Learning RIGHT lessons from Delhi results

First of all, my heartfelt congratulations to Sri Arvind Kejriwal and Aam Admi Party for winning an unprecedented mandate in Delhi! I truly hope they will deliver a corruption-free, stable and progressive government to people of Delhi.

Many have analyzed this election in detail to understand how AAP was able to get this stupendous mandate and most importantly how all the pundits missed this tsunami. Here is my analysis.

I will start with 2013 Delhi State Elections.

The background of this election was (1) public anger against corrupt Congress government (2) a highly successful movement by Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev’s India Against Corruption (IAC) and Congress government’s high-handed response to it. At that time Narendra Modi was far away as CM of Gujarat who stayed away from these elections.

It was obvious that Delhi voters were going to punish Sheila Dikshit’s Congress government and they had two choices in the form of BJP and AAP. In those elections BJP secured 33% votes, AAP got 29.5% votes and Congress 24.6% votes. Together these three parties got 87% of votes. At this point of time AAP’s core vote base had two components. The Leftists+NGO groups and the Hindu vote base that was genuinely smitten by Anna Hazare, Aravind Kejriwal and the youthfulness of Aam Admi Party. I would put this Hindu voter base at 14% of AAP’s voters.

It resulted in a Hung Assembly and subsequent resignation of Arvind Kejriwal as CM of Delhi.

Then came 2014 General Elections.

The background of this election was Modi’s call for a “Congress Mukth Bharat” and a decisive mandate for his “Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas” agenda. In these elections Modi entered Delhi seeking votes while Arvind Kejriwal left to Varanasi to fight Modi for Lok Sabha. Another fact is that majority of AAP Delhi leadership also moved out of Delhi to contest/campaign Lok Sabha elections.

So the 14% Hindu voters who voted for AAP in 2013 Delhi elections went to BJP for they preferred Modi than Arvind Kejriwal. This increased BJP vote share to 46% in Delhi. On the other hand AAP got its vote share supplemented by two vote banks. First one is the Muslim vote bank. Muslims are well known to strategically vote as a block to any candidate who has a chance to defeat BJP candidate. In 2014 elections it became obvious that Modi is riding a wave and the Muslim vote bank in Delhi realized that Congress has little chance of winning. So they chose their next best option based on 2013 election results, hence went with AAP. Congress lost 9.5% of its votes in 2014 elections compared to 2013 Delhi elections. In 2014, these three parties together got 94% of votes, 7% more votes than 2013 elections.

That brings us to 2015 Delhi State Elections.

The electoral  landscape of Delhi changed again for these elections. Modi is acting Prime Minister of India and Arvind Kejriwal came back to Delhi as CM candidate. As observed in 2013 elections the 14% Hindu voters prefer Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP to a non-Modi led BJP, so they went back to AAP. Given the utter defeat of Congress in 2014 general elections, the Muslim vote back stayed with AAP for they have the best chances to defeat BJP candidates. We can see Asaduddin Owaisi MIM’s efforts from this perspective. Congress party on the other hand continued to lose its core vote back and transferred another 7% votes to AAP. I think this is the Christian vote bank, given the Church-vandalism incidents and Obama’s comments to that extent. Congress is left with hardly 8% votes in these elections. Together these three parties secured 93% of votes in these elections indicating the overall electoral space of Delhi did not change between 2014 and 2015 elections.

Wrong lessons for BJP

The media and secular intelligentsia is trying to portray AAP’s victory over BJP as a failure of Modi and is a warning by the nation to him vis.a.vis Hindutva. They are trying to impose the lessons they want on Modi Sarkar because they know that Narendra Modi is steering the nation towards an independent Bharat, free from colonial hangover. Some of these wrong lessons making rounds in TV studios and Social Media are

·         Curtail Hindu resurgence and stop reminding the nation of its Hindu identity.

·         Stop reconversions into Hinduism while ignoring/facilitating Christian Evangelical organizations.

·         Go slow on Islamic Terror and make peace with Pakistan

All these are wrong lessons for Modi Sarkar and the nation, for these are mere continuation of colonial rule of India. If BJP goes this path it will lose its differentiation and becomes Congress party without Gandhi/Nehru family.

It is important for BJP to learn right lessons from these elections because it is not only in the interests of BJP the political party but in the larger interests of the whole nation, especially 900 million Hindus who are suffering from the triple colonization of India by Islam, Christianity and Secularism.

Learning RIGHT lessons

• Modi Sarkar is on right path and must continue with its plan to remove colonial hangover in policy, law and justice, police, planning and economic agenda.
• Modi Sarkar must perform better than AAP especially in areas like fight against corruption, good governance and inclusive development. Not just that, it must be able to pass the message as well as benefits to the common man. When this becomes visible on the ground, the floating Hindu vote base (14% which is with AAP now) will come back to BJP. If Modi were to be the candidate of BJP, it would have gotten 46% vote share compared to AAP’s 39% (53-14%).
• BJP must reorganize itself to become a youthful party. This need not mean it will have to get rid of all these party workers who are 40+ years old. It will have to push the youth leaders into public and legislative arena while the seniors contribute in party and policy roles/matters.
• BJP must plan to get majority vote (51%) moving forward. Now that Congress is decimated, all anti-Hindu vote banks will unite to fight BJP. There will be attempts to splinter Hindu votes on caste/creed lines but all non-Hindu votes will be focused to defeat BJP candidates.

A Telugu patriotic poet Gurajada Apparao said thus “DEsamantE Matti KAdOy, DEsamantE ManushulOy” which means “It is the people who make the nation, not the soil/land”. So the people must be made to feel proud of their Hindu identity before this nation becomes a Hindu nation again. This pride comes only when there are ample real-life examples of successful Indians who live and assert their Hinduness. 

When Modi Sarkar gets rid of corruption, poverty, filth, unemployment without compromising on its core values; Hindutva will become cool for hundreds of millions of (now) secularized Hindus. THAT will be the day India achieves true independence.

Tathastu!