Hope: Indian Democracy
The recent elections gives me great hope in the Indian Democracy. I was starting to loose faith in the ability of the uneducated & the illiterate voters to steer the largest democracy in the world.
The image below represents the results of the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections in India. The ruling party, with Narendra Modi as its leader, was expected to gain absolute majority. Modi persona, as an avatar of God, was supposedly going to get BJP a super majority of more than 400 seats. This would been an absolute mandate to make India a Hindu Nation. As it turned out, this was BJP’s worst performance since 2014 and it could not even secure 272 seats needed to secure majority.
BJP did eventually manage to form a government, third time around, but it had to rely on alliance partners to get to the magical number of 293. This was not the worst part of BJP’s defeat. In Uttar Pradesh, a BJP’s strong state, where earlier this year Ram Mandir was inaugurated, BJP was expected to retain and expand its lead. However BJP barely managed to secure 33 seats out of 80. A very tight slap on Modi’s face while it tried to leverage Ram Mandir for political vote banking. The message from people of Uttar Pradesh was clear. It is the Economy, stupid. No amount of religious hate mongering or doling out freebies is going to matter if the unemployment numbers are high. Voters have voted with their “Ego” telling the government that they would rather work for food.
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Embedded in the above map is even a brighter ray of hope. The “Farmer Protest” that started in 2021, and are still going in some quarters of North India, did bring the farmers together against the Government. No wonder one sees a lot of Blue spots, in North India, specifically clustered around Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Western UP. This is the area where most of the farmers hit the streets of Delhi to protest against the ill conceived Farm Laws. And the voters have sided with the farmers in the recently concluded elections. What we “also” see is that voters rejected BJP painting “Sikh” Farmers as Khalistanis. This is the biggest vote of confidence that Indian voters have bestowed upon Sikhs, since the 1980s, when Khalistan boogieman was initially created by Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, and labeling Sikhs as Khalistanis became a norm. Not every protesting Sikh is a terrorist and a separatist.
I have been waiting for this day when I could thank the Indian voters for rejecting the communal hatred that Indian politicians spew to divide and rule. The Hindutva force is spent and Sikhs, along with other minorities, can be proud to call themselves Indians again.
Rejoice but be cautious.
