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During his 13-year-long tenure as the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi lost only one assembly bypoll. That defeat came in the Mansa assembly seat in March 2012, eight months before the elections to the Gujarat legislature. Modi told leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, that he couldn't spare time to campaign for a seat that the party had held since 1995. The Congress won in Mansa by over 8,000 votes, leading many to presume the deflated Congress was finally astir. Yet in December that year, Modi won a handsome fourth term as chief minister, a triumph that helped catapult him to prime ministership when Lok Sabha elections were held more than a year later.
As with Mansa, Modi has similarly distanced himself from the electoral management of the recent assembly and Lok Sabha bypolls. He left the job to BJP's new president, Amit Shah, and the leadership in the states. In Gujarat, for instance, he was confident enough to demand of his successor, Anandiben Patel, a birthday present of all the nine assembly seats that were going to the polls there. A day before he turned 64 on September 17, Patel found herself gifting Modi only six of the nine seats.
The erosion in votes in Gujarat was not the only example. After the spectacular Lok Sabha campaign that gave BJP the first single-party majority in the House in three decades, the party's second-rung leadership has tasted regular humiliation. BJP lost all the three assembly bypolls in Uttarakhand in July. This was followed by losses in Bihar in August, and this month, embarrassing defeats in seven of 10 seats it had held in Uttar Pradesh, three of the four seats in Rajasthan and three of nine seats in Gujarat. Analysts have said that never before has a party lost so many bye-elections within three months of having won as emphatic a Lok Sabha victory as BJP did in May.
Some opposition leaders have attributed these electoral losses to the waning of the Modi wave and the electorate becoming wise to BJP's "hoax" of achhe din, or better days, with the Modi-led government having little to show for its 100 days in office. However, despite the setbacks, this is not the view held by insiders in BJP or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). "Isn't it too early and based on too little evidence to consign the Modi wave to history," asks a mid-level RSS leader. He does admit though that the elections showed up the limitations of a BJP without the Modi charisma. The prime minister did not campaign for even one of the over 50 assembly seats that have seen elections across 15 states since July.
The RSS leader also rejects the view that the losses show the Sangh Parivar, of which BJP is a component, is incapable of repeating the Lok Sabha magic. The Hindu organisation had campaigned ceaselessly for BJP's victory in the general elections. "RSS didn't campaign in these polls," says the leader. "As a rule, we don't campaign for bypolls or for assembly elections." A BJP spokesperson agrees with the RSS leader. "The bypolls can hardly be a referendum on Modi and his government's performance," he insists. "A handful of seats more or less is not going to make any difference to state administrations." The reasons for the losses, he says, lie in the local causes that determine the outcomes of assembly seats.
The string of losses, rather than being a setback for the prime minister, has in fact strengthened the Modi brand within the power structure, while weakening the position of Sangh-backed leaders like Yogi Adityanath and Laxmi Kant Bajpai. Adityanath was in charge of BJP's Uttar Pradesh campaign, while Bajpai is the chief of the state unit there. Both led a virulently anti-Muslim campaign, characterised by constant highlighting of the so-called 'love jihad' - the alleged conspiracy to get Hindu women to convert to Islam through marriage.
Now, many leaders, like Bihar's Sushil Modi, are openly critical of the choice of Adityanath as the face of BJP's campaign in Uttar Pradesh. They disapprove of the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha member putting the issue of 'love jihad' above Modi's all-embracing Sabka saath, Sabka vikas slogan. Senior leaders like M Venkaiah Naidu and Rajnath Singh have also declared that the party does not agree on the idea of 'love jihad'. "The party needlessly jumped the gun in blooding Adityanath at this juncture," says a BJP leader. Bajpai now says the party will review how the issue of 'love jihad' contributed to the defeat of its candidates.
The despondency over the election losses has been compounded by unsavoury developments that have taken the sheen off the new BJP leadership. In Delhi, a party leader was allegedly caught on tape offering money to an Aam Aadmi Party MLA. In Haryana, preparing for state polls, ticket distribution has caused a controversy and allegations that relatives and turncoats have been favoured. In Maharashtra, there is an unseemly tug of war between BJP and ally Shiv Sena on seat-sharing for the upcoming assembly polls.
The entire Sangh Parivar, says an insider, is also edgy because some leaders feel the Modi government isn't toeing the saffron group's line. The complaint isn't just about policies. Several RSS-recommended appointments are yet to come through. After decrying the retention of bureaucrats from the earlier regime, RSS had suggested that the government should instead recruit retired bureaucrats who are currently associated with the New Delhi-based think tank, Vivekanand International Foundation.
People like Shah and Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani, both Modi proteges, are facing the brunt for this, or so sources within the government claim. The bypoll losses are being blamed on Shah's "arrogance" and his failure to follow a more consultative decision-making process. Each move of the HRD minister is under the scanner. Of late, questions have been raised over the choice of her officer on special duty, a former executive of a corporate group.
The Sangh Parivar is keen that Modi's government pursue policies consistent with the RSS agenda, like 'love jihad', and effect appointments that Nagpur suggests. In this, it represents the classic conflict between RSS and its political arm, reminiscent of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance era. Unlike Vajpayee, the expectations from Modi, a pracharak, are high.
But Modi has indicated he is his own man. In what could possibly be an attempt to move away from the anti-Muslim pronouncement of saffron cohorts in recent days, he appointed former McKinsey India chairman, Adil Zainulbhai, a Bohra Muslim, to chair the Quality Council of India. He is also likely to appoint Lt-General (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain as the next governor of Jammu & Kashmir.
He endorsed his appointments on Friday by telling CNN's Fareed Zakaria that Indian Muslims are patriots who live and die for India. To a question regarding Al Qaeda announcing an arm of the subcontinent, Modi said, "If anyone thinks Indian Muslims will dance to their tune, they are delusional."
This has engendered apprehensions at Keshav Kunj, the RSS headquarters at Delhi's Jhandewalan, and in Nagpur that Modi could become bigger than the organisations that created him. Modi, as chief minister of Gujarat, was the unquestioned leader in the party, having successfully marginalised such veterans as former chief minister Keshubhai Patel as well as people like Pravin Togadia of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. He also kept at bay all RSS attempts to intervene in the government and party, and erected an alternate structure of workers who owed allegiance primarily to him. This army of activists provided him constant feedback from the ground. That network, over a hundred thousand strong now, covers the entire country today.
