Opinion - Editorials

Saffron rides again

If there is one clear political message from the results of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections, it is that the city's secular parties are so divided by mutual antagonism that they cannot overcome the ideologues of Hindutva. This lack of cohesion among non-communal parties has resulted, in the past, in the ascendancy of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies at the Centre. Successive elections in Gujarat have also shown the edge that a purposefully directed Hindutva campaign has over a disunited secular front. The same scenario has now been played out in India's commercial capital, which the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party coalition that rules Maharashtra had hoped to wrest from the Shiv Sena-BJP combine. That hope was unrealistic, since the Congress and the NCP failed to arrive at a pre-poll seat-sharing arrangement. They thus virtually handed over the elections to the saffron combine: while the secular vote was badly fractured between these two major players, small but cumulatively significant segments of the cake were carried off by Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navanirman Sena, the Samajwadi Party, the various factions of the Republican Party of India (RPI), and rebel candidates from all parties.

Many among Mumbai's middle class had been looking forward to these polls, enthused by the presence of untested but clean, independent candidates supported by citizens' action groups: individuals whose campaigns had emphasised civic issues such as bureaucratic accountability, public hygiene, and the availability of basic amenities. Despite their best efforts, the turnout was below 50 per cent. These votaries of Utopia will be disappointed; the politics of Mumbai is still determined by charismatic demagoguery and ethnic loyalties. The Shiv Sena, claiming the mantle of the `zaanta Raja' (the compassionate monarch), denied tickets to a large number of sitting corporators, in response to complaints from constituents. The Sena also persuaded its patriarch, Bal Thackeray, to roar again in the cause of `Hindu nationalism.' The BJP flew in Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to woo the city's substantial Gujarati voters. This concerted strategy inspired large numbers of Sena-BJP supporters to vote; by contrast, the secular parties had nothing to offer except looming cut-outs of their leaders. The results from Mumbai and the nine other municipal corporations in Maharashtra are viewed, in some quarters, as a foretaste of what the 2009 Assembly elections will bring. While Maharashtra does tend to vote differently at the civic and the State levels, the ruling Congress-NCP coalition will be fooling itself if it made light of its defeat at the grassroots.

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