Oppn changes the discourse of national politics

Shikha Mukerjee

Two recent moves by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and his Bharatiya Janata Party are unambiguous concessions to the new political dynamics unfolding in India. From being in control of the political discourse, Modi and his party have now been cornered into reacting to the new discourse controlled by the opposition.

There is a marked shift, and the margins, that is states and political parties in opposition to the BJP as well as all party platforms like the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, are setting the agenda. Modi and his BJP have been compelled by the circumstances to make backhanded concessions to constituencies that they do not dominate or control. States ruled by parties in opposition to the BJP have become stronger and more confident as locations of resistance on the one hand and in setting the agenda on the other the closer India gets to the 2024 general elections: One which is likely to be a mother of all hitherto battles.

Flawed and irresponsible as the manner in which the change was effected may be, the fact that the Modi government was pushed to making a splashy stand on empowering young women by raising the age of marriage to 21 years is one of the several, small but significant ways in which the agenda of the BJP’s politics and policy is shifting to adjust to a new dynamic. The discovery of women as having agency, especially in making political choices in 2021, is an admission of one of the several reasons that the BJP lost so comprehensively in West Bengal to Mamata Banerjee in the May elections. The amendment is an acknowledgment that women turned away from Modi’s masculine and muscular appeal, preferring the feisty and empowering role model of Didi. The empowerment of women, the BJP claims, has been Modi’s priority since 2014. Other than palliatives like the Ujjwala Yojana of distributing free gas connections to make it easier for women in their role as unpaid domestic labour and the Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao campaign that spent more on advertising than on creating the enabling infrastructure for the scheme’s success, the government has been singularly selective in its policies. Its hard right construction of Hindutva social order have disabled the BJP from seeing women as autonomous and a constituency in themselves.

Trapped by its single point agenda of establishing a majoritarian hegemony that deploys communal identity to marginalise, if not disenfranchise, the Other, the BJP and the Modi government will no doubt use the change in the age of marriage to paint all communities and political parties that criticise and oppose the amendment as anti-women, anti-national forces out to stymie the development agenda of the government. The closer it gets to the Uttar Pradesh elections — the most crucial contest for Modi and the BJP in the run up to 2024 — the divisive underpinnings of the change will become more apparent, based on the political compulsions of the campaign. The first and very big backing off by the Modi government was over the repeal of the three “black” farm laws, and the promise that was embedded in the constitution of the committee with leaders of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha to consider how a guarantee on Minimum Support Prices nation- wide for 23 crops can be put into place. These and the promptness with which the Uttar Pradesh government announced a probe into the Ayodhya land scam by vested interests, as well as the refusal of the Modi government to take action against Union Minister of State for Home, Ajay Mishra Teni, over the Lakhimpur Kheri killings as a premeditated act as revealed by investigators are signs that the issues and agendas in the politics of India are being set more by the opposition than by the BJP or Prime Minister Modi.

The obvious discomfort of the BJP is evident in other ways too. The parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi was forced to invite opposition parties to discuss the controversial suspension of 12 opposition Members of Parliament, because the opposition succeeded in using its marginalisation in Parliament, where the BJP has a brute majority, to take the protest outside and grab public attention. The rejection of the invitation was egg on the BJP’s face. What was obvious is the BJP is unused to managing a successful opposition counter offensive.

It is possible, if not almost certain, that down the line, the character of the intangible cultural tag bestowed on West Bengal’s Durga Puja by UNESCO in recognition of its aesthetics and creativity, its uniquely inclusive appeal that is rooted in its essence as a religious event that transcends the religious, linguistic barriers to be a “universal festival of humanity,” will become a ground for political confrontation. With Modi and Mamata Banerjee both claiming credit but emphasising different aspects of the Durga Puja cult and culture, a fight