BJP tries image make-over on poll eve in MP

NK SINGH

Naya jamana aayega,

Kamane wala khayega

The working class slogan, a favourite Left rhetoric, was heard this week at a meeting organised by the BJP Government in Madhya Pradesh. And exhorting the people to raise the slogan was none other than Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. He was addressing a meeting of beneficiaries of his government’s welfare scheme for the poor and downtrodden in Sehore district.

The chief minister talked about his government’s efforts to alleviate poverty, pointing out that Indira Gandhi’s Garibi Hatao was just an empty slogan. At the end of his meeting, instead of the customary ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’, he switched to the slogan first raised by Lenin a century ago, promising to usher in the New Age when only those who work get to eat.

The slogan is a familiar war cry at rallies organised by communist and socialist parties. One rarely hears it at Congress meetings ever since socialists parted company. And it is almost never heard at BJP meetings, at least not till now. “It is not a BJP slogan,” confirms Rajendra Sharma, chief editor of Swadesh, a Hindi daily ideologically aligned with the Sangh parivar.  

“Our slogan was quite different,” recalls former Chief Minister Babulal Gaur, who was active in Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, the labour wing of RSS. The BMS philosophy is, he says, that earning members would feed others --- Jo kamayega wo sabko khilayega.

In the run up to 2018 assembly elections, Chouhan seems to have switched over to Left vocabulary to win over a new territory. It is raining sops for farmers, women, urban poor and working class. The BJP is, ironically, desperate to establish its credentials as a party of the proletariat. It is bizarre, given Sangh parivar’s inherent ideological hatred for class conflict.

Over the past decade the BJP has seamlessly captured the traditional Congress vote banks of scheduled castes and tribes, rural population, women and urban slum dwellers. Nine of the 10 SC&ST Lok Sabha members from MP are from BJP, which is no long considered a party of trading and business classes and rich kulaks. 

Says Prabhat Jha, a former president of the party’s state unit: “It was a wrong perception about us created by our opponents.”

Gone are the Jana Sangh days of Gau Mata.  Gone are the Advani days of ‘Mandir wahin banayenge.’ The slogan of sadak, pani, bizli would not work this time. After all the BJP has been in power for 15 years now. Hence the party is trying to write a new narrative around working class. “We have always been pro-poor,” insists Jha.

Combining Marxist tools with Ram Manohar Lohia’s understanding of Indian society shows how the BJP has changed. The first three chief ministers from the BJP stable, in late 70s and early 90s, were all middle class, upper caste politicians. Kailash Joshi, a Brahmin, belonged to a prosperous farmer’s family. VK Sakhlecha and Sunderlal Patwa were both upper caste Jains and belonged to rich trading class.

In sharp contrast, the last three BJP chief ministers were all OBCs, who came from humble economic backgrounds. Uma Bharati, a backward caste Lodhi, never tires of reminiscing about the stark poverty she faced as a child. Babulal Gaur, a backward caste Yadav, was a mill worker. Shivraj Singh Chouhan is Kirar OBC from lower middle class rural background.

Even as BJP, the upper caste party of the affluent, is trying to reinvent itself, it is interesting to take a look at the chief ministers the Congress has given to this state. All the nine Congress chief ministers were upper castes Hindus who came from comfortable middle class or rich homes. 

In fact, two of these, Arjun Singh and Digvijay Singh, came from affluent feudal families. Six of them were Brahmins, two were Rajputs and one a Jain. None of them was poor.

Besides them, the state had two other chief ministers, who were essentially Congressmen but who rebelled and joined hands with opposition to form coalition governments. GN Singh, a Rajput, was from a rich farmer’s family. Raja Naresh Chandra Singh was a tribal but he was head of a princely state.

It is interesting to note that although Uma Bharati was the 21^st chief minister of MP but when she assumed office in 2003, she was the state’s first OBC chief minister and also the first one who came from such humble background.     

The forthcoming assembly elections are going to be an interesting battle in populism as both the BJP and the Congress will try to prove that they are more pro-poor than their opponent. It should not come as a surprise if the BJP assumes a more belligerent tone in its search for fresh political pastures. After all, politics is the art of the possible.

Powers That Be, my column in DB Post of 16 June 2018

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