First of all, many in metropolitan circles have been proclaiming, for unknown reasons, the death of coalition politics and the politics of region, both of which they take to be "anti-national." As such, Ramachandra Guha appeared on CNN-IBN on counting day (May 16) to inform us hyperbolically that the latest election verdict in favor of national parties is the most significant electoral result since Mrs. Gandhi's ouster in 1977. Since no arguments were offered by either Mr. Guha or the newspersons who parotted his line, his opinion was apparently taken as self-evident. Allow me now to unsettle this settled notion that regional and coalition politics have just died in India today, and therefore, the recent election results are, by no means, as significant as those in 1977. The Congress and its allies won in different states such as West Bengal, UP, and Andhra Pradesh because 1) it made clever pre-poll alliances with regional parties such as the Trinamool Congress and the NCP, and 2) it picked up seats due to its state-level opponents losing out on account of anti-incumbency in non-Congress states (e.g West Bengal), pro-incumbency in Congress-ruled states (e.g. Andhra), and/or opponents cutting into each other's vote share (e.g. UP). Only lunatics and fools would contend that voters in West Bengal suddenly chose national over regional politics. Or that YSR's victory in Andhra Pradesh reflects the new national agendas of voters. Or that the four-way battle in UP that led to a roughly even share of seats for the four main parties reflects some latent yearning for national politics. It would be even more ludicrous to extend the popular metropolitan hypothesis to states such as Orissa or Tamil Nadu, where the victories of the BJD and the DMK obviously reflect the regional aspirations of voters. These regional tendencies, affirmed over and over since 1989, suggest that the states ultimately decide who will be crowned the rulers of Delhi. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it has always been so in Indian elections. The bargaining between the states and Delhi was a feature of electoral politics even as early as 1951-52, much to Nehru's dismay, though in the first three decades or so, such bargaining came to be restricted largely within the Congress party organization. Most of the regional parties in existence today are either offshoots of the Congress (e.g. NCP, TMC, TDP) or formations directly opposed to it from their inception (DMK, BSP, Left Front). The former group of parties have only recently begun to articulate their regional claims independent of the Congress, while the raison d'etre of the latter group is precisely their historical opposition to the Congress at the state level. As such, it is quite reasonable to say that the states (or the much-derided politics of region) ultimately make or break a national election in India. There is simply no tendency away from this established political reality. Regarding 1977, I shall simply say that it marked the end of Mrs. Gandhi's tyrannical regime, and represented the first alteration of power in Delhi since Independence. I cannot see how 2009 can be discussed in the same breath, least of all by a self-proclaimed historian who has recently authored a bestselling book on postcolonial India. In sum, the results in 2009 seem no more significant than those in 2004 or 1999, and certainly do not reflect any new trend towards national politics in India.
A second false opinion currently in vogue concerns the fate of the Left parties. It is routinely assumed by all and sundry that the Left lost in West Bengal and Kerala because their ideology is outmoded today and/or contemporary India has left the Left behind while it has rushed headlong into the embrace of neoliberal globalization. I strongly disagree even though I have never been a great fan of the parliamentary Left in India. In Kerala, we are witnessing merely the latest round of a long bout between the LDF and the UDF, who usually take turns to sit on the throne. Ideology is certainly not a factor. In Bengal, the CPM and its allies have taken a beating because their anti-people politics has been exposed after the conflagrations in Singur and Nandigram. Far from defending farmers' and workers' rights, Buddhadeb & Co. have gotten cosy with big business, the World Bank, and so forth. I cannot see how Left ideology mandates these cosy alliances at the expense of the people. Some have pointed to Deng's reforms in China or the capitalist accommodations sought by even Lenin immedaitely after the Bolshevik Revolution. I am afraid none of those examples were met with the kind of popular resistance that we witnessed in West Bengal since 2005. The Left lost simply because it could no longer use statist violence to control the rural masses asit had for over three decades. Its ideology in practice has been reactionary in the extreme. Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury may gloat over their role in drafting and pushing the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), but West Bengal government has been one of the worst implementors of the Act. The likes of Mamata Bannerjee are now back in business primarily because the CPM and its allies have abandoned rural Bengal to its fate and have jumped onto the neoliberal bandwagon. The opposition to the US-India nuclear deal was not so much an ideological move as a poorly-devised scheme to topple the Manmohan government and set up a meangingful Third Front government in its stead. Obviously, the electorate in Bengal and elsewhere did not think much of this scheme. But we should remember that the Left scheme failed due to poor political strategy rather than some ideological shortcoming. In fact, it is shameful for the Indian Left that it could not win popular support during the worst global economic crisis since WWII. If anything, the CPM and its cronies would do well to go back to first principles, rethink their strategy, and re-build their grassroots organizations. Like any other country, India too needs a healthy Left to counter the dominant Center and Right. There is much to be gained by parties that offer a development package that caters to the interests of the majority, including those below the poverty line, rather than merely pandering to metropolitan Indian tastes.
The third myth that needs to be shattered concerns secularism, that holy cow of Indian politics. Some wise souls have declared a victory for secularism after the UPA won. I wonder why. The Congress is a party that has routinely orchestrated riots in the name of religion, and employed brazen majoritarian rhetoric for electoral gain. It still refuses to admit its role in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms, especially in the national capital, and nearly awarded two leading riot-specialists with election tickets (withdrawn only after popular protests). For the Congress to point fingers at Modi and Advani is like the pot calling the kettle black. It simply doesn't work. I cannot think of a single party in India that does not expoit religion cynically via vote-bank politics. Even the Left in Kerala and Bengal do so routinely. Secularism is the collective farce of South Asian politics, underwritten no doubt by ideologically-bankrupt intellectuals who are completely disconnected from popular religion and politics. For these so-called secularists, religion equals fanaticism, fundamentalism, and the like. It is inconceivable for these alienated intellectuals that religion may also be a source of ethical values, pluralism, and good personal habits. Mani Shanker Aiyar, who lost this time on a Congress ticket, has confessed to being a "secular fundamentalist." I do not see how such intolerant ideologies help. Secular or not, fundamentalism needs to be fought back in the realm of popular politics, and at least to my mind, it is clear that the Congress is no more reliable than the BJP in this fight, which can be fought best by everyday practitioners of the diverse faiths of the subcontinent and those sympathetic to these pluralist traditions.
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