Daya Varma
& Vinod Mubayi
May 13, 2004, will be remembered as a memorable day in the history of independent India. Belying the predictions of media "experts", pre-election polls, exit polls and commentators of all shades, the voters of India threw Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's BJP (Indian Peoples Party)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government out of office.
The successful organisation of nation-wide elections in India with an electorate of almost 700 million people and where almost 400 million exercise their franchise, more than the entire electorate of almost all of the Western democracies combined, is undoubtedly a credit to the Indian Election Commission, but it is much more due to the intense desire of the Indian people to assert their fundamental democratic rights. And it is in the recognition of the desires, wishes, and hopes of the majority of those who vote that one can begin to understand the outcome of this election.
Why did NDA lose and why did many of us, even those who fervently had hoped for it, fail to see it coming, despite our own predilections and preferences? The answer perhaps lies in the class background of those making predictions and those, including us, reading and listening to them.
NDA rule had in the last several years become a bonanza for the affluent, consumption-fixated Indian upper and middle classes. Economic "liberalisation", privatisation, and the withdrawal of the state from its former role in the economy has enormously widened the gap between the rich and the poor to the advantage of the former.
A fortuitous monsoon last year helped the economy and it seemed suddenly that India had ultimately "arrived", at least on the financial pages of Western newspapers. The NDA regime started believing its own propaganda as depicted in its "India Shining" advertisement program, hailed as a masterpiece by sections of the media.
No doubt the NDA had the support of most of the urban middle class, many of whom have also been seduced by the BJP-promoted Hindu chauvinist Hindutva ideology. All the media reflected this bias. Even those of us opposed to the NDA and its policies were taken in by this thinking.
The results, however, show that the majority of the working people, including peasants, slum-dwellers and landless labourers, along with other impoverished people, did not share this thinking. They account for more than half of India's 1 billion plus population. They do not expect perfection from their rulers, but they do wish to make their voice heard and their views known when they get the opportunity. India has definitely not been shining for them and their vote shows that they have decisively repudiated the direction in which their country was headed under the NDA's rule.
The middle-class's chauvinistic preoccupation with opposition Congress Party leader Sonja Gandhi's foreign origins meant little to the Indian masses. They wanted to register their dissatisfaction with BJP, not obsess with Sonia Gandhi's Italian accent.
It is highly gratifying that the majority of the poor and disempowered Indian people have asserted themselves in this dramatic fashion. This is an extremely healthy development for India. Not only has it stopped and derailed, for the first time in over a decade, the heretofore triumphal procession of the wrath of the sangh parivar (the collective name for the Hindu chauvinist organisations), they have served notice on future governments that their priorities can no longer be ignored.
Of course, we cannot neglect or forget the many courageous voices that were raised against the sangh parivar's misdeeds, above all the pogrom in Gujarat, and the Tehelka scam, in the five long years of the NDA's misrule.
At the same time, the electoral results have only emboldened the sangh parivar to resort to their crudest tactics and assault on secularism and democracy. Open threats on Sonja Gandhi's life have led her to withdraw her rightful claim to the prime ministership.
For the Indian left, the electoral outcome does not change our agenda. The defeat of the BJP in the parliamentary elections is undoubtedly a set back for the sangh parivar, but only a set back. It can never be a decisive defeat. When not in power, the BJP is like a painless cancer, just as virulent as any.
[Based on the International South Asia Forum's May 14 election supplement. Daya Varma is the Montreal-based secretary of the ISAF and Vinod Mubayi its New York-based vice-president.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 2, 2004.
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