There sometimes comes a point in the life of a nation when there are only two choices — submit to the forces of darkness or fight for a new tomorrow.
That was the clarion call of Nelson Mandela when he successfully took up cudgels against the highly discriminatory apartheid regime in South Africa.
For Indians in the impoverished but politically mature northern state of Bihar, the recent assembly elections presented that same stark choice.
On one side was the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by a highly divisive Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the controversial Amit Shah. On the other side were Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Sonia Gandhi, the three shining stalwarts of secularism who fought with their backs to the wall against the rising tide of intolerance, death and destruction instigated by the ruling party.
The BJP, riding on the artificially manufactured Modi wave, had won big time in Bihar in 2014. Nitish Kumar, Lalu Yadav, Sonia Gandhi and everyone else were cast aside. Sixteen months later, the same electorate delivered a stinging rebuke to Modi, Amit Shah and their politics of hate.
As results were declared on Sunday, the whole nation, from Kashmir in the north to Kanyakumari in the south, from Bombay in the west to Calcutta in the east, heaved a collective sigh of relief at having wrested the nation back from the brink.
In these last 16 months, the BJP functionaries and their ideological mentors in the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) brought infamy to the nation whose foundations were laid by that paragon of nonviolence and pluralism, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and the country’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
India was on the front-pages of the world’s leading newspapers, but for all the wrong reasons. Award-winning writers, superstars, journalists, poets, filmmakers, lawyers, bureaucrats, women activists, libertarians, judges — everybody was feeling claustrophobic and helpless as the new right-wing regime set about unraveling the edifice of secularism which was, and still remains, the foundation and bedrock of India.
Modi was given a massive mandate by the people of India because he had promised good governance and development. Instead during the 16 months, his followers and party functionaries went on a rampage, creating chaos, enmity and discord between different communities. Absolutely no effort was made by the prime minister to rein in the openly divisive elements. He excused himself by saying that law and order was not his responsibility.
A party that had comprehensively defeated Modi’s BJP in Delhi in February this year — Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) — was not allowed to function. The nation watched with uneasy trepidation and when the election schedule for Bihar was announced, the secular parties joined ranks to save the very Idea of India. To save the India of Gandhi, in which all communities live cheek by jowl in harmony and where Hindus and Muslims celebrate their social and religious festivals together.
As elections drew near, the ruling party set about pitting one community against another in the hope of consolidating the majority community against the minorities. But the tenacious Biharis — about whom Nitish Kumar once said: “In all other things we may be below the national average, but in the political sense we, Biharis, are above the national average” — refused to be swayed by the campaign of division and calumny and used the most potent weapon that a democracy offers — the vote — to deliver a sharp and unmistakable rebuke to Modi and Amit Shah. The scale of BJP’s defeat is staggering. It has been decimated.
There is celebration through the length and breadth of the country. The number of congratulatory messages the winners are receiving from political leaders and civil society activists is in itself indicative of the huge sense of relief that India and Indians are feeling at the moment. It seems as if India has gained its independence all over again.
Having said that, things must be put in perspective. This was just one state election. Modi and his government will be in office for three more years. There is, however, a point to be made. In 2014, he was the political master of all that he surveyed. Yesterday, he became the parochial and defeated leader of a divisive party.
Modi has to decide in which direction he wants to take India, and while he does that, he would do well to read the writing on the wall. If he does not take corrective measures, then he and his party will face greater ignominy.
For opposition parties, this victory heralds a new phase in Indian politics. Congress, despite being annihilated, garnered 110 million votes in the 2014 general elections. It is still the only party with a pan-India footprint. All secular parties will, therefore, rally around Congress and, in so doing, take the wind out of BJP’s sails throughout India. In that sense, anti-Congressism, one of the factors that led to the sweeping victory of Modi in 2014, is well and truly a thing of the past.
As for Biharis, they have just saved India from joining the list of failed countries in the world. They richly deserve the gratitude and accolades that are coming their way from every single Indian, both inside and outside the country.
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