‘Outlook Talks’ features a conversation with political scientist Rahul Verma on the evolving nature of election campaigns.
The conversation covers ideological shifts, the rise of the Bhartiya Janta Party as a dominant party, and the critical role of charismatic leadership in shaping political landscapes.
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#IndianPolitics #ElectionCampaigns #BJP #Leadership #Democracy #NarendraModi
The conversation covers ideological shifts, the rise of the Bhartiya Janta Party as a dominant party, and the critical role of charismatic leadership in shaping political landscapes.
Follow us:
Website: https://www.outlookindia.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Outlookindia
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outlookindia/
X: https://twitter.com/Outlookindia
Whatsapp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaNrF3v0AgWLA6OnJH0R
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OutlookMagazine
Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/outlookindia
#IndianPolitics #ElectionCampaigns #BJP #Leadership #Democracy #NarendraModi
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Welcome to Outlook Talks.
00:11 Today, we have with us political scientist and fellow
00:15 of Center for Policy Research, Rahul Verma.
00:19 And we always have with us our editor, Chinkee Sinha.
00:22 So we will talk about the current elections
00:25 and the campaigning and how it has changed
00:29 or it has just--
00:30 in the few months, we have seen the changes in speech.
00:34 We have seen the changes in campaigns,
00:37 how it has operated in the elections.
00:39 So thank you, Rahul, for joining us.
00:40 Thank you for having me.
00:41 Thank you, Chinkee.
00:42 Thank you.
00:43 So Rahul, let's start with this, that in the last few months,
00:47 we have seen during campaigns one
00:49 of the major contentious point has been democracy,
00:53 the idea of democracy, how democracy is going to operate.
00:56 So opposition parties have been saying that if the BGP comes
01:00 to power, it will be the end of democracy in India.
01:03 So how do you read these campaigns
01:05 and how do you read democracy altogether?
01:08 So that's a very interesting question.
01:10 I think what seems to be happening,
01:12 it's basically reversal of what Bharti Jansang used
01:18 to do during Indira years.
01:21 Like if Indira comes back to power,
01:24 then you will see a similar sort of like emergency provisions
01:27 and hacking of democracy and other things.
01:30 And now the current opposition, which
01:32 is Congress and many of other opposition parties,
01:36 have been making some of these points.
01:40 So this is just a sort of repetition of that thing
01:42 that you--
01:43 In some ways, coming back off some of those points.
01:46 So in this case, if we consider that,
01:48 as you were referring to BJS and like at that point of time,
01:51 how against Indira Gandhi, the opposition got consolidated.
01:55 Even this time, we have found the same.
01:57 The opposition's parties came together and got consolidated.
02:00 But is it working on the ground?
02:02 The results in a few hours, we are
02:04 going to know what are the results.
02:05 But what are you thinking about it?
02:07 Doesn't seem to be working because exit polls have
02:10 indicated that BJP is coming back to power, perhaps
02:14 with a much more improved numbers than they had in 2019.
02:19 And think of it, it also didn't work for BJS
02:23 for a very, very long time.
02:24 Congress was in power from 1952 to 1989.
02:29 So except the 1977 election, this point
02:33 was also made in 1971 election.
02:37 So it's not that opposition coming together
02:41 is automatically going to lead to defeat of the incumbent.
02:46 But as you were saying that democracy--
02:48 and this is just a sort of repetition
02:50 of whatever has happened.
02:52 So democratically, don't you think
02:54 that the weakened opposition that we
02:56 have been observing since 2014, a sort of weakened opposition,
03:00 is actually affecting the health of democracy?
03:03 How to get out of it?
03:04 Like you have to, I think--
03:07 What is the way out of it?
03:08 Think about this.
03:09 Let's take a long view of Indian politics since 1952.
03:13 In any dominant party system, opposition
03:17 is going to be weaker.
03:18 That's a feature of the dominant party system.
03:21 There were some reasons that it took a serious opposition
03:25 to challenge Congress and being able to replace them.
