Narendra Modi is awe-inspiring. His capacity to win is astonishing. The spectacular victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party, after 27 years in power in Gujarat, is all because of Modi. He was the leader and the face of the campaign. The election was fought in his name and by him; state leaders were side shows, swept along in the wake of Modi's mystique.
He pitched it perfectly. The economic success of Gujarat, its development and everything about the state that makes it an investment destination, Modi claimed and succeeded in convincing Gujarat's voters, was entirely due to his ceaseless efforts. In a state famous for its trading skills and business acumen, promises of massive inflows of money and the ripple effects of it were just the kind of booster that the BJP needed for a big relaunch to eclipse the undercurrents of anti-incumbency that could have tripped the party and tarnished its image.
Also Read — BJP's record win in Gujarat shows it's favourite for 2024; Himachal loss gives glimmer of hope to Congress
The Gujarat election was a personal challenge, and Modi pulled out all the stops in a relentless campaign, with 27 meetings, a 51-kilometre road show, days of ribbon cutting, deal signing photo ops on the eve of the elections to ensure that he and his party won. Backing him up was master mind Amit Shah, who was tireless in his efforts to ensure that Gujarat and the rest of India got the message that Modi is not just a vote catcher, but has an extraordinary ability to deliver unprecedented wins.
For all the perfection of the mechanism that delivered the unmatched victory in Gujarat, the BJP lost in Himachal Pradesh. The hill state is BJP president J P Nadda's home state and, therefore, no less significant than Gujarat. In Himachal Pradesh, Modi's campaign was a mirror of his campaign in Gujarat; he was the face of the contest; he was the leader, and declared that he was the real candidate in every constituency, the nominees were proxies, in other words.
The BJP also lost the municipal elections in Delhi. Not by a large margin, but by a margin that makes it convincing that the Aam Aadmi Party is the little guy who can defeat the largest political party in the world in the town where it has its headquarter, on the one hand, and from where it runs the country, on the other.
These elaborations of where Modi won and where he lost are necessary to understand that no matter how pitch-perfect Modi may be for voters in Gujarat, he does not go down as well with voters in other parts of the country. The truth is he is not exactly the heartthrob of Gujarat. He is not the superstar he once may have been. The BJP won by totting up over 52 per cent of the votes, but the number of voters was fewer than ever before. Analysts on the ground read the voting numbers as a lukewarm response from younger voters.
If significant numbers of younger voters were put off by Modi and the BJP in Gujarat, they were definitely impervious to his charisma, his pitch and his perfection in Himachal Pradesh, the election verdict confirms. Voters in Himachal converted their discontent into a verdict against Modi's policies and the shenanigans of the BJP in the state party. The Himachal verdict reflects that issues like unemployment, rising prices, slow down of the economy and the bleak future of younger citizens cannot be offset by promises to legislate the Uniform Civil Code, teach trouble makers of 2002 (Shah's oblique but crystal clear reference to the carnage that followed the train burning in Godhara on Modi's watch) a lesson and usher in "Akhand Shanti" or unending peace.
The temple in Ayodhya, igniting the controversy over the Gyanvapi Mosque in Benares, calling the protestors of Shaheen Bagh "gaddar" or traitors, who deserved to be shot (goli maro ….) failed to convince voters in Delhi that the BJP should remain in power after 15 years of endless brawling and bungling and bad governance. The machinery mobilised and delivered the votes in polling stations across Gujarat clearly did not work in Himachal Pradesh and Delhi. Put differently, BJP's machinery and Modi's mystique were defeated by the Congress in one place and the AAP in another.
Gujarat's verdict could be the exception as the BJP prepares to fight several more elections in 2023. The combination of pride and loyalty that makes Modi the superhero in Gujarat is missing everywhere else. The BJP's vote mobilisation machinery in other states is not as efficient as it is in Gujarat. In some states, like West Bengal, the BJP does not have enough workers to man polling booths on polling day.
It does appear that the blind fervour that swept across India and contributed to the build-up of the Modi cult and his reputation as the invincible force in Indian politics may be cooling off. It is the break that the Congress needs to get its act together. The party needs to convert its Bharat Jodo Yatra into a people's movement or Andolan that foregrounds political principles – unity in diversity, harmony not discord, peace not violence, citizenship not religious identity, secularism and social justice – to counter the toxic narrative of Hindutva and its divisions based on religious identity.
The elections in Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh will be opportunities for the Congress to test its strategy of rebooting its politics to fight for principles which would mean leaving the BJP to hard sell the larger than life image of Modi. As a gamble, it would be worth taking, because the Congress has very little to lose.
(Shikha Mukerjee is a senior journalist based in Kolkata)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.