Sriram Karri | Hyderabad-Bhagyanagar face-off ends in uneasy stalemate

It begins with the name. Always.

You can hold on to it or change it, but the decision is never easy. Ask parents as they go through greater anxiety in deciding the name of their child to be over any other birthing issue. Should we continue to be Hyderabad, or become Bhagyanagar?

When a city of over one crore was thrown the challenge, over which its nearly 77 lakh registered voters brooded hard during a fortnight of the most shrill vituperative campaign that forced the attention of the nation, in which less than half turned out to vote in the midst of a pandemic, some turning nostalgic for a chance to vote on paper ballots again, the Hyderabad or Bhagyanagar duel, with all its underlying implications of this symbolism and euphemism, ended in an uneasy stalemate.

A Split Verdict

The ruling TRS, receiving yet another drubbing by the BJP in the state, received 12,04,167 votes (35.81 per cent) to the saffron party’s 11,95,711 (35.56 per cent), the MIM holding on to its fortress, winning 6,30,866 votes (18.76 per cent), a distant but formidable third. The TRS has 55 divisions in the 150 municipal council, while the BJP has 48. The MIM held on to its 44. A high court judgment on Monday will give us the result for the last seat. The ruling TRS in short had only 8,456 votes more than its challenger.

The Bhagyanagar reference resonates strongly amongst both its supporters and opponents, and is a very viscerally fundamental call to people to decide on their idea of “mini India” as the city perceives itself to be. Over half of them said they would rather watch from the sidelines. The half that matters, the one that turned up to vote, was nearly split. Statistically, combining the MIM votes to TRS does mean a decisive rejection of the name change idea and all other implications, but it is still largely an uneasy stalemate.

Saffron-Pink battles ahead

The TRS has failed to defend its 99 incumbent seats won in the last elections, losing 44 out of them to the BJP. Where it has won too, it is the BJP, which was a close second in most. More importantly, the BJP has stolen the narrative and set the agenda — it has successfully portrayed the TRS as a dynastic, nepotistic, corrupt, decadent party and government, which has failed to deliver its promises, all of which are explained by their policy of appeasing Muslims under pressure from the MIM.

The TRS, in turn, tried hard to set its stated narrative of continuity and development as an alternative paradigm but was unconvincing. The TRS called the BJP communal, fanatic, insane, divisive and a big failure, even promising to be the nucleus of a new formation that would challenge Narendra Modi on a national-level.

As a voter said, “while according to the TRS, it was a vote between development and communalism, the BJP dubbed it a battle between a dynasty’s corrupt politics versus nationalistic Hindutva without appeasement. People see the picture in their own way, without the funnel vision of parties — as a battle between corrupt, nepotistic development versus communal nationalism”.

In this round, the advantage is still with TRS-MIM but the momentum has been taken by the BJP. The impasse will be broken by battles, nay, war, that lies ahead.

A multi-cut strategy

The BJP has demonstrated successfully, with three different electoral coups — in Nizamabad Lok Sabha elections in 2019 defeating K. Kavitha, incumbent MP and daughter of chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao; in a byelection in Dubbaka last month, in which they humbled the TRS strategist in-charge, T. Harish Rao, minister and CM’s nephew; and finally, the GHMC, in which they had dented the hitherto invincible image of K.T. Rama Rao, CM’s son and heir apparent.

As a BJP leader said, “daughter, nephew and son have been given a drubbing each. Each individually and three together add up to what people feel — a strong anti-KCR family and TRS emotion. The next defeat is reserved for KCR in the Assembly elections”.

Meanwhile, the next by-election is in sight, in Nagarjunasagar constituency, whose sitting TRS MLA passed away on December 1.

BJP’s second southern bastion

Despite the fascinating changes in Tamil Nadu and Kerala politics, it is unlikely the BJP is realistically close to winning power on its own in any southern state as Telangana.

In 2013, MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi told me in an interview, explaining why his party was opposed to the formation of a separate Telangana. “The YSRC and TDP will die out in this region because they will be dubbed as Andhra parties. A new regional party may win and come to power based on sentiment, but as we have seen in Jharkhand and other such states, such parties lose credibility soon because of corruption and family domination. Telangana will become very vulnerable to a BJP onslaught.”

Owaisi’s words, spoken when Narendra Modi was chief minister of Gujarat, have come very true. The BJP is not coming for some 60 MLA seats or 17 Lok Sabha seats; it is coming to make more fundamental changes to how south India perceives itself.

For too long, most people argued and believed that the five southern states are not rife as a social soil for a political Hindutva to bloom. Pakistan is too far away, far less people understand Hindi, education and prosperity levels are relatively higher and delivery of development and welfare much more effective for decades here. The case of Karnataka was dismissed as an exception. 

Not any longer. Not the way Telangana is rapidly shifting from pink to saffron. Not unless the development alternative introspects and reinterprets itself as a stronger moral alternative, not a merely more convenient substitute.