03:29 Since 2014, what we are witnessing
03:32 is rise of the second dominant party system,
03:34 this time BJP being the nucleus of that system.
03:38 And the systemic feature is going
03:39 to constrain, in some ways, opposition party's ability
03:43 to challenge them.
03:45 To be able to defeat a dominant party,
03:47 you need an extraordinary mobilization.
03:50 Ordinary politics, everyday issues,
03:52 are not enough to displace a dominant party.
03:55 So what are the major issues that can be mobilized?
03:58 Because as you're saying, ordinary issues--
04:00 I'll have to join politics for that and win elections.
04:02 Otherwise, ordinary issues, the narratives
04:04 that we found in the ground, that's not going to work.
04:07 Jokes apart, see, what I'm saying,
04:11 some of these issues, like economic anxieties
04:13 and other things, in a poor country like India,
04:17 where a large population is dependent on the state
04:21 for their well-being, these anxieties
04:23 are always going to be there.
04:25 So just based on those anxieties,
04:27 you cannot build a politics.
04:29 And you cannot build a politics in a very short period of time.
04:34 So to be able to challenge a dominant party system, which
04:38 to my mind has certain characteristics,
04:40 first, there is going to be an ideological hegemony
04:43 of that party.
04:46 This is not to say everyone buys that ideological idea.
04:48 But a larger portion or larger proportion of masses
04:52 would in some ways or will agree to that ideological.
04:56 And that's why you will see some of the opposition parties
05:00 will also mirror that in tactics.
05:03 Second thing what you are going to see,
05:05 that a dominant party system is presided
05:08 by a charismatic leader at the top.
05:11 This is not to say that leader has to be respected and loved
05:14 by everyone.
05:15 But the person is going to be charismatic.
05:18 Third, what you are going to see is
05:20 that it has an unparalleled organizational machinery.
05:26 Fourth, what you are going to see
05:29 is that they will have very large or undue advantage
05:33 over all kinds of resources, including
05:36 money and communication.
05:38 And fifth, because of these things,
05:41 opposition is going to be disarrayed.
05:43 Even the efforts to come together would be hard.
05:46 And even if you come together, it's
05:48 not enough to dislodge the dominant party system.
05:51 There was a reason why Congress Party continued for so long
05:54 in power, because it was a dominant party system.
05:57 And there is a reason why BJP may continue for a much more
06:01 foreseeable future.
06:03 I had a couple of questions about this ideology situation.
06:08 And your research also focuses on that.
06:11 So I just wanted to ask the role of ideology
06:13 in terms of elections.
06:14 The regional parties have their own ideological agendas.
06:19 And over time, we have also seen a lot of dilution
06:22 with coalition politics and politics of opportunism.
06:25 Like people kind of dilute.
06:27 Like for example, if we look at Bihar, for instance,
06:30 they went with CPI-ML.
06:32 And kind of it had not happened for a long time.
06:35 But they also gave up their land reforms thing.
06:39 And so how does that work?
06:42 And does it still work?
06:43 And how does this dominant party ideology,
06:46 how does that take over every other-- like social justice,
06:49 for example, DMK.
06:51 There are all kinds of ideological.
06:53 And it started with that.
06:54 And then it kind of went more localized.
06:57 So I think when we think of ideological politics,
07:03 our first reaction in sort of comparative sense
07:07 is, OK, if you look at United States,
07:09 there is a clear divide between Republicans and Democrats.
07:15 A similar kind of ideological structures
07:18 don't exist in India.
07:19 Or a similar level of clear divide don't exist in India.
07:23 And that is true.
07:24 What Pradeep and I try to do in our book,
07:29 the argument we make is fairly simple,
07:33 is that in India, there is an ideological divide.
07:37 And that divide has been there for a very long period
07:40 of time.
07:41 The rise of BJP is a culmination of a historical battle
07:44 that has been based on Indian soil for over a century.
07:48 So it's not a sudden rise.
