Turmoil in the Hindutva camp
- Published at 06:09 PM February 02, 2017
Should BJP be worried?/REUTERS
Trouble could be brewing for the BJP
Goa
is an important state for the BJP. Except for Punjab, where the party
is the junior partner in a coalition government led by the Shiromani
Akali Dal, Goa is the only one of the five states that will soon go to
the polls where BJP is already in power.
Goa’s former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar was
handpicked by Modi himself in 2014 to head the Defense Ministry; and
none other than the BJP’s former president Nitin Gadhkari is in charge
of party affairs in the state. A defeat here will thus be extremely
unwelcome; much is, in other words, at stake — even if Goa is India’s
smallest state.
But there is turmoil in the Hindutva camp.
In addition to the BJP, Goa’s Hindu national wing
comprises of several smaller players. The Shiv Sena, which we otherwise
know best from Maharashtra and Mumbai, has a presence although it is
quite limited. And it seems that the bad blood that gradually has
emerged between the BJP and Shiv Sena in Maharashtra has found its way
to Goa.
When Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray kicked off his
party’s campaign in Goa in October, he talked about how a power-hungry
BJP had exploited and abused Shiv Sena’s loyal support in pursuit of its
own power and influence.
That is why his party would take on the BJP in Goa, said Thackeray.
This kind of threat should not give the BJP leadership in
Goa sleepless nights — the Shiv Sena is, as mentioned, a marginal
player. But since October other events have transpired. A new party, the
Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM), has seen the light of day, and behind this
party stands the rebellious RSS leader in Goa, Subhash Velingkar.
Velingkar is unhappy that the BJP government in Goa has
not done enough to promote the use of their mother tongue as the medium
of instruction in schools; therefore he campaigns now to defeat the BJP.
He has also quit the RSS and formed its own branch of the RSS in Goa.
Reportedly, several hundred RSS members followed him. Such
internal strife in the RSS, which even played out in full public view
and in most media channels, is far from common. Still, on its own, the
GSM poses no threat to the BJP. But things do not stop here.
As if this was not enough, the BJP’s partner in government
in recent years, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), not long ago
decided to leave the alliance. 50 years ago the MGP was the main party
in Goa with considerable appeal among non-Brahmin Hindus. Since then it
has mostly been downhill for the MGP who has lost many votes to the BJP.
But they are not yet reduced to a political small fry.
If the BJP performs badly in Goa, Modi may appear politically weakened and the more conservative elements of the RSS may find the time opportune to raise their demands for a stronger Hindutva imprint more vocally
In 2012, they polled around 6% of the votes and won three
seats in the state legislative assembly. And in light of Goa’s political
fragmentation, a party can (even with only three MLAs) achieve
considerable influence.
Now, the MGP has entered into an electoral alliance with
Shiv Sena and the GSM, and this should be a cause for concern for the
BJP.
For, in what promises to be a very close election, all
parties need to hold on to their core voters — and it is precisely the
BJP’s core constituency that the new alliance is eyeing.
The GSM-MGP-Shiv Sena alliance used the Portuguese Prime
Minister Antonio Costa’s recent visit to Goa to lash out at the former
colonial power. They demanded an apology for past colonial sins;
demanded that the Portuguese Consulate General in Goa closed; and even
accused the Portuguese of having introduced an “English culture” in Goa.
Antonio Costa has roots in Goa and visited his ancestral
home in Margao, the largest city in Christian-dominated Salcete. But for
the GSM-MGP-Shiv Sena alliance, this was no happy homecoming.
While they used
the opportunity to demonstrate their nationalist pedigree, BJP Chief
Minister Laxmikant Parsekar paid a courtesy visit to meet Costa at the
Portuguese Consulate General, where he spoke warmly about the good and
close relations between Portugal and Goa.
In the big picture, the Goa elections may be a trivial
matter for BJP, which probably has its eyes set on the big political
prize to be won in Uttar Pradesh.
But it may very well be that the internal disagreements in
RSS in Goa, and the ensuing conflict between the BJP and segments of
the RSS, could ultimately prove to be symptomatic of wider problems in
the Hindutva camp.
It is well known that not everyone in the RSS is
enthusiastic about the policy direction of the BJP under Modi. If the
BJP performs badly in Goa (and the four other states who go to the polls
soon), Modi may appear politically weakened and the more conservative
elements of the RSS may find the time opportune to raise their demands
for a stronger Hindutva imprint more vocally — not just in Goa, but also
elsewhere.
For now, however, the BJP in Goa can find solace in the
fact that the “secular” camp consisting of parties like the Congress
Party, AAP, and Goa Forward appears no less divided than the Hindutva
camp.
Kenneth Bo Nielsen is the Coordinator of Asianettverket, the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies.
