Gods, demons and political parties

THE story of victory of good over evil has been playing out all over India this week. Behind my house in Chandigarh, a Garhwal troupe has just enacted Meghnad badha, the killing of Ravan's warrior-son, Meghnad by Lakshman, as it is meant to be performed on the ninth day of the navratras; under the bright starlight and within earshot of the chitter-chatter of the ice-cream vendor, the story is moving inexorably to its logical conclusion. Ravan simply has to die the next day, today, by the unerring flight of Ram's arrow.

Whatever else you believe about the BJP — you have to accept that it also learns fast, swallowing its own arrogance if need be, in order to achieve the required result.

And yet, as you walk home from the Ramlila, you cannot escape the fact that the gods also employ both deception and illusion to get their way — that, according to famous Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Lakshman abandoned the Kshatriya warrior code by cornering Meghnad in a temple where he had no access to his weapons. And that's how he killed him.

Back in Bengal, meanwhile, the goddess is taking charge, all set to slay the buffalo demon Mahishasura in sync with clanging cymbals, the deafening sound of the dhaak-player and the rising smoke from the pujari's lamp. In one stunning image from a Kolkata pandal, the Devi holds a female doctor in her arms, complete in white coat and stethoscope — a direct reference to the ongoing protest over the brutal rape of a young doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.

All week, then, as India's male and female gods have fought their immortal battles, politicians in Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir have taken a leaf out of their book — the BJP is celebrating its unexpected victory in Haryana, while the INDIA coalition is crowing about its mandate in J&K. In both states, the voter has punished the arrogant and high-handed political party, which believed it could take the voter for granted.

Unfortunately, the Congress party still refuses to come to terms with the fact that the BJP fairly and squarely won Haryana. That the saffron party worked hard, employing every instrument in and outside the book — from micro-managing every seat via the door-to-door campaign of RSS cadres, to ensuring that proxy candidates cut into the opposition candidates’ vote, to getting Dera Sacha Sauda chief Ram Rahim released on parole so that his whispered message impacted about 35 seats across the state. There was nothing the BJP did not try to do in tiny Haryana.

The people's mandate in favour of the BJP has left the Congress party stunned. Party spokesman Jairam Ramesh has sought to pin the blame on the EVMs, implying the BJP tampered with the source code — a shameful charge that slanders the voter. (That charge has since been put on hold as wiser Congressmen and women have realised the damage it can do to the democratic mandate.) Worse, Rahul Gandhi has tried to pass the buck by blaming the infighting between regional satraps Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Kumar Selja.

Clearly, there's nothing worse than a leader refusing to take responsibility for the defeat of his team — especially since Rahul would have got all the credit if his party had won the state. An inquiry has been set up, but Rahul himself seems to have moved on. That one gesture smacks of both cynicism and hauteur. It's the noblesse oblige syndrome — you owe me, but actually I don't really care if you don't.

It was the same in J&K. The Congress behaved with such entitlement that it didn't even care to pick the best candidates in Jammu — “oh the people will vote for us, because they are so upset with the BJP," they said, airily. That was certainly true — a whole month ago, in mid-September. At the time, Jammu was seriously upset with the BJP for a variety of reasons, but it is to the credit of its local leadership that it worked damn hard to alleviate that distress. The RSS-BJP realised it could not afford to do badly in Jammu, because this, here, is the ideological underpinning of Hindutva. When the results came out this week, the BJP had won 29 seats, vastly improving upon its own expectations.

Certainly, the BJP knows it can afford to sit pretty in J&K, because it won't restore all the powers to the newly elected Assembly, at least not yet, even if Omar Abdullah has won the popular mandate. That the L-G in Srinagar will remain his master's voice in Delhi.

Still, whatever else you believe about the BJP — you have to accept that it also learns fast, swallowing its own arrogance if need be, in order to achieve the required result.

That's what happened in Haryana. The BJP realised that its own hubris during the Lok Sabha polls ("abki baar, 400 paar") had been perceived by UP’s Dalits as a threat to amend the Constitution and tamper with the 22.5 per cent reservation for Scheduled Castes & Tribes. That's why it lost 29 crucial seats in India's most politically important state.

That's why in Haryana, the BJP went out of its way to prevent a consolidation between the Jats (Hooda's caste) and Dalits (Kumari Selja's caste) — realising that if that was not prevented, it could be fatal.

As Hooda and Selja fought publicly, arguing over who better deserved to sit on the throne of Haryana, RSS cadres carried the message down to every village and mohalla: If the Jats came to power — a reference to Hooda — it would be scornful of Dalits and backwards ("Daliton aur pichhdon ka tiraskar hoga"). Just like Selja is being treated now.

Still, all this is now down the waters of the Yamuna. The BJP's Nayab Singh Saini will be sworn in as chief minister for the second time on October 15. The party's strategy of reversing the traditional snakes-and-ladders of power, from the Jats to the backward and Dalit castes, has worked.

By winning Haryana, the BJP has arrested the rising graph of the Congress party. It has provoked the latter's over-confident, squabbling satraps to complain openly about one another and thereby undermine the party's unity; it has once again demonstrated that Rahul Gandhi may be a wonderful man, but he doesn't really understand the land of the Mahabharata.

Does it matter? As Ravan is felled by that fatal arrow and Mahishasura is slayed by Durga, there seems to be only one answer to that question. Yes.