Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay | How ‘social engineering’ led to BJP triumph in Haryana

On August 16, when the Election Commission of India called for Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana, a victory for the Congress in the latter was considered a given — all that remained to be determined by the electoral process, was the extent of the BJP’s defeat. This viewpoint gained ground due to the party and the Union government’s failure in tackling two agitations that at one stage appeared to have the capacity to dramatically weaken the party all across northern India, especially Haryana. The two agitations were the farmers’ stir and the wrestlers’ protest. The issue of unemployed youth denied from 2021 onward a long career in the defence forces and lifelong post-retirement pension because of the “Agniveer” scheme, was appended to these and a theory was propounded — that Haryana was dominated by three political narratives involving Jawan, Kisan and Pahelwan, and these framed the BJP as being responsible for desperation among the three professional communities.

These narratives would sink the BJP, it was thought. The viewpoint was accepted as the gospel truth by a large section of non-BJP political leaders and activists, besides sections of the intelligentsia on the other side of the BJP’s fence. The sense was so overpowering that when in March this year, the BJP replaced the chief minister, Manohar Lal Khattar, with Nayab Singh Saini, whose legislative career had started only in 2014, the majority of such people dismissed the move as a desperate act to extricate the party from the morass the party was trapped in. It was considered an act of desperation, conceived without much thought because just a day earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had praised Mr Khattar at a public event, recalled their old association and the days when how he rode pillion on Mr Khattar’s motorbike while they carried out party work.

The party’s social engineering in this move was overlooked. Instead, the BJP’s adversaries concluded that the party junked Mr Khattar because his governance was riddled with failures and shortcomings and only a new face had a chance to shepherd the party to power again. Few paid much attention to Mr Saini’s CV and termed him as a low-profile leader. Almost universally, the importance of Mr Saini being an OBC leader was overlooked and why the BJP replaced one non-Jat leader with another, from the Punjabi Khatri Khattar to Mr Saini.

For decades, Haryana was looked as a Jat fiefdom with power alternating between the “three Lals” — Devi Lal, Bansi Lal and Bhajan Lal — and their progeny. Their stranglehold on Haryana’s power corridors ended only in March 2005, when Om Prakash Chautala made way for Bhupinder Singh Hooda, another Jat leader. When the BJP seized power with a slender majority in 2014, it appointed a non-Jat as CM in Mr Khattar. This strategy was used in Maha-rashtra and Jhar-khand too, when leaders from politically dominant communities, the Maratha and tribals, were overlooked, and instead Devendra Fadnavis and Raghubar Das were appointed CMs.

The power shuffle in March, from a Punjabi Khatri to an OBC Saini leader, was another step in the direction of consolidating non-Jat communities behind the BJP. The Congress virtually named Mr Hooda as its CM face. He refused to accommodate other Congress leaders, most notably Kumari Selja, a Dailt, and Randeep Singh Surjewala. This heightened the fear of Jat hegemony among those from other castes.

Significantly, the Congress almost matched the BJP’s social mix of candidates: 20 OBCs for BJP’s 21, 11 Punjabis or Sikhs to the same number of Punjabi Hindus put up by BJP, two Baniyas of the Congress to five from the BJP. However, the Congress put up 26 Jat candidates while the BJP fielded 17. But, more than the candidates’ social profiles, Mr Hooda’s refusal to accommodate other Congr-ess leaders send chills down the spines of non-Jats — if he refused to accept party leaders and their supporters, this sentiment would percolate to the community and they would hegemonise all avenues to privilege.

There are lessons for the Congress in losing the election which should have been theirs. First, the party’s central leadership must be more assertive and disallow dominant satraps to impose their hegemony over state units, especially during elections. The national leadership failed to rein in Kamal Nath, Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh respectively, during the Assembly polls in November-December 2023, consequently handing power to the BJP. The same act was repeated in Haryana. Second, the Congress leadership needs to rediscover merits in organisation building. Despite differences within the BJP, it has to be accepted that its electoral machinery is extremely well-oiled and runs smoothly with aides of top leaders micro-managing the entire campaign. It must be noted that the only states where the BJP faced hurdles in establishing its hegemony are those where the principal adversary has an efficient booth management system in place, for instance West Bengal, where the Trinamul Congress’ infrastructure is extremely well organised.

The decisive victory in Haryana gives a push to the state becoming one from where the BJP’s hegemony becomes almost permanent or extremely hard to dislodge, like in Gujarat and MP. After three successive victories, from a virtually clean slate prior to 2014, the party is close to establishing permanence. The credit for this goes to the central leadership and not its state leaders, the BJP in any case does not have many of them, save the likes of Yogi Adityanath and Himanta Biswa Sarma. It is a different matter that the BJP’s central leadership has destroyed the party’s collegial style of functioning. The Congress needs to convert itself into a more dynamic party without compromising on principles of democracy.

While the verdict from Haryana will give the BJP a push towards retaining power in Maharashtra and regaining it in Jharkhand, the results from Jammu and Kashmir bestows it with responsibility to respect the people’s mandate on a day-to-day basis and allow the new government to function and not hamper governance in the UT, the way it has interfered in Delhi in recent years. It is time for the BJP to stop making governors and lieutenant-governors act like its handmaidens. With the humungous and structured organisational network of the Sangh Parivar and the party, it is time for the BJP to make gubernatorial offices truly non-partisan. Haryana has presented the BJP with the first real opportunity to reverse the downward trend seen during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. With this win, it can strategise better for improving performance in Maharashtra, Jhark-hand, and eventually Delhi.

Author-journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay’s latest book is The Demolition, The Verdict and The Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project. He is also the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times. He tweets at @NilanjanUdwin