Will Modi’s divide and rule strategy succeed in Haryana and J&K | Faraz Ahmad

September 12 will go down as a memorable day in India’s political and judicial history. That day Prime Minister Narendra Modi put aside the obligatory distance between the executive and judiciary demanded by constitutional propriety and invited himself to Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud’s home to attend Ganesh puja on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi.

The same day, a Patiala House court in New Delhi set free Engineer Rashid, an MP from Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) being tried under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) accused of funding a terrorist. By the way, JNU scholar Umar Khalid and his other young student/scholar comrades from JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia and Delhi University were also charged under UAPA for presumably inciting the women to sit on dharna against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, which the Delhi Police claimed caused the 2020 North East Delhi riots of February 23-24, 2020 are still languishing in Delhi prisons. Are Khalid and his comrades’ greater threat to India’s sovereignty and integrity and their crime in the eyes of our law-enforcing agencies greater than arming a terrorist? For Rashid is out campaigning and influencing the forthcoming Assembly elections in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Besides, Rashid too had to file his nomination for the Lok Sabha elections from the jail and yet won, such is the militant mood in Kashmir valley.

The same day the Supreme Court set the next day, September 13 for pronouncing its verdict on the appeal by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal seeking bail. And lo and behold Arvind Kejriwal who was rotting in Tihar for months together, again on a weak charge by CBI and ED of some act of corruption in Delhi Excise policy was out on the streets. But the bail conditions are very queer. Kejriwal cannot go to the Delhi secretariat, cannot call any meetings of the government functionaries and not even sign on any file as the CM, apart from those to be vetted and cleared by the Lieutenant Governor. Thus, his bail is only to ensure that he campaigned vigorously for his AAP in Haryana. September 12 was also the last date for filing nominations for the Haryana assembly elections, currently underway and on that day the INDIA alliance apparently broke with Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress party having fielded their respective candidates for all the 90 seats.

The crux of the matter is that now in Haryana whereas the sweeping victory of Congress looked a foregone conclusion initially because of the widespread disenchantment with the BJP, with three sets of supposedly anti-BJP candidates, one from INLD plus Chandrashekhar Azad Ravana camp, the other with JJP and Mayawati and the third and most significant the AAP, will all cut into the Congress votes.

Many political analysts say that it may not make much difference to the Congress chances since none of these three will be in a winning position. Kejriwal of all three is weakest in Haryana. But then as some commentators pointed out in an Assembly election even a thousand or two votes sometimes make all the difference between a victory and defeat, mentioning that Mayawati’s BSP actually damaged the INDIA prospects on as many as 16 seats in the recent Lok Sabha elections. Thus, the BJP which won only 33 seats might have had merely 17 MPs from UP in the present Lok Sabha, had Mayawati not played a spoilsport. That’s what Kejriwal and others may do in Haryana. But more significantly the BJP will go to town mocking the INDIA alliance that was built so assiduously by anti-BJP and pro-democracy forces and a kind of defeat of Rahul Gandhi the main move behind the INDIA alliance.

Barely a month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi led his ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) to a virtual defeat retaining barely 240, 33 short of a simple majority in the 18th Lok Sabha most political analysts started writing Modi’s political obituary.

The elections to four states, namely Haryana, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand were looming large on the horizon for the BJP and another round of defeat would have damaged Modi’s reputation and esteem in his party irreparably. The Lok Sabha elections proved how the BJP was unpopular in all these states and the waning of Prime Minister Modi’s much-touted charisma.

This feeling of confidence in the INDIA bloc in J&K too on account of visible anger and resentment against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for having blatantly reduced Kashmir to an occupied territory in which the residents had virtually no rights of democratic voice to express themselves. This resulted in frequent terror action by disillusioned youth presumably instigated and armed by Pakistan while the Government kept harping on having put an end to terrorism in Kashmir valley.

One thing creditable in Amit Shah and Narendra Modi is their planning and strategizing much in advance. So soon after August 9, 2019, when the Central government read down Article 370 and 35A giving special status to the state of J&K, the Delhi durbar set about causing bigger fissures between the Muslim majority Kashmir valley and the Hindu majority Jammu through an unwelcome and rather partisan delimitation exercise by a three-member Delimitation Commission chaired by Retired Justice Ranjana Desai which increased the Jammu seats from 37 to 43 and of Kashmir valley comprising mostly Kashmiri Muslim population from 46 to just 47, never mind the population ratio. Even in this 9 seats were reserved for the first time in J&K for scheduled castes and seven for scheduled tribes. Plus, the LG has been granted the privilege of nominating any two members of his choice. Thus, the entire BJP-sponsored exercise was evidently aimed at changing the political equilibrium in J&K to obstruct in future the domination of the valley with a Kashmiri Muslim majority in the assembly. This aimed at undermining the upper hand of the two nationalist parties, National Conference of Farooq Abdullah and Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) of Mehbooba Mufti, who swear by the Indian Constitution. But if the BJP’s aim is to divide the anti-BJP vote and continue its domination in the assembly then it needs to polarise communally the valley and Jammu. That’s where the relevance of Engineer Rashid, comes in and this explains the urgency of releasing him on bail to ensure that he campaigns vigorously in the valley, damaging NC-Congress prospects. In addition, the Jamaat-i-Islami a hard-core communal outfit which has thrown its hat into the ring after a couple of decades, has also been let loose in the valley. Whose votes Engineer and Jamat will damage? Who could benefit from this three-way split in the valley vote? Of course, the BJP and in a hung house Modi might succeed in foisting a Hindu chief minister from Jammu for the first time in independent India. If the BJP succeeds in doing this, which in the current developing political scenario cannot be ruled out, Modi may again emerge as the Hindu Hriday Samrat.

There were always Hindus in the J&K government right from Sheikh Abdullah’s days including Kashmiri Brahmins from the valley as well as Dogras from the Jammu region. But because Kashmir all through since independence has been the only Muslim majority state, logically the chief minister so far has always been a Muslim from the valley. But the BJP has been surreptitiously assuring the Hindus of Jammu that it will give a Hindu chief minister to this union territory this time. It is another thing that a chief minister of the union territory will be as powerless as Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi.

Meanwhile, In Haryana, the incessant stream of former BJP ministers, MLAs, and even party workers right up to ground level leaving the BJP and joining the Congress party showed how the politicians could sense the pent-up anger against the 10-year rule of virtually an outsider Manohar Lal Khattar, who ran his shop in Delhi’s Sadar Bazar before Modi transplanted him as chief minister in Chandigarh.

Initially, the BJP’s prospects appeared very bleak. Some even predicted the BJP could be reduced to single digits in Haryana.

In Haryana, it was pointed out, the Jats comprise 23 per cent of the electorate while the Dalits account for 21 per cent totalling to 44 per cent, which is very formidable. The Congress leadership also comprises Bhoopendra Singh Hooda, a Jat and Kumari Selja a Dalit.

Bhajan Lal who was neither a Jat nor a Dalit became three times chief minister of Haryana from 1979-1996. In between there was a Devi Lal rule. Bhajan Lal a Bishnoi won by mobilising and bringing together all the anti-Jat voters including the post-partition Punjabi migrant settlers.

Perhaps that is why Modi made a rank outsider Manohar Lal Khattar the CM in 2014 to garner all the Punjabi votes plus all the anti-Jat votes. But if the BJP strategy succeeds in fragmenting the anti-BJP vote despite a huge anti-incumbency, we might have Khattar back as the CM once more who knows?

And if the BJP succeeds in countering its anti-incumbency in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir, it will be in such high spirits that it could even swing Maharashtra which comes immediately thereafter and Jharkhand soon after.