His fans belong to no political party or subscribe to no definite ideology. They believe that lower classes always want free food to satisfy their hunger and other essentials as charity. They need to be kept in their proper place and under restraint by forcing them to work and pay for their needs. Most middle class persons around the world suffer from similar symptoms. They believed that the strict nature of governance by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the answer when he had clarified that every service would need to be paid for.

Their dislike for earlier regimes stems from their belief that earlier regimes wasted huge proportion of financial resources on feeding weaker sections to retain them as vote banks. Due to huge burden of administrative expenditure, nothing was left for development works and the country lagged far behind in growth compared to developed nation despite availability of huge bank of capable minds and skilled hands.

This was not a new phenomenon. Intellectuals, professionals including the retired defence services, and administrative services officers had come rushing to enroll as the BJP members after it accepted reality that it cannot transit as the alternate secular entity and surrender to the Sangh. The message discerned from it served as allurement for upper class interests. Rush of upper middle class for enrolment was under the belief that the party would not now encourage ever grazing greenery crowds to eat away all state resources.

In 1991 elections, the party emerged as the second largest group in the Lok Sabha with first Congress Prime Minister who was not a member from the Nehru Gandhi family. The BJP leaders not only cooperated but also sang paeans in praise of Narsimha Rao as their B team. Their affair lasted until the over-enthusiasm of Shiva Sainiks brought down the disputed structure of the Babri Masjid.

The BJP was exploiting to its advantage two frivolities of the Rajiv Gandhi regime in 1986, one opening gates of the Masjid (they were closed since 1949 after few statues were smuggled in causing communal tension) and second was concessions in the form of Amendment to the Indian Criminal Procedure Code to appease the Muslim Orthodoxy displeased with the Shahbano verdict.

The demolition of the Babri structure was a huge loss of a potential weapon as the Babri Masjid was useful as a symbol of hatred for political mobilization. It entailed a need to find another symbol. The idea of the Ram temple took four years to concretize. The new symbol has yet not come in existence and there is a vast difference in converting the symbol of reverence and the symbol of emotional hatred into political mobilization. The Ram temple cannot be used as a symbolic weapon.

The BJP could emerge as the single largest group in 1996 but still short of 101 seats for requisite majority to form a government on its own strength. It was forced to put three controversial issues on back burners to formulate the coalition to come to power. The Ram temple idea could be exploited only in 2009 election but to end up with merely eight seats in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP numbers came down from highest 172 to 116 in the 2009 elections.

Narendra Modi had a different set of ideas other than exploiting religious sentiments. It was the ideas of stoking fires in the hearts of younger generation for economic future. He could see better results in exploiting the Gandhian path. He virtually obliterated the party to project his own image through use of modern mediums or his campaigns. He stood in stark contrast with his oratorical skills against the muted responses of the UPA Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and inability of the Congress president to converse in the local language. In fact the UPA had not leader who can spellbind the audience in Hindi belt states. Narendra Modi could. His message was totally different to mesmerize the young in the middle classes. He was able to make inroads in the consolidated OBC politics to win over their educated young with a better economic future dream. He swept through the Mulayam and Mayavati citadels in Uttar Pradesh with 71 seats for himself and two for partners. In Nitish and Lalu Yadav’s Empire in Bihar, he won 22 seats for his party and eight for his partner parties.

The surprise was the loss of 162 seats of Congress from its tally of 206 in the previous election despite the offer of two schemes for weaker sections while NaMo made no such offer. On the contrary he insisted on hard work and dignity of life in return. Yet NaMo was not able to demolish hold of state parties in five coastal states and Telangana. He gained more campaigners for the self than he has in the party. His fan club is unable to see the change in his stance in the campaign for the current election. Absent from his campaign is verve and energy and also spirit that were his main assets in the last election. He seems like repeating the issues and words written for him by others. In the last election, he did not make distinction in people based on their faith. He had talked of growth of all. Same words do not ring same notes anymore.

Can his hard stance of no charity become a catalyst in the electoral chemistry once again? It has a potential but limited to urban middle class youth. Rural populations live by different traditions. Helping hand is automatically extended and is not considered to be a charity. Religious fervor has ebbed out even in rural areas but not the gesture of helping hand. Yet charity is no more generosity.