The juggernaut of religious majoritarianism and centralised authoritarianism has at last stumbled in its tracks.
The lofty sentiments expressed by Narendra Modi on his air journey from Kanniyakumari to Delhi stand in sharp contrast to the divisive rhetoric deployed by him during the lengthy election campaign. Bharat, for thousands of years, he rightly claims, has been “a cradle of ideas” (‘We need to dream new dreams’, IE, June 3). What he failed to recognise was that the legendary ruler Bharat, from whom the name of our country is derived, was a rajchakravarti — a sovereign at the centre of a circle of sovereigns — not a despot exercising overcentralised bureaucratic domination. Indian unity can only be of the federal type.
Ten years ago, I had taken a break from my tranquil academic life to make a foray into the rough and tumble of India’s parliamentary politics. In early June 2014, I delivered my first speech in the 16th Lok Sabha on the same day as Modi and warned the newly formed Modi sarkar not to confuse majoritarianism with democracy and uniformity with unity. The juggernaut of religious majoritarianism and centralised authoritarianism has at last stumbled in its tracks. Projects such as “One Nation, One Election” will not now achieve fruition.
“We need to dream new dreams,” pontificated our Prime Minister on the eve of his third term in office. For a decade, Modi has been a successful seller of dreams. The harsh reality of massive youth unemployment and obscene levels of inequality has finally caught up with him. Even the pomp and ceremony surrounding the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya did not deflect the voters of Uttar Pradesh from the issues that truly mattered in their lives. The resort by Modi to hate speech in a cynical attempt to galvanise his core base ended up alienating most decent people. Merely invoking Saint Thiruvalluvar and Swami Vivekananda without adherence to their ecumenical ideals impressed neither the Tamils nor the Bengalis.
A modicum of respect for parliamentary convention would have triggered the resignation of a PM who has lost his party’s majority. If anything, the NDA should have elected a new leader to stake a claim to form the government. However, a moral defeat is insufficient to get Modi and Amit Shah to relinquish the levers of power. It remains to be seen what terms the two king-makers — Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar — are prepared to exact from the BJP.
By the same token, the INDIA alliance — despite its improved performance, especially in Uttar Pradesh — has not really won a mandate, having failed to present even a common minimum programme before the electorate. Defeats of the BJP in forthcoming state elections in Haryana, Maharashtra and possibly Bihar may lead to the unravelling of Modi’s tenuous third term. The Opposition urgently needs to fashion itself as a credible and coherent coalition capable of governance at the national level. The ideological pillars must be samyavada — a commitment to gender, class, and caste equality — and genuine federalism that gives all regions a sense of belonging to the Indian Union.
The delimitation of 2026 will be a moment of reckoning for the NDA and INDIA alike, indeed for the entire political class and leaders of civil society. India, that is Bharat, will need to find a judicious balance between representation based on numbers and representation of our country’s myriad diversities at the level of the union. To achieve that aim, it will be necessary to draw upon our country’s robust intellectual tradition of anti-colonial federalism that was not fully accommodated within our political structures in the immediate aftermath of Independence and Partition. This may require, among other reforms, giving smaller states greater weighted representation in a directly elected upper house. Regional parties must realise that federalism is not just about fiscal, financial and cultural rights of the states but, more importantly, requires an equitable sharing of power at the Centre.
There is one other lesson for regional parties in office from the verdict of 2024. Unbridled arrogance of power will be punished by a discerning electorate sooner or later. That message has today been directed towards a regime in Delhi that seemed determined to establish a tyranny of the majority. Victory in 2024 does not obviate the imperative of a course correction by regional parties in states where they will have to face the people in 2026. In offering this word of caution and good advice, I include my own state — Bengal.
The writer is the Gardiner Professor of History at Harvard University and a former TMC MP in the 16th Lok Sabha
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