07:49 Now, what does ideology consist in Indian case?
07:52 So ideology in some ways, what we are trying to say,
07:55 is a bundle of ideas or issues.
07:59 Issues and ideas are going to change from election
08:03 to election.
08:03 But ideology in some ways is basically,
08:06 you're not going to care about everything.
08:08 But because that becomes part of the ideological bundle,
08:11 you basically put yourself on one side.
08:15 And so for us, the politics in India,
08:17 like at the national level-- and this needs to be proved more--
08:20 has been on two axes.
08:22 The first axis we call as politics of recognition,
08:27 which is basically how to bring different groups
08:30 or marginalized groups of citizens
08:34 into the mainstream of politics.
08:36 And whether we are going to use measures such as reservations
08:39 or quotas or there are--
08:40 see, there was an agreement that there
08:42 is a marginalized community.
08:43 And we need to do something about them.
08:45 The difference is on methods.
08:47 And similarly, on what we call as statism,
08:50 which is how much state is going to intervene
08:54 in family affairs, redistribution of property,
08:57 and other things.
08:59 And these ideological divisions were very visible
09:03 if you read through the freedom movement documents
09:06 and if you read through the constituent assembly debates.
09:11 What we did additionally after reading those documents,
09:14 we took survey data, which CSDS has conducted long back
09:18 under Professor Rajnik Kothari in '67, '71,
09:21 and then the series after 1996.
09:23 We show that voters of different parties
09:27 actually have some ideological leaning.
09:29 And this is consistent.
09:31 BJP or BJS voters will stand on what you will call as the right.
09:36 The Congress voters are likely in the center.
09:38 And the left and socialist parties were on the left.
09:42 And this pattern is consistent.
09:44 What is also consistent is that a large mass, which
09:48 is across the globe, is in the middle.
09:51 You have 10% to 15% to 20% population on this extreme
09:56 and 10% to 15% of population on that extreme.
10:01 And then there is a large mass which is in the middle.
10:03 And this is what happens everywhere.
10:06 Now, because in India there are so many parties,
10:10 and the issues and the demographic compositions
10:13 and everything at the state level differs,
10:16 someone should take that study forward,
10:18 critique us, criticize us, whatever they want to do.
10:21 But at least see how much of these ideological components--
10:25 because our argument was at the national and historical level--
10:28 how much does this work in Northeast?
10:31 Are their axes different?
10:32 How much does this work in southern states
10:36 or northern states?
10:37 And so that needs to be done.
10:39 But ideological axes in some ways, what it does
10:42 is structures the party competition.
10:45 And so what we did in the second part of the book,
10:47 we first showed that there is ideological competition.
10:50 In the second part of this book, we
10:51 show that movement of political parties,
10:54 the changes in the party system from a Congress-dominant system
10:58 to a coalition system to a BJP-dominant system
11:01 is a result of political parties moving in that space.
11:05 Now, how do parties move?
11:06 They move because of the leaders.
11:09 Leaders basically make those changes within the parties.
11:12 And what we basically-- and someone, again,
11:16 there is a need for some political theorists
11:18 to intervene--
11:19 is when we think of ideology, we make it
11:22 as if it's a pure thing.
11:24 If you are ideological, then you should not
11:26 be making some sort of adjustment, adaptation,
11:32 or opportunism.
11:34 I think we need to think about that,
11:35 even while being ideological, parties and leaders
11:40 have to show flexibility.
11:41 Because if you are too much ideological
11:43 and don't show pragmatism, then you will become dogmatic
11:46 and you will lose out, which is what
11:49 seems to be happening to the left parties in India.
11:54 And BJP has shown much more agility and flexibility,
11:58 and that's why they are rising at this moment.
12:01 This is not to say that BJP will always keep rising.
12:04 And at some point, they will, during the process of rise--
12:09 not saturate, during the process of rise--
12:11 see, politics at the end of the day
12:13 is a game of balancing the contradictions.
