Modi stamps his authority on
Varanasi. Kejriwal takes home enough to fight another day.
It’s
noon at Varanasi’s Pahariya mandi. Not a single supporter of the Aam Aadmi
Party, or any party other than the BJP for that matter, was to be seen outside
the fortified counting centre. It would be another four hours before Arvind
Kejriwal would formally concede defeat. But a bunch of young BJP supporters
grinningly assured me that the body count would not rise at the city’s
Manikarnika ghat where pyres burn round the clock by the Ganga.
During
the count in 2009, Murli Manohar Joshi had lost the first two assembly segments
– Rohaniya and Sevapuri – to his BSP rival Mukhtar Ansari. The setback gave one
Sahuji, Joshi’s election manager, a heart attack. By the time the remaining
three segments made Joshi victorious by a slender margin of 17,000 votes,
Sahuji was dead. “Suppose we topple the Modi applecart. The shock will keep the
ghat busy for a few days,” a local AAP functionary cracked up the evening
before D-day.
Dismissing
his darkly mischievous humour, I landed up at the ghat myself, only to be
confronted by a burly middle-aged trader at the edge of an ancient staircase.
“What do you mean by how big a victory we expect for Modi?” he challenged me.
“Modi Varanasi se haar kar ke nahin ja sakta kya (Do you think Modi can’t lose
in Varanasi)?”
I
did carry the thought as a journalistic curiosity from Delhi but none of the
voters or functionaries across party lines I chatted up in Lucknow, Rae Bareli,
Amethi, Pratapgarh or Varanasi gave me any reason to nurture it. Even a few AAP
volunteers confided that they were looking at a moral victory by denying
Narendra Modi a margin any bigger than 50,000.
By
noon, Modi took a lead of over one lakh. Six hours later, it would swell to 3.7
lakh. Not quite the record margin of Vadodara but enough to show “the upstart”
his place. For now.
Maybe
it is the Amit Shah effect but a senior leader at BJP’s campaign headquarters
in Varanasi quickly drew up the numbers. “About 11 lakh votes were cast here.
Let’s give the Congress, SP and BSP together some 2 lakh. Even if Kejriwal
takes all the Muslim votes, say up to one and a half lakh, he will still not cross
two lakhs. We estimate five and a half to six lakh for Modi-ji. That’s a margin
of four lakhs,” he concluded matter-of-factly.
Kejriwal
eventually crossed the two-lakh mark but by only nine thousand votes Modi
stopped just 19,000 short of six lakh. The margin of error in the BJP’s math
was just 7%. By noon, it was time for celebrations in Varanasi.
+++
Two
new leaders were born in Varanasi this election season. One galvanized his new
cult as India’s undisputed man of the hour; another, till now primarily an
urban politician, learnt to engage and be patient with the rural voter. It
wasn’t easy for either.
“The
party started thinking that they could nominate a tree and still win here. But
2009 gave them a scare. To make matters worse, Joshi did nothing for Varanasi
other than widening a bridge here and laying a road there in five years. People
were unhappy. Modi would have still won but ensuring a befitting margin was a
challenge,” a local BJP functionary admitted at the party camp set up close to
the counting centre.
The
symbolism of a mega triumph at Varanasi gained from a masterstroke in politics:
the way Modi turned around his party’s fortunes in Uttar Pradesh. Take the
tech-savvy campaign, for example. Piyush Vardhan Singh, convener of the party’s
regional IT cell, was an important spoke in the party’s giant wheel that
engaged 10,000-odd mostly young professionals and students in UP alone.
“We
had nine divisions in the state. We at Varanasi were looking after the city and
14 districts. That means working social media handles to send out the right
message. On polling days, we doubled up as booth agents to help voters find
their names in the revised rolls,” explained Singh, a full-timer with the cell.
If
the likes of the Singh ensured that nobody returned from the booth without
voting, the arduous task of getting the reluctant voters, particularly senior
citizens, to the booths was taken up by the members of the Sangh. “Our parents
and grandparents voted after many years. Varanasi is laidback. While people
love to debate politics, not many turn up to vote. This time, Sangh members
were also active in getting people out of their houses,” said a young BJP
worker who along with his friends ferried voters throughout polling day.
