Bolstered by the surprising Haryana victory for a third successive term, the Sangh brigade is going all out to retain power in Maharashtra and conquer Jharkhand. For public consumption, the BJP's pet slogan in every Assembly election is ensuring 'double engine' government for 'development', but the party is keenly aware that the double engine rhetoric no longer has many takers. In state after state, 'double engine' driven dispensations are today identified with complete collapse of governance as in Manipur, growing crime and corruption as in Bihar and brazen assault on constitutional principles and rights as in all 'model' BJP-ruled states from UP and Uttarakhand to Assam and Tripura. The actual electioneering of the BJP however revolves around an unmitigated anti-Muslim hate campaign spearheaded directly by the party's senior campaign managers.
Indeed, were the Election Commission to take the model code of conduct seriously, the BJP should have by now been stripped of its political recognition for the kind of venom being spewed daily in this season by Modi himself along with Himanta Biswa Sarma, Giriraj Singh, Mithun Chakrabarty and others. The bogey of Bangladeshi infiltration is being projected as an existential threat to the majority Hindu population of India. 'Bantoge to katoge' (divided, you will be killed) has become the BJP's new war cry which asks all Hindus to rally around the BJP to ensure survival from the 'threat of Muslim aggression'. In Jharkhand Himanta Biswa Sarma refers to Muslim legislators and ministers by name, presents them as aggressors and plunderers and pits them against the legendary icons of Jharkhand like Sidho-Kanu, Pitambar-Nilambar and Birsa Munda. In Bihar, Giriraj Singh takes out a yatra in the name of Hindu 'swabhiman' or self-respect and asks every Hindu household to acquire and use tridents to defend themselves.
Alongside the demonization of Muslims as infiltrators and invaders is the constant branding of dissenters as 'urban Naxals'. Defending the Constitution of India has now become the latest definition of 'naxalism' for the Modi government. The Congress and the INDIA bloc are being accused of promoting 'urban naxals' for taking up the agenda of caste census and saving the Constitution. Behind this attempt to browbeat the opposition lies the BJP's design of passing off its agenda of Hindu supremacist majoritarianism, corporate appeasement, institutionalised corruption and tyrannical rule as India's 'national interest'. Both Maharashtra and Jharkhand are crucial states for this BJP agenda. In Maharashtra the BJP broke every constitutional principle and ethical norm to grab power. In Jharkhand too, the Modi government tried every trick to destabilise the Hemant Soren government, obstructing the state government's policies and curtailing its federal powers by a brazenly partisan abuse of the Governor's office, sending the CM to jail before the Lok Sabha elections and, ahead of the Assembly elections, even trying to engineer major defections from the JMM by getting veteran JMM leader and former CM Champai Soren to join the BJP. If the BJP can grab power in Jharkhand after winning Chhattisgarh and Odisha, it will mark the completion of the Adani triangle.
A lot is therefore at stake in the Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand and the accompanying by-elections in several states. The Left and the INDIA bloc must summon all its strength and energy in this crucial round of electoral battles to defeat the Sangh brigade's sinister design. It is unfortunate that the seat-sharing arrangement in Jharkhand could not ensure a complete alliance in all the 81 seats. The CPI(ML) is contesting only four seats and even in one of these four seats, the JMM has fielded a candidate despite finishing sixth in that constituency in the 2019 Assembly elections. In Assam too, the Congress went back on the 2019 Assembly election understanding to field its own candidate in Behali by-poll against our candidate, that too by rehabilitating a defector from the BJP. A positive sign has however emerged in West Bengal where the CPI(M) has for the first time in the state's political history extended support to the CPI(ML) in one of the six bypoll-bound constituencies. A broader and more vibrant unity of the Left is the need of the hour to change the political balance in West Bengal by accelerating the political and electoral revival of the Left. Let the people of India make the best possible use of the opportunity provided by the November elections to deliver another powerful blow to the Sangh brigade and its fascist offensive.
