History is replete with instances of defeat providing the springboard for eventual victory. Now that the reverses of May 4 are upon us, the time has come to transform defeat into a launch pad for success in 2029.
The starting point must be the recognition that in the 2024 general election, the ramshackle INDIA bloc was only eight seats behind the BJP. If only the year-long run-up to that election had been used to give the alliance an identity and purpose, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah might have been rendered history two years ago. As it is, the saffron forces did not take their near-defeat lying down but girded their loins to take the fight to the next stage. That is what has given them repeated breathtaking victories, climaxing on May 4.
Is this then the moment of despair for the tattered remains of the non- and anti-Hindutva Opposition? Has India really been rendered an ineradicable Hindu Rashtra? My answer is an unqualified “No, nil desperandum.” In West Bengal, the SIR was a fraught exercise, casting a shadow on the poll process: 91 lakh voters were deleted from the rolls. The total reinstatement across both phases of elections in the state stood at around 1,600 — 139 names before the first round of voting and 1,468 names before the second. Such vote “chori” exemplifies the “sanatan” brand of patriotism, which, meretriciously, attracts a third of the national electorate. Two-thirds, if mobilised, could still upset the BJP applecart despite all the shenanigans the establishment has perfected, in collusion with investigative agencies, the EC, and elements of the judiciary, to pervert the electoral process. West Bengal shows that such perversion works effectively not at the heart but at the margins, which are often decisive.
The exit from government of such stalwarts as Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin to join Tejashwi Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav, the Left, even possibly Arvind Kejriwal, and that long-time exile, Rahul Gandhi, in an apparent political wilderness, gives INDIA a golden opportunity to regroup and present a united front that could ensure the tables are turned come 2029. A collective leadership, a cabinet of rivals as it were, must be the starting point. The time to do so is now, at the nadir of defeat.
But on what novel platform or innovative programme can they unite? Federalism is the answer, cooperative not confrontational. The kickoff point might be the Justice Kurian Joseph High-Level Committee Report on Union-State Relations. It was commissioned by Tamil Nadu’s DMK government and tabled as almost the Chief Minister’s last substantive act before the elections. I would be amazed if the new CM were to bury the report for it holds the road to Tamil Nadu rivalling, even overtaking, the Asian Tigers — if only the Centre would let it. And if the BJP at the Centre digs in its heels, that will provide the leitmotif around which the INDIA bloc might forge a distinctive identity.
The incoming Chief Minister, for all his opposition to the senior Dravidian party, is also part of the wider Dravidian consensus that rests on three pillars: Inclusive social and economic development; states’ rights; and secularism. This is incompatible with Hindutva’s centralised, sectarian authoritarianism. That ideological glue extends to the principal opposition parties of the Ganga basin, to the Left and the National Conference of J&K, to the motley parties of the religious minorities and, of course, the INC. Together, they represent up to two-thirds of the national electorate or, if there are dents in the Index of Opposition Unity, at least half. They can easily pick up the eight unachieved seats of June 2024 and, indeed, go up to a lead of even 80 seats.
Surely, they would have learned the lesson that the saffron establishment will resort to all the tricks already on display and, doubtless, new ones, to twist the electoral process in its favour. But there is a limit to manipulation. Winning West Bengal may expand the BJP national vote in 2029 from one-third to around two-fifths. The remaining three-fifths is for INDIA’s taking — provided wisdom, discipline and, above all, humility dawn.
The 2029 elections are likely to be the last that have any pretension to democratic norms. And so, the Opposition had better shape up now. The prospect of rampant religious-identity nationalism triumphing again — and in perpetuity — must alarm the INDIA bloc enough to stow away internecine differences and intra-party feuds for the larger goal of saving themselves and the nation from the disaster signalled by the May 4 results.
The writer is former cabinet minister