12:16 And at the end of the day, at some point,
12:18 those contradictions would become large enough
12:21 that once your most charismatic leader is not around,
12:26 once a better leader comes on the alternative side,
12:31 once you're not able to manage those contradictions,
12:34 then you will have a problem.
12:35 Think about it.
12:36 Congress declines, begins at its peak.
12:41 In 1984, they got highest majority
12:43 that they had ever got.
12:45 Within three years, the government by 1987
12:48 becomes a lame duck government.
12:49 And 1989 is when their national decline begins.
12:54 And why it begins?
12:55 Because till Mrs. Gandhi--
12:58 Indira Gandhi was at the helm of affairs,
13:00 because of her charisma, she was able to hold
13:02 on to the contradictions.
13:04 And those contradictions had started
13:05 becoming visible in 1980.
13:09 Political scientists had pointed out
13:11 why 1980 is not a restoration.
13:14 While you have won the election, it's not a restoration.
13:17 And as soon as Indira Gandhi departed the scene,
13:21 within five years, the Congress system
13:23 starts showing signs of collapse.
13:25 But as you were saying, the 1984 elections--
13:27 and you're referring to that huge margin Congress almost
13:30 got, 414 seats--
13:32 it was for sympathy.
13:33 It was Indira's sympathy, because after Indira's killing,
13:36 the sympathy vote actually got consolidated.
13:38 Don't you think?
13:39 It was just '77 when Congress actually
13:42 got disinherited almost.
13:44 And thereafter, it went on in 1989.
13:47 It was the culmination.
13:48 How do you read it?
13:49 In politics, no election is decided by a single factor.
13:54 And we continue to make this mistake every election,
13:59 because we want a simple explanation, one talking point.
14:02 What's the punchline?
14:04 1980, Indira had won, returned with a thumping majority.
14:09 Opposition has fragmented.
14:12 If you look at 1980 election, even if Indira Gandhi had not
14:16 died, do you think any other opposition party
14:19 was credible enough to replace Congress party at that time?
14:21 They may not have got 404.
14:23 But I don't think there was any other party that
14:25 would have stopped Congress from getting 272.
14:30 And so yes, Indira Gandhi's death
14:32 might have given them some bump.
14:35 They might have got just 350 seats.
14:36 They got 4%, 5% extra votes and 50 more seats.
14:40 Same might have happened in 2019.
14:43 What you call like Balakot, it would
14:45 have given a 25, 30-seat bump.
14:48 But it wasn't as if like Pulwama Balakot would not
14:51 have happened and BJP would have been below 200.
14:54 Exactly.
14:55 And I had one other thing that you
14:56 talked about contradictions, right?
14:58 Like a charismatic leader holds on
15:00 to different kinds of contradictions
15:02 and then kind of channelizes it or however.
15:04 What were the contradictions that Indira Gandhi
15:06 was holding on to?
15:07 And what is Mr. Narendra Modi holding?
15:09 What are these contradictions?
15:10 Because also looking at the 2024 campaign, for instance,
15:14 after the two phases, the campaign also
15:16 got really, really like high octane, emotional,
15:20 kind of aggressive.
15:22 There was a lot of othering.
15:23 And the fact that they were not like scared of this.
15:26 There was also this whole arrogance
15:29 in terms of like name calling, all kinds of--
15:32 maybe there was an audience to it.
15:34 But what is then the contradiction here?
15:35 OK, so let me start with the second question first,
15:40 which is that why did BJP suddenly change course?
15:47 Right?
15:49 To my mind, I think there was a bit of knee-jerk reaction
15:52 from every corner, including analysts, who
15:56 should be more circumspect.
15:58 Because everyone thought that the turnout drop
16:01 is very severe.
16:03 By the end of the election, we know that overall turnout drop
16:07 is very minuscule, right?
16:10 And second point is basically--
16:12 so first knee-jerk reaction from every side,
16:14 including BJP, Prime Minister Modi.
16:17 Why that knee-jerk reaction from BJP would have come--
16:21 and this is just a speculation--
16:24 is that two things.
