous turn-outs.
How does all this eventually make a difference in the voter sensibility? It’s not that they are being hedge hammered to vote, or a pickle is added to their food plate to blindly taste the political dystopia. The idea is to protuberate an ideological revered beat deepening a fixed altercation with the nonchalant, if meant to be, though retaining the animism of tolerance. BJP does this immaculately and here fore is all rictus in its victory in the state elections. It indisputably painted an impasto of ‘Hindu impedance’ floating a brush of ‘Ram Temple’ along with fine strokes of ‘women impulsion’.
On the contrary, Congress failed to tap the voter sensibility. It offered everything; gas cylinder at Rs. 400, Rs. 1500 allowance to women, the aradoxical ‘Caste Census’ and the rattletrap of ‘Adani rasion d’ etre’. Unusual though, the intrinsic felicitation of ‘Who We Are’ was completely ignored.
I still believe that religion is no premise for electoral win but is definitely a sustainable human need in our country. Addressing the very need is cashing on voter sensibility. The voter too waits for an identity edification which the ‘Ram Temple’ and ‘safeguarding Hindu beliefs’ have been a winner at, considering Hindus are a majority in our country.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be the 2 nd PM after Jawaharlal Nehru to hold the chair three times if he wins the Lok Sabha elections 2024. The road does not seem far but the win should mean ‘religious freedom’ for all communities as it’s a need for an incessant impulsion to live without discrimination.
Jawaharlal Nehru in his book ‘The Discovery of India’ writes:
In political matters, religion has been displaced by what is called communalism, a narrow group mentality basing itself on a religious community but in reality concerned with political power and patronage for the interested group.