How state sub-nationalism is the only thing that can beat Modi

Six months ago, it looked like the Congress government in Karnataka of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah would be easily voted out when it went to the polls. After all, what campaign could Siddaramaiah conceivably craft that could dent the all-conquering narrative built up by Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2013? 

Today, it looks like he has found one. He might still lose, but in his choice lies the future of Indian politics — and it’s one that, however inevitable, should worry us. On June 6, the Karnataka government set up a committee “to examine the feasibility and legal issues around the demand”, as The Indian Express put it. In case you’re wondering, that’s a couple of weeks before the Siddaramaiah government made an issue out of Hindi signage in the Bengaluru Metro. 

There is a certain dire inevitability about the growth of the Two Indias story. The BJP has conquered every single other narrative. It pretends to be less corrupt than everyone, more efficient than everyone, more “pro-poor” than everyone, more pro-“development” than everyone, more nationalist than everyone. But it cannot pretend to be anything other than what it is: A party with roots in the north and the west, and one which is now ruled firmly from its two centres of power in Delhi and Nagpur. 

Every narrative has been taken; only sub-nationalism remains. And the BJP has, if nothing else, played into the Opposition’s hands. It may have picked a South Indian for vice-president — but the same man had declared, just weeks earlier, that the nation could not progress without Hindi. The nationwide cattle trading Rules — the de facto “beef ban” —could not but be seen as an imposition of northern values on beef-eating states in the south and east. It was the BJP itself that made an issue of the Karnataka flag as an insult to the nation — forced by its ideological foot soldiers to highlight issues that will only hurt its own prospects. 

And even more substantive changes are afoot: Tamil Nadu has long complained that the goods and services tax is unfair to it, as a major production centre. Uttar Pradesh farmers are being given a loan waiver that, according to the state’s Budget, will be paid for largely out of national taxes. But Tamil farmers agitate in Delhi for similar benefits in vain. (Siddaramaiah has already issued a Rs 8,000-crore loan waiver.)

It is extraordinary, in some sense, that these states’ sense of ill-usage at an increasingly north-dominated country has not flared up long before this. The very stability of their politics may have had something to do with it — as well as the fact that the BJP, in Karnataka, was very much a regional party when B S Yeddyurappa ran the state. But the BJP’s attempts to extend its national narratives to places that are deeply unfit for it created the grounds for a backlash. The Jallikattu protests in Chennai were just the beginning. Andhra Pradesh politics is organising itself around the demand for a “special package” from the Centre. Meanwhile, the Telangana chief minister is discovering the political pressures that come with seeking to coexist with a BJP that many of his own workers see as a distant, north Indian party — and one that is, furthermore, determined to expand into territory the Telangana Rashtra Samithi claims as its own.  

As for the east, the BJP in Assam is running into one bit of trouble after another. The big dispute this Bihu was over whether Hindi songs should be sung; and the government had to deny that non-vegetarian food was banned from its Namami Brahmaputra festival. And everyone knows that West Bengal only occasionally remembers that the rest of India exists. 

I can’t imagine that this surprises Modi, at least; he won three elections in Gujarat by declaring he was their champion against the insults being levelled at the state and its “asmita” by the rest of the country. He insists he believes in cooperative federalism; he organises big meetings for chief ministers and calls them “Team India”. But the truth is that he, himself, is limited by his party’s straitjacketing ideology. Ask yourself: Why has he chosen to represent a northern constituency in Parliament? Doesn’t the message go out that even the strongest state leaders must bow to the power of the Gangetic Plain? 

If Siddaramaiah is rediscovering sub-nationalism in his state, it’s an inevitable consequence of the BJP’s successes — and its failures. Nor will Siddaramaiah be the only one to do so. Sub-nationalism may be the only route for the survival of the Opposition, including Siddaramaiah’s Congress. The BJP beat the Congress by becoming a coalition of regional satraps; the Congress will have to do the same. Still, The New Indian Express reported that instructions have come down from Delhi to Siddaramaiah to go easy on the flag stuff. If true, that’s idiotic even by Congress standards. Perhaps the party doesn’t want to survive. But if they don’t, I expect that some other inclusive grouping that defines itself against Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan will.

m.s.sharma@gmail.com; Twitter: @mihirssharma