However, it would be foolish to assume that BJP is ahead in both the states simply because of its campaign based on nationalism. There are other reasons for BJP's dominance in the election campaigning. One explanation is that the saffron party has been successful in cultivating strong state leaderships in both the states — Devendra Fadvavis in Maharashtra and Manohar Lal Khattar in Haryana. Both the chief ministers in the last five years have been known for their clean images with their administration trying to reach to both the rural and urban voters through various schemes — in order to stitch new social alliances to nullify the effects of the anti-incumbency and that of the opposition, which already seems to have accepted its defeat even before the casting of votes in the polling booths.

Nevertheless, the question arises — why does BJP keep raising the bogey of hyper-nationalism in the election campaigning, even attacking Pakistan, when it is clearly ahead of the opposition? The answer lies in the fact that BJP is not only contesting the elections to win it — but also to spread its ideology as much as possible. Not to forget that, the country's ruling party is strictly an ideological party, which never forgets to flaunt publicly on a regular basis. And as far as ideology is concerned, apart from BJP and the two communist parties — CPI and CPM — there is hardly any mainstream political party in the country that strictly follows any ideology — with some parties even having no ideologies at all. As the communist parties face the existential threat because of their own blunders, it leaves BJP as the only major political party that is pursuing its own ideology. The saffron party is trying to create a strong base of its ideology in the ground — so that the party should be in benefit for the next elections to be held five years later. In that way, the cadre based saffron party can have longer stints and it has a glaring example of West Bengal, ruled by its ideological adversary CPM, also cadre-based, for a continuous period of 34 years.

The ideological parties have a common tendency. They just don't fight to win elections — but also do so to change the political system to make their own ideology dominant and deeply rooted within it. Left Front led by the CPM successfully did that in West Bengal. The success of CPM’s method in changing the political system of West Bengal can be judged from the fact that its arch-rival, Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool Congress had to move towards Left — to organise the fall of the giant Red Wall of Bengal. Although, BJP has emerged as the main competitor against Trinamool by pushing the CPM led Left parties to the wall, the saffron party is aware that most of its cadres were CPM supporters — who still more or less are influenced by the Left ideology. In West Bengal, despite Left parties being politically weak, their ideology still remains a force in the state. Congress, although not so ideological like CPM or BJP, also did it during its heydays by creating its own habitual ecosystem within the political structure of the country. However, for doing so, the grand old party had to take the help of a section of intellectuals, who were mostly Leftists.

Actually, BJP is raising issues related to nationalism woven with threads of party's Hindutva ideology to garner additional votes that the party needs if it is to make its ideology more strong and deeply rooted within the Indian political system. And the plus point is most of the nationalistic issues that BJP raises currently echoes with the common sentiments of majority of the Indians. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently even mocked the opposition in Maharashtra for questioning him, as he raised the issue of Article 370 in state elections, by saying that the topic of Kashmir is very well related with the minds and lives of common people of the country. That actually is true. But there are other important state issues — one among them is the burning topic of rising unemployment. There is also the issue of farmers' suicides in Maharashtra, particularly in the Vidarbha region, where draughts are frequent. It is an irony that the cycle of farmers' suicides still continues despite changes of regimes in the state.

But, if today BJP is able to raise nationalistic issues in state elections without even major public scrutiny, it is because of the opposition, particularly the Congress, the main opposition party, which over the course of years has abandoned the issues related to nationalism forgetting that the Indian nationalism is unlike the European version. Indian nationalism has its significant role in the freedom struggle of the country against the imperialist Britishers. But with the Congress and other mainstream parties like the Communist and Socialist-Janata parties choosing to ignore nationalism, BJP successfully adapted it.

That's why BJP, despite being the incumbent in Maharashtra and Haryana and with country's economy not doing well, is ahead in both the states, thanks to its well planned campaigning strategy. After all, more than elections, naturally for any ideological party like BJP or CPM altering the political system in its own way matters more. This is what BJP is doing — and the confused opposition, which is already cut-off from the ground realities, has no other options but to willy-nilly watch the political development that is taking place. (IPA Service)