16:26 One, Prime Minister has never campaigned
16:28 in a less charged election.
16:31 He needs a very, very charged up election.
16:35 That's where he plays.
16:36 Think of 2002, 2007, 2012, 2014, 2019.
16:42 When he leads the campaign, it can't be a normal sort of like,
16:46 you know, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
16:48 There has to be energy.
16:49 Yeah, there has to be some--
16:49 Right?
16:50 And so to perhaps--
16:52 like their reading might be, I need
16:54 to put energy into the campaign.
16:55 How do you do that?
16:56 You charge up your base.
16:58 How do you charge up your base?
16:59 You go to the core ideological messaging.
17:02 The second, I think, is perhaps a reaction
17:08 to Congress or opposition parties' campaign.
17:12 And this is, again, a speculation.
17:14 I think Prime Minister thought that many of the promises
17:18 that Congress is making, or at least the way
17:22 they have turned around [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
17:24 400 campaign narrative, that they need [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
17:34 They thought that this might get traction.
17:37 And so what Prime Minister did is basically
17:40 picked up Congress manifesto, went back
17:42 to BJP's core ideological messaging on Hindu-Muslim,
17:45 brought in redistribution, married all three together,
17:48 and used very powerful symbolism.
17:51 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
17:54 So he basically combined multiple things into one
17:58 to basically sort of like put a cap on Congress
18:06 or opposition parties' messages taking any deeper roots.
18:10 And what about the first one, the contradictions
18:13 that they're holding onto?
18:14 And also the opposition.
18:15 I mean, were they not able to hold
18:17 onto these kinds of contradictions?
18:19 Because their messaging was not very clear.
18:20 Like I had no idea what I was going to vote for.
18:24 And like, for example, I know at least with the BJP
18:28 that, OK, this is what it is.
18:29 With this mixed messaging over here, it was very--
18:33 so contradictions in both--
18:34 Let's think about the contradictions.
18:36 What are the contradictions?
18:37 The first contradiction is, what is your social base?
18:41 And who are you basically projecting as leaders
18:45 or giving tickets and nominations
18:46 and making ministers and chief ministers?
18:48 Congress was a rainbow coalition.
18:51 Upper caste, schedule caste, Muslims
18:54 were the large blocks that used to vote for them.
18:57 What was Congress leadership for the first 30 years?
18:59 Mostly upper caste.
19:01 So at some point, you started seeing
19:04 rise of caste-based parties across North India,
19:06 saying, we need more representation.
19:09 And so those castes started gravitating towards them.
19:12 Similarly, what was happening is that Congress party,
19:18 in a dominant system, this is what has happened.
19:20 You will basically absorb everyone or poach everyone.
19:24 So some people are part of your own core ideological group.
19:29 But some who are not ideologically
19:32 sort of aligned to you, but they think
19:34 you are the vehicle through which power can be won,
19:37 you will get them.
19:38 That's the second contradiction.
19:39 At some point, there is going to be
19:41 a fight within the core ideological group
19:43 and the non-ideological group over power.
19:47 The third kind of contradiction is going to be,
19:51 when someone is at helm of affairs,
19:54 then there is going to be a greater centralization
19:56 within the party structures.
19:58 Power is going to be centralized around two, three people.
20:01 And once that happens, then what it does,
20:04 it basically stops all kind of incentive structures
20:09 for other people to rise.
20:11 Because then there is going to be who's more loyal to me
20:14 and those kind of--
20:15 so all these contradictions start sort of building up.
20:19 I would like to put this as Srinky was saying.
20:24 Ideology and ideological politics,
20:26 ideological hegemony, as you were talking about, in 2013,
20:29 when Aam Aadmi Party is during Aam Aadmi Party's emergence,
20:32 we certainly saw a shift from ideological politics
20:36 to specifically infrastructural politics,
20:38 where welfare schemes were focused.
