By Sushil Kutty
Yes. The verdict in the Karnataka assembly polls announced on May 13 is emphatic. The Congress has won majority in the 224 member house comfortably. The Congress winning figure is around 139 seats as against 62 by the BJP and 20 by JD(S) around afternoon. The final figures may see a small change but there is no doubt about the big defeat of the BJP in the state which the saffron leaders conceded themselves.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the biggest loser of Karnataka 2023. The Bharatiya Janata Party not surprisingly comes a close second. The Bharatiya Janata Party is squarely to blame for handing over the reins of the party’s Karnataka election campaign to Prime Minister Modi and for the party’s total dependence on Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Party spokesperson Shehzad Poonawala marvelled at the smooth functioning of EVMs and admired how democracy functioned in the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The smooth-talking spokesperson said those “extrapolating 2023 to 2024” should do the “dancing” carefully and not let the “dance of democracy” go to their heads.
Right. The BJP is wary. The party has very little to celebrate in Karnataka. No BJP spokespersons were present in the so-called election headquarters of the various television channels. Poonawala came only after everything was lost and the writing was on the wall.
Whose head will roll wouldn’t be that of the man at whose door the buck stopped. His chest-thumping in the Upper House is a distant memory, but what will not be forgotten is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi couldn’t have played his cards worse. That is, if he had the right cards at all, after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s eponymous Bharat Jodo Yatra, which played a big part in landing Karnataka for the grand old party.
Strike 1! There are five more assembly elections to be lost before 2023 closes in on Prime Minister Modi. Five more strikes. Before the big one in 2024. Anybody looking at the road to 2024 will see the blacktop narrowing and narrowing till it’s but a minute dot in the far horizon. That is Narendra Modi at the end of his Prime Ministerial run.
The ‘public’ is merciless. The public will not forget the megalomania. The acute narcissism. If anybody caught the man preening nobody recorded it. Opinion polls and the “Mood of the Nation” surveys kept the admiration going. Weaker world leaders helped keep up the charade ‘Modi No.1’ – the world leader with the highest approval rating.
To his credit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi saw what was coming before anybody else. Midway in the Karnataka campaigning it dawned that everything was over for the BJP in Karnataka. Modi mounted the blitzkrieg. Back to default position and Hindu-Muslim polarization. But the opportunism was on tape. The Hindu consolidation of the Hijab and Halal days in Karnataka had gone for a toss. Modi’s ‘Pasmanda-fixation’ cost the BJP the ’gateway to the south’.
Right or not, Telangana is also referred to as the ‘gateway to the south’. It is hardly likely the BJP will be able to make a southern breakthrough via Telangana. Copycats abound. Karnataka has opened the sluice gates. Modi is at the moment on a rock in swirling waters. Left are Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Rajasthan, Telangana…what’s the guarantee they wouldn’t go the Karnataka way?
Top question of the hour: When will the BJP Parliamentary Party dump Narendra Modi? If the remaining five states also do a Karnataka, the Bharatiya Janata Party will be staring at a 2024 version of 2004 ‘Shining India’ mayhem. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP will have to seriously look at winning 2024 “by hook or crook”!
Modi’s outreach to Muslim and Christian did not deliver the goods to the saffron party. Kerala Christians and feelers to Andhra Pradesh Christians went to waste. The Hindu nationalist embraced the “minorities” little knowing that his unprovoked move was seen as a sign of weakness. Only a complete novice and the totally naïve politician could have fallen prey to a self-manufactured rat-trap.
It will take time for the BJP to recover from Narendra Modi’s last minute gasps. Even the Congress faux pas of posting ‘We’ll ban Bajrang Dal’ in its manifesto did not help the Hindutva flag-bearer because it was no longer true to his logo. Modi & Shah’s Hindutva credentials were in tatters. The Congress party’s inclusive politics appealed to the majority.
Also, ‘The Kerala Story’ made no difference to the Muslim consolidation, which continued unabated despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unabashed Pasmanda-Muslim ‘tripthikaran’, which was bleeding BJP unrecoverable Hindu votes. And will continue to bleed Hindu votes till the Modi government doesn’t implement its promises made to his voters when he first elected in 2014. Narendra Modi is a victim of his own machinations. May 13 Modi lost his swagger. Modi is the real pseudo-secular, if any. (IPA Service)
Karnataka provides a ray of hope, says Mehbooba Mufti 