On the Ground

Based on a personal journey through states in south, west, and north India, starting from Bengaluru and ending with Banaras, this chapter examines popular and elite conceptions of electoral politics during the 2014 Indian general election campaign. It argues that the National Democratic Alliance’s success was not monocausal, but arose from effective targeting of ‘winnable’ seats, high turnout by new voters, the professionalism of the BJP’s national campaign, and limits in the success of appeals to caste identity in favour of voter preference based on economic self-interest and aspiration. Using interviews with individuals, ‘On The Ground’ looks at the ways local, regional, or state factors can affect voting decisions.

Caste and Cultural Icons

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may be an insignificant entity in the electoral arena of Tamil Nadu as the party won only one seat in the 2014 parliamentary elections. However, its efforts to expand its support base in the state where ideologically hostile political dispensations have near hegemonic presence demand a thorough scrutiny. BJP’s endeavours to expand by vernacularizing itself are arguably met with resistance, yet the party’s desperation to project itself as a Tamilized Hindutva party must be dissected. While tracing the genealogy of the BJP’s electoral performance and its modus operandi to expand its support base, this chapter elaborates a two-way process of ‘vernacularization’ and ‘pan-Indianization’.

Modi and the Spectre of Terrorism

Terrorism constituted an important element of the wider ensemble of ideas and images that Narendra Modi’s election campaign disseminated. It reiterated the Bharatiya Janata Party’s idea of India as, essentially, a Hindu nation; Hindus as authentic citizens and Muslims as the ‘other’. Based on a survey of Modi’s election speeches, BJP’s publicity material and the extensive commentary and analysis focused on the person of Narendra Modi, this paper argues that terrorism as an election issue was carefully calibrated by Modi’s managers: a spectre of imminent threats was raised, dangerous ‘other’ identified, the outgoing government was lambasted for failing to quarantine the danger, and an alternative Modi model of battling terrorism held up. This had the effect of crafting the tough, muscular, macho Hindutva icon who would rein in ‘Islamic terrorism’, and consolidating and rallying a majoritarian vote bank behind this leader.

Democracy as Rumour

Based on qualitative data from the coverage of the 2014 Indian elections by television channels and social media, this chapter demonstrates Schmittian politics by examining electoral–democratic rumours. It discusses how media circulated Hindutva as development to resemble rumourmongering, in that the sources of development remained unknown. The emerging interface among media, elections, and neoliberal economy in polities like India signifies what is proposed as ‘designer democracy’, of which rumour is a key component. The chapter discusses the effects of rumours and other factors that helped Hindutva win in 2014. The premise of rumour as a plebeian resistance, it is argued, is unsustainable. Contra established view, this chapter contends that rumour is also a weapon of the power elites and is deployed during elections. Dwelling on the vital issues of the truth and lie, the chapter concludes with observations on the place of rumour and media in democracies in general.

Introduction

The ‘Introduction’ proposes a framework to understand the truth behind, as opposed to mere reality of, democratic–electoral politics. Rather than viewing the understandings of politics as a function of the state in opposition to the understandings of politics as not limited to the state, it advances the thesis that an important way to analyse democracy is to understand it as an intertwined phenomenon of warfare and welfare. This algebra of warfare-welfare is constitutive of democracy in general, including in India. To this end, the ‘Introduction’ examines important works on the 2014 Indian elections informed by ‘democratic triumphalism’. From an interdisciplinary and in-disciplinary approach, it aims to throw a pebble into the calm, muddy, unquestioned—to some even unquestionable—water of democracy to craft an alternative and democratic idea of democracy. Stressing a longue durée frame, it puts human subjectivity rather than cold statistics at the centre of our understanding of electoral democracy.

Hindutva’s Reach Out to Muslims in the 2014 Elections

At the peak of the 2014 election campaign, Delhi was dotted with posters like ‘Na Doori Na Khaai, Modi Hamara Bhai’ (neither difference nor gap, Modi is our brother). These posters announcing Narendra Modi as ‘our brother’, were put up by Maulana Suhaib Qasmi of Jamaat Ulema-e-Hind, aligned to the BJP. Several such groups of BJP’s Muslims worked to mobilize Muslim votes for the right-wing Hindutva party. Drawing upon field reporting, covering the 2014 elections, and interviews with some of the political leaders and stake-holders of these organizations (and their literature), this chapter examines three key issues: contradiction between BJP’s outreach programmes towards Muslims and their condemnation of similar initiatives by other political parties as ‘Muslim appeasement’; perception of Muslim identity among leaders engaging in such initiatives; and whether such outreach programs had any impact in drawing Muslim voters towards the BJP?

Communal Violence, Electoral Polarization, and Muslim Representation

There are a number of commentaries, official reports, and well-researched academic books on communalism in India that directly or indirectly look at the nature of violence-centric electoral politics. However, our understanding of Muslim electoral politics is very limited. The belief that violent events persuade Muslims to vote tactically at the national level is often evoked to substantiate the claim that communal violence always determines Muslim electoral preferences. The idea of Muslim vote bank is also an expanded version of this argument. Focusing upon the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013, this paper makes an attempt to revisit the idea of electoral polarization in the context of the 2014 general election. The paper critically evaluates the merit of a twofold claim that the communal and targeted violence against Muslims produce electoral polarization; and, violence of this kind could only be prevented if the number of Muslim MPs and MLAs in legislative bodies increases.

Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Politics

Though Gurudom is diverse, Gurus and Hindu Nationalism have a shared world, promoting and patronizing each other. With the onset of the New Age mediatized Hinduism and the rising popularity of these Gurus, the bonding between Hinduism and Hindutva has got strengthened further. Reflecting on Yoga guru and entrepreneur Ramdev’s life-journey, world-view, political activism, particularly with reference to his anti-corruption crusade, this chapter argues that though Ramdev’s Hindu revivalist and nationalist ideas are closer to the Sangh gospel in many ways, Ramdev has always nurtured his own political ambition and agenda. Analysing the complexities of Ramdev’s political ideas and actions, it tries to understand why Ramdev, setting aside his own agenda, decided to have a partnership with Modi and the BJP in the 2014 elections.

On Studying Elections and Democracy

This conversation between R. Thirunavukkarasu and T.K. Oommen underscores the sociological significance of analysing electoral democracy. Electoral studies pre-supposes democracy which is a recent phenomenon; as recent as 2000, only 58 per cent of the world’s population had electoral democracies. These factors explain the rickety level of election studies in sociology. In West European countries, wherein democracy flourishes the co-terminality between political and cultural boundaries is either a fact or an ideal. However, in India cultural pluralism is both a fact and a valued goal. The three-tier Indian polity—local, provincial (linguistic states), and national—witnesses different behaviours. Along with factors such as class, gender, age, and rural–urban differences which are common to democracies, the specificity of caste is important in India. In addition to the horizontal factors, caste divides voters vertically and the intersectionality among these factors increases the complexity of democracy and electoral behaviour. The conversation also discusses the forthcoming 2019 general election.

Unity in Diversity

This chapter analyses the manifestos of three political parties: AAP, BJP, and the Congress. Paying attention to their texts and visual symbolism, it argues that there were more similarities than differences among them. The discussion on similarity is organized under three headings: (a) Economy, Development, Religion; (b) Social Groups; and (c) International Relations and Security. The next section delineates minor differences unable to reflect dissensus, the core of the political for Rancière. It concludes with observations on the prevalent views that elections offer freedom of choice to show their limits, structural and theoretical. Following Rancière, it is argued that elections and their manifestos institute policies that inscribe the world differently as opposed to politics, which beckons to a possible different world.