In an election year, it is interesting to see what new books have to say about party politics, polls and protests. Inquilab: A Decade of Protest talks of the most important protests of the past ten years in India. The anthology includes the voices of Anna Hazare, Kavita Krishnan, Nayantara Sahgal, Rana Ayyub, Rohith Vemula, Kanhaiya Kumar, Romila Thapar, P Sainath, Mahua Moitra, Majid Maqbool, Chandra Shekhar Aazad, Nabiya Khan and Ramachandra Guha. The book burns with hope, it notes how students and civil society have taken to the streets to raise their voice against the establishment.

We look at protests in just the last two years. In the book, The Citizenship Debate, BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya and Congress leader Salman Khurshid present their viewpoints on the CAA-NRC-NPR. Malviya argues, it is wrong to say that CAA is a step towards ‘Hindu Rashtra’.

Khurshid says, ‘The Liberation War of 1971 forced millions to escape the civil war between East and West Pakistan…. Mass illegal migrations to Assam, West Bengal and other parts of India… turned into grabbing of local resources by the migrants, adding more fuel to the Assam Movement (1979–85). The Assamese felt that their indigenous culture and ethos were threatened by the huge influx of Bangladeshi immigrants, both Hindus and Muslims…. The entire state is up in arms about outsiders, irrespective of religion.’

Khurshid explains that the Modi government is seen as ‘giving to all outsiders, excluding Muslims, the right to become citizens…. In Assam’s context, once people from the six religions are identified and granted the status of citizens, there will be no bar to their stay in any other part of Assam that is not covered under the Sixth Schedule. This, in their view, clearly defeats the purpose of NRC in Assam and the objectives of the Assam Accord’.

While the Supreme Court mulls the conundrum, what will the BJP do? In the coming summer, there will be assembly elections in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala.

Only one poll State, Assam, has a BJP government. Post CAA, the NDA partner AGP is in tatters, like Bihar’s JDU. Assam has been in protest mode since the winter of 2019, can BJP increase its tally to more than 60 seats in the assembly? The Citizenship book is an attempt at creating the informed voter.

West Bengal’s feisty chief minister Mamata Banerjee in February 2020 launched her book, Why We Are Saying No CAA, No NRC, No NPR at the 44th Kolkata book fair. The BJP has 23 seats in the assembly.

Kerala has 140 seats, with BJP hugging 1 seat. The Puducherry Assembly has 33 seats, with the BJP and AIADMK holding 7 seats. Last of all, let me come to Tamil Nadu that has 234 seats of which the AIADMK holds 124. The DMK and allies have 105. BJP has zero.

After the CAA came the Migrants debacle due to Covid -19 lockdown, but as Bihar results show, it did not affect the BJP at all. What makes the BJP tick? After the farm law agitations (no book yet on this) and the discord with SAD, and Shiv Sena, one might also ask, how long NDA?

Vinay Sitapati’s book Jugalbandi gives us an answer to what make the BJP different. In a recent lit fest interaction, Sitapati kept emphasising on unity and a watertight political organisation, calling all opposition ‘squabbling’ divorcees. He says of Vajpayee, ‘In the Ayodhya movement, his initial instinct was to oppose the movement and oppose the Rath yatra... his instincts were liberal, his instincts were parliamentary. But at the end of the day, he was a loyal Hindutva politician’. In other platforms, he has pointed out that the RSS backed off, not Vajpayee, on Rajkumari Kaul. What he does not say is that perhaps, Vajpayee was beholden to the RSS and RSS reaped the benefits.

In yet another book, Vajpayee: The Years that Changed India, Shakti Sinha, a political aide since 1996, recalls an NDA Coordination Committee resolution: ‘Since the BJP is at the core of the alliance, it shall make every effort to ensure that the prestige and cohesiveness of the coalition are not diluted by organisations belonging to its ideological fraternity.’ This was in February 1999. ‘The Coordination Committee made it clear that the onus of keeping its ideological cousins under control was on the BJP.’ Mamata Banerjee had walked out of the Committee in November 1998 in protest against the ‘neglect’ of West Bengal. At the moment she is enemy number one. Jayalalithaa too did not attend. Till 2016, during all assembly elections, Jayalalithaa never allied with the BJP. All books on her note this fact.

Can the BJP be called a ‘modern’ political party? ‘It has no use for institutions. It has no use for science. ’Sitapati adds, there is no denying that the ‘BJP looks at any battle as religious’, and in summer it has both WB and Kerala Marxists and Muslims to tackle. He says, BJP took advantage of ‘Hindu anxiety’ from the 1980s to the 1990s. And Hindus continue to be anxious.

All the three large States, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Assam have cultural and language issues at the top of their election agendas. It is in the 1990s that the BJP started appropriating Saraswati Puja, Vande Mataram, Syama Prasad, Netaji et al and now Robi Thakur aka Tagore. Sitapati says, it also wants to ‘appropriate socialism’. (IPA Service)