The
third triumph of Modi was in an unprecedented consolidation of the Hindu vote.
With a large number of OBCs and Dalits backing the BJP, the party’s vote share
jumped from 18 to 43 per cent in the state and nearly doubled in Varanasi. It
did not hurt that Modi flaunted his own OBC status.
“Modi-ji
promised every sect – be it the weavers of Varanasi or the Dalits and Jats of
western UP – something or the other and they all responded positively,” said a
young marketing executive who returned to Varanasi from Lucknow to vote for the
BJP. “But I don’t know if he will be able to satisfy all. Shayad sinni bana ke
sab me thoda thoda baant denge (maybe he will make candies and distribute a few
to each).”
Political
opponents, however, accused the BJP of polarizing the voters on communal lines.
Subtle (in stage décor) and overt (in speeches) use of Hindutva symbolisms and
constant reminding of minority vote banks did influence a pan-Hindu
consolidation. “It is unclear if it was the promise of development or communal
polarization that helped the BJP break the caste barrier,” said a rare Congress
voter who found the names of his family members missing from the electoral roll
on 12 May.
As
the trends became evident on counting day, he marveled at the BJP’s “give no
quarters” approach. “Who knows, given the hype, maybe even my family would have
voted for Modi,” he sounded both awed and rattled.
+++
The
idea of taking on Modi in Varanasi, agreed even a section of AAP volunteers,
perhaps cost the AAP a few seats. “Kejriwal could have devoted more time in
Delhi and its neighbourhood. Anyway, he was destined to lose against Modi,”
said a ticket inspector aboard the Lucknow-Varanasi Express. “Other parties
exploited his political immaturity in Delhi and gave him a bad name. He is such
a fine man.”
The
“fine man” was a “nobody” in Varanasi till the second week of April when he
struggled to find a campaign office in the city. Mukund Singh, a local
businessman, offered him a four-storey building for a maintenance fee of Rs
30,000. “I could tell my neighbours and friends who resented my support for
Kejriwal against Modi that it was a business decision,” he recalled.
It
took Kejriwal and his team of a few thousand volunteers less than a month to
build a mass support base in Varanasi. “He reached out to the poor in villages
who were waiting for an opportunity to say no to the conventional parties. The
Muslims, Patels and even certain pockets of Yadavs rallied around him. He will
get at least three lakh votes,” Kejriwal’s ‘landlord’ had claimed the day
before counting.
That
estimate turned out to be too optimistic on Friday. Prerna Prasad from Delhi,
holed up with AAP workers in a house close to the counting centre, complained
that certain groups who promised support and even campaigned for her party
probably did not vote for Kejriwal.
But
for all the attacks on AAP volunteers in Varanasi and the Kejriwals being told
to leave Sankat Mochan temple in the run-up to polls, it was difficult to find
someone who had strong words for the streetfighter. Barring a section of young
BJP workers, most admitted that they found him to be “a gentleman”. But few
said they voted for him. The bulk of AAP’s vote came from the rural poor who
were equally charmed by Kejriwal’s easy ways and had little to lose by betting
on him.
By
9 pm, raucous BJP supporters had called it a day; after all, Modi was dropping
by the next day to offer thanks. Vinod Shankar Shukla, a traditional silk
merchant, was happy to reclaim his quiet spot by Assi ghat. He had expected a
bigger margin for Modi but admitted he was not short of admiration for Kejriwal
either.
“Those
who are not benefiting from this system need him. He wants to do good work. But
he also needs to tell the people what his plans are. Varanasi has given him
hope and time to return stronger,” Shukla paused. A strong grassy waft blew in
our direction by the slow tide. “Most people smoke up here but some prefer our
bhang thandai,” Shukla smiled. “Varanasi is also called Anand Nagari. One must
learn to take it easy here.”
Late
afternoon on Friday, Kejriwal thanked Anand Nagari for all its love. For a man
in a hurry, Varanasi probably wasn’t the right choice. Or maybe he just ran
into a man in a bigger hurry to fulfill his destiny. Varanasi isn’t calling
time.
No comments:
Post a Comment