As the saffron juggernaut rolls on, the Oppn must do better than just making speeches
Senior BJP leader Amit Shah’s claim that the next 30-40 years will be the era of the saffron party should not be dismissed or downplayed by opponents as pure hyperbole or an assertion suggesting complacency. The BJP juggernaut under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah seems unstoppable; indeed it is gaining momentum. This is extremely disconcerting for the Opposition and a large section of the intellectual class; for them, it’s a nightmare come true. There have been highs (too numerous to be mentioned) and lows (eg, West Bengal last year) in the BJP’s journey; but its rise has been secular — no pun intended. Some political and thought leaders may even try to see complacency in Shah’s statement, though there is none. He is not among those who like to rest on their laurels; for him, laurels are never enough; there is always need for more. Winning a State is not enough; the number of BJP’s MLAs and MPs from the State should rise further; and after every rise, the Modi-Shah duo look for another rise. They fight for not just the 543 Lok Sabha seats, but also every Rajya Sabha seat, every State, even municipalities. The duo has excised complacency from the BJP genes. It is a new BJP, not that of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani. This is not to say that the Vajpayee-Advani BJP was lethargic and laidback; quite the contrary, it has always been extremely active, vocal and enthusiastic.
Even in the late 1980s, when the saffron party was reduced to two seats in the Lok Sabha, there was no let-up in its activity; its leaders continued to make their presence felt even though the Congress had over 400 members in the Lok Sabha. Whatever else the BJP’s opponents say about it, they can’t fault it for being slack or slothful. Under Modi and Shah, the saffron party has been further galvanised. Not many parties show the kind of energy, purpose and drive when out of power that the BJP does; and the Congress, which can boast of all-India presence, is certainly not that party. It bounced back to power in 1980 because the Janata Party fell under the weight of its own contradictions. Ditto with another experiment, involving Janata Dal, which was repeated a decade later. In 2004 too, the ‘grand old party’ came to power not because its leaders sweated it out on streets to win a landslide against the BJP — in fact, it got just seven seats more than the BJP’s — but because the saffron party’s messaging was awful and it could not get the RSS’ support during campaigning. Against this backdrop, Shah’s claim doesn’t seem improbable. If the GOP and other Opposition parties want to oust the BJP, they must do more than making fiery speeches and viral tweets. They must come up with something that is politically feasible and electorally possible. They have to stir out of their complacency.
