117 is the magic figure BJP is in love with currently. Of the 182 seats in Gujarat, BJP bagged 117. That makes it two-thirds majority for BJP, or should I say for Modi! Modi has done something which was unforeseen or thinkable and in Congress’s words “Grand” and “remarkable”. This is the fifth time in a row that BJP has won state elections in the State of Gujarat.
This elections, it was Modi all the way. Have you seen the pre elections campaign video snippets on the news channels? Modi was on the roll. His all inspiring speeches in local language Gujarati, bashing congress president Sonia Gandhi, talking about the clean governance, the development in Gujarat by his government and finally about the controversial Sorabuddin issue. He looked like Yuvraj Singh playing Twenty-20 innings and hitting every ball for a six. Well, not very surprisingly, BJP president compared him to MSD, calling him Captain of Gujarat!!
When I was watching the news yesterday and looking at the steady rising tally of seats in the BJP bucket, I was forced to think, what did BJP do in Gujarat, or what did Modi do for that matter. Well, in the Gujarat politics, for that matter, the only “name” people know is I guess Narendra bhai Modi! I remember a decade back, there were a lot of names in the Gujarat state politics, Keshu Bhai Patel, Shankar Singh Waghela (he was seen more on TV those days than Amar Singh!!!), Kanshi Ram Rana… where did these people go? Where did they vanish? Well I found one person on 5-6 page of Indian express, today’s edition , Keshu Bhai Patel. And I think even he wished he should not have been there, a completely lost expression on the face of rebel. This was for BJP rebels, but for Congress, there was no strong regional leader who could stand up to the stature of Modi. All congress could muster up was Sonia Gandhi as their poster face, which obviously, people of Gujarat could not relate directly to. Modi was larger than life this time round.
So thinking of the fact that, What did Modi do this election to get a 2/3 majority. What was his agenda? What so many states going in for a coalition government, what made people of Gujarat elect BJP in power with 2/3 of majority? The major Points in the agenda were, clean governance and Development by Modi government. This time, at least initially, Modi did not take the Hindutva batten in his hands. As per him, Hindutva was never on his agenda, and he has commented on the topic only on the instigation of opposition parties. But was this really true? Was Hindutva really not in the agenda at all?
I think it was. And that’s what actually worked for BJP. BJP had tried extreme Hindutva agenda, which failed a lot of times, and then they tried this “India Shining” which, the current Priministerial candidate, L K Advani, himself accepted was a failure. But this time, Modi came up with an innovative idea of wrapping the Hindutva agenda with his clean governance and development in the State. This is what scored big for BJP. The fact that this time Hindutva was not the only thing BJP tried cashing on, but it was with Development, which fetched them the middle class and lower middle class votes. This was I think a major positive on the BJP side.
Once again, Modi proved, most of the psephologists and “political Pundits” wrong. Most of them predicted Modi win, but the figures were never close. Modi has won Gujarat single handedly and has boosted moral of the party! BJP now is ready with, what Indian express has aptly called, ‘Hindutva 2.0’. Now it now for us to see, whether this Hindutva 2.0, really makes any difference in the forth coming elections for BJP in other states.
