Bihar is the rare Hindi -speaking state of India, where the BJP has not won a majority on its own. The Earth is where Buddha reached the lighting and preached the message of harmony in the year 600 a. C. That may not be the reason behind the frustrations of the Hindu right in the populous Hindi -speaking state. But it does indicate a greater intellectual understanding by their people of the challenges they face in life and politics.
The despair of the BJP for winning the state elections could be obtained from the various high -profile visits that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made to the State. The recent one was also dramatic. When Pahalgam’s terrorist attack occurred on April 22, Modi was visiting a Gulf State. He shortened the trip but did not say a word about Pahalgam in Delhi. Instead, Bihar flew the next day, where he announced in a vitriolic speech the decision to “hunt terrorists and punish their sponsors.” He usually speaks with his foreign interlocutors in Hindi, but with a Hindi -speaking audience in Bihar Modi spoke in English.
“Today, from Bihar’s floor, I tell the whole world. India will identify, track and punish all terrorists and their sponsors. We will persecute them to the end of the earth.” The Sindoor operation occurred, and according to Modi, it is not over yet. However, until now, neither of the two promises he made has been redeemed. It is said that terrorists are wandering free, and have not been identified or appointed. As for Pakistan, his alleged implicit sponsors, his head of the Army was agreed by Donald Trump during a lunch at the White House. Modi’s captive media have declared victorious of India, but the evidence suggests a shameful error of Indian calculation about Pakistan’s ability to respond to his attack.
The despair of winning Bihar now can have to trust the hands capable of the selected electoral commission of Modi. There is fear between opposition matches and potential voters that the Sir (special intensive review) of the list of voters in progress in Bihar aims to guarantee the victory of the ruling party eliminating hundreds and thousands of voters from the opposition of the electoral lists. It is said that the exclusion of AADHAAR identification cards and official trusted voters of the list of valid documents for SIZE exposes great sections of Muslim, backward and Dalit communities with the risk of being deprived of their rights. These communities in general vote for the parties that are not BJP, and use AADHAR and the voting identification cards such as their basic identity documents. Few would possess birth certificates or land ownership or identity documents of the government that are on the list of 11 documents that the Electoral Commission is requested.
Delivering a theocratic renewal of the Constitution of India would need at least one claim of popular support.
In his widely cited poem, the solution, Bertolt Brecht, the famous playwright, describes with acid the disenchantment environment among people with their increasingly autocratic democracy. The Secretary of the Union of Writers suggests that they could recover with redoubled efforts, but the government offers an accountant solution: “Wouldn’t it be easier/in that case than the Government/dissolve people/and choose another?” According to most accounts, the Electoral Commission of India seems to be doing exactly that.
Obviously, Modi’s government has lost Brecht’s mocking tone and seems to have taken it seriously as an exciting perspective. Why Bihar? The State stands as an important obstacle to the Hindu Rashtra project. The BJP lacks a vital support of most Hindus in the state and throughout the country. A mandate must be conjured, but strong probabilities are stacked against the search. In the peak of Modi’s popularity in the 2019 elections, there were around 960 million Indian voters registered by the right to vote. However, in the elections of that year, the BJP and its allies obtained only about 221 million votes, which gave them an emphatic victory.
Most votes come from the majority community of Hindus. It is estimated that 37.36 percent of voters voted for BJP in 2019, almost 90 percent came from Hindus, or approximately 210 m. That is more or less the support that Hindutva can have in a population currently estimated of around 1.46 billion Indians, including 80pc Hindus.
A remedy that has worked elsewhere for closet autocrats is to suspend democracy. It has also happened in India, although during a relatively short duration of 21 months when Indira Gandhi imposed emergency in June 1975. Mrs. Gandhi used the emergency to strengthen the Constitution by adding two crucial words that described Indian democracy as planned by founding parents, but that were missing in the preamble: secular and socialist. The supporters of the Hindu rash have been openly surveyed to do without the words. The fly in the ointment is that the BJP lost its majority in 2024 and directs a minority government with supporters who distrust a Hindu rash.
Therefore, a slow emptiness of the main pillars of democracy: Parliament, the Judiciary and the media, seems to be doing the trick for now. But delivering a theocratic renewal of the Constitution would need at least one claim of popular support. Adjusting the mandate of the people look closer to the false prescription of Brecht. Changing the list of voters, prohibiting parties or their leaders, has occurred in almost all democracy in southern Asia, replicating the Brechtian nightmare.
Finally, Western Bengala is also in the sight of Modi. It is said that the sudden increase in the monitoring and deportation of the alleged Muslims of Bangladesh in the states governed by BJP indicates the deprivation of rights of a substantial part of the Muslim voters of Western Bengal in the next year’s elections. Bangladesh’s gambit could go back in the BJP in West Bengal. Prime Minister Mamata Banerje has turned the issue into a Bengali honor. Challenging the monsoon rains in the streets of Kolkata, he roared: “I have decided to speak stronger in Bengali, arrest me if you can.” Choosing ‘A new people’ is not a cake walk. Or so seems.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Posted in Dawn, July 29, 2025
