Can Stalin pull it off?

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. K. Stalin’s call to 37 political parties to join the All India Federation for Social Justice deserves serious attention by all those who feel disillusioned with the current direction of the national polity under the leadership of the BJP and the Modi-Shah duo. Stalin has sought participation from all like-minded individuals, organisations, and political parties who matter at the national level or in states. His appeal to raise a common platform against hate and bigotry and hegemony of the majority is laudable. The objective of ensuring ‘everything for everyone’ goes beyond defining the objectives in mere political terms against the current BJP dispensation at the Centre and imparts to it an element of social and economic justice.

Eight years of BJP rule (or misrule?) at the Centre should provide enough fodder to propel such a federation of political parties. But mutual antagonism, differences on key national issues, divergent worldviews and diverse ideological persuasions, have stopped them from coming together. Over-bloated egos of leaders too have hindered their coalescence. Decline of the Indian National Congress has deprived those opposed to the BJP of a credible pole to build an alternative to the saffronists. But the urge to come together is gathering intensity as the party ruling at the Centre has bared all its fangs in a bid to undermine all that sustains a democracy just because it has a brutal majority in Parliament.

Stalin’s call is therefore likely to strike chord with many parties who have been at the receiving end during BJP rule. But opposition to the BJP does not constitute a sufficient basis for such unity. Many such platforms splintered soon enough in the past owing to ideological disunity and for want of a common will to guide the polity.

Economic grievances such as unemployment and rising inflation, or at best mismanagement during the pandemic could be an argument for unity of the opposition. But excessive assertion of regional identities often proves more a hindrance in forging such a platform.

It is in this context that some pan-Indian imagination is imperative in raising a federal platform against the BJP’s centripetal ideology. A platform against the exclusionary appeal of the BJP and its campaign of hate and bigotry will be successful only if the alternative platform of ‘everything for everyone’ comes up with an inclusive economic vision against the rapacious capitalism the BJP has unleashed. It will be naïve if regional parties think that the sum total of their votes can enable an alternative forum to sail to victory in the 2024 General Elections. The Indian electorate has learnt to think differently while voting in the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. With two years in hand, regional parties would do well to shape a coherent narrative to capture the popular imagination and put in place an ideology, a hierarchy of leaders, and train a cadre for some solid advance in pursuit of a polity different from the one drawing its sustenance from hate, bigotry, exclusion, fomenting of phobias and fostering fanaticism.