20:40 And the broader political ideology,
20:42 as we understand if we take Althusser's definition as well,
20:46 in that way, Aam Aadmi Party, as we have read it,
20:50 it's not in that way they operated.
20:52 They spoke about water.
20:53 They spoke about electricity, the infrastructure,
20:56 people's lives.
20:57 But gradually, if we look at now the exit polls and Delhi
21:01 elections results, even that failed.
21:03 So how do you--
21:06 Because see, in political science
21:10 and those who study ideological politics,
21:12 we basically talk about two kinds of issues.
21:16 One, what is known as valence issues,
21:19 and the other one is known as positional issues.
21:22 Valence issues are those on which every party is going
21:26 to have a similar position.
21:29 And basically, voters are going to decide on the credibility
21:32 of performance.
21:34 So delivery of welfare, reduction of corruption,
21:39 like improving people's life, or improving infrastructure,
21:45 all these are valence issues.
21:48 No one is going to say, I'm not going to do that,
21:50 or I'm going to do the opposite thing.
21:52 So then it basically becomes how your performance is
21:56 in comparison to alternative, and you
21:57 are going to be voted on that.
21:59 Then you have positional issues, on which parties
22:03 are going to take opposite positions,
22:08 whether we need construction of Ram temple or no situation
22:13 as it is.
22:15 Sometimes valence issues also become positional issues.
22:19 To give you an example, national security is a valence issue.
22:23 Every party would say we should protect the borders
22:25 and do everything in our capacity to protect it.
22:28 It becomes a positional issue, how do we want to do it?
22:31 Do we want to bomb Pakistan, put our army on the border,
22:35 or we should protect our national security interests
22:37 through dialogues and tier two things?
22:41 So both of these things exist.
22:45 If you are going to be a single issue party or a single caste
22:49 party, you will face challenges.
22:52 There are going to be times when you will win elections,
22:55 because of the prevailing circumstances.
22:58 But the problem is, at some point of time, on that issue,
23:03 if there is another party that can match you,
23:05 then you will be in trouble.
23:06 And so this election, if exit polls are going to be right,
23:10 then you are seeing extinction, or at least
23:13 you've seen decline of BSP in front of our eyes.
23:16 You are seeing decline maybe of--
23:18 BRS has exploded in this election.
23:21 Assam gun parishad, single issue.
23:24 So unless you are mobilizing on multiple issues
23:27 and you are forming multiple coalitions,
23:30 politics at the end of the day game
23:32 is of constructing majority through coalitions.
23:35 Coalitions not in terms of just bringing leaders,
23:38 coalitions on the ground, so social and political coalition.
23:41 And different coalitions come to you
23:43 because you are serving different interests.
23:47 As you say about coalitions, do you
23:49 think that the very messaging to the people
23:52 went wrong when Congress and Aam Aadmi Party fought
23:55 against each other in Punjab, left-hand Congress
23:57 fought against each other in Kerala,
23:59 Dhrinamool Congress and left fought
24:01 against each other in Bengal?
24:03 The political messaging went wrong somewhere or other
24:05 because there was some sort of what even the solidarity was--
24:08 Yeah, partly that may be true.
24:10 But I don't think, even if they would have come together,
24:14 what would have that changed?
24:18 It may have made the competition in some cases better or much
24:24 more tougher.
24:25 But think of SP-BSP coalition in UP.
24:29 So it's not like-- see, the 1989 to 2014 formula of--
24:35 or language of understanding Indian politics has to change.
24:41 If you are still stuck in how politics happened in the--
24:45 every system has a different formula of conducting politics.
24:52 I'm not saying I know this formula.
24:54 But just think of it.
24:57 There are system exchanges that have happened.
24:59 And so you need to recalibrate some of those things.
25:04 The reason why at 30% or 25%, BSP and SP
25:09 have formed single largest majorities in UP,
25:13 in 25% and 27%.
25:15 Now SP, in the 2022 UP election, got its highest vote share
25:20 ever, but got lower seats.
25:23 The reason, because the polity has become bipolar.
25:27 And so now at 30% in UP, you will not
25:32 be able to cross any threshold.
25:35 And I had one other simple question that--
25:38 you talked about this voter behavior also.
25:41 You studied that.
25:43 Now, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] somehow this religion thing.
25:49 So BJP, when it started, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
25:51 had said integral humanism was the ideological thing.
25:55 Then it-- '89 Hindutva and all of that.
25:57 How did they-- how does a voter respond to this ideology?
26:03 See, religion has become very prominent now
26:05 as an ideological--
26:06 I mean, what we see.
26:08 I'm sure they are marrying it with many other things.
26:11 But what comes to us and what is more visible
26:14 is this huge thing, Hindu Rashtra,
26:16 the visual optics of it.
26:17 The temple is there.
26:18 All of this is-- there's a lot more effort going into South
26:21 in terms of building this perception with Shiva.
26:25 There's an appropriation over there.
26:26 Adivasi situation, this [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
26:28 indigenous person, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
26:31 All of these things are also there.
26:33 And these are very, very prominent ideological positions
26:37 that they have taken.
26:37 So how does a voter react to that?
26:40 Or how does that--
26:41 and why has this happened?
26:43 Why is this increased religiosity?
26:46 First, religion has always been an important part
26:49 of our political life, and caste also.
26:53 The problem is that we want to think of politics
26:58 as if only economic issues should be the determining
27:02 criteria.
27:02 How you are feeling economically should be
27:06 deciding how you should vote.
27:08 So this logic doesn't work anywhere, not in India,
27:13 not in Europe, and not even in United States,
27:16 the middle class fascination destination.
27:19 So social fault lines are always going
27:24 to be reflected in politics.
27:26 Why?
27:27 Because through politics, you are trying to acquire power.
27:32 So social fault lines will always
27:33 get reflected in politics.
27:35 Religion was always a part of our politics,
27:39 even during the 1950s and '60s and '70s.
27:43 Religion was used in a very different way,
27:46 not just by the--
27:48 in some ways, why was Congress an umbrella coalition?
27:51 Congress was an umbrella coalition
27:52 because it had tendencies of left and socialist block,
27:58 but it also had the entire right wing block within it.
28:03 What happens in the 1950 to 1980 is slowly
28:09 those right wing blocks moving from Congress Party
28:12 towards Jansangh.
28:13 Why does BJP grow slowly?
28:16 And just to give you a trivia fact,
28:19 we all know about Gulzarilal Nanda, two time interim prime
28:22 minister of India.
28:23 He was also the founding member of BHP.
28:26 When Vishwa Hindu Parishad was formed,
28:29 he was sitting on the dais.
28:32 The entire Patel group, what you'll
28:36 call as syndicate or conservative congressmen,
28:39 were actually your chief ministers
28:42 in different states of India.
28:44 The politics of religious conversion, in some ways,
28:47 the laws and other things were passed.
28:51 So it has always remained part and parcel of our politics.
28:55 I think what the rise of BJP in some ways
28:59 is that in the '60s, '70s, '80s, they
29:04 managed to convince a sizable section of middle classes
29:08 and upper caste that Congress politics is
29:11 of appeasement to Muslims.
29:14 And in some ways, what this is going to lead to,
29:17 that Hindus in their homeland and motherland
29:21 are going to be reduced to second class citizen.
29:24 And so slowly, it has larger takers.
29:29 And at the end of the day, they managed
29:31 to convince a sizable section of population
29:33 that this is happening.
29:35 Whether it's true or not, I'm not getting into that.
29:39 Because each party exaggerates to their constituents
29:44 what they want to happen in politics.
29:47 Thanks a lot, Rahul.
29:49 The discussion could have been longer,
29:51 but we are running out of time.
29:52 Thanks a lot for joining us.
29:54 Thank you.
29:54 Thank you so much, Rahul.
29:55 Thank you for watching.
29:56 [MUSIC PLAYING]
29:59 Bye bye.
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