The changing election campaign moods of Prime Minister Narendra Modi

This quickly yielded to the third phase of zero-sum calculations, where the progress of any one social class is portrayed as a threat to another.

Modi’s guarantee

The BJP manifesto for the 2024 general election is titled “Modi ki guarantee”, a solemn assurance from the Prime Minister to deliver on every one of its commitments.

The name “Modi” appears 65 times throughout the text. Commitments made in sectors ranging from infrastructure, science and technology, agriculture, health, education, and the welfare of senior citizens and the youth are phrased as personal guarantees from Modi.

Introducing his party manifesto, Modi addresses citizens as “parivar-jan,” or family. He talks up his record of achievement over ten years, all of which he attributes to the guiding philosophy of “sabka saath,” or “all together.”

In terms of frequency, the word “jobs” occurs twice in the manifesto, “employment” 28 times, “farmer” 15 times, and “agriculture” eight times. The term “food security” makes two appearances.

In the days following the BJP manifesto, Modi spoke of how his achievement at Ayodhya was testimony to the power of his guarantee to make “Viksit Bharat” a reality. He missed no opportunity to fling a barb at the Congress, as when he accused them of disrespecting Lord Ram.

Deriding Congress manifesto

Fallen on lean days, fragmented by factions and dynastic privilege, and yet the main hope for a political alternative, the Congress had put out its manifesto a few days before. First salvos were fired soon afterwards, with BJP president JP Nadda and Modi himself denouncing it as a clone of Muslim League ideology, with the potential to fragment the country.

At a rally in the Nawada district in Bihar, Modi urged the crowd to partake in the Ram Navami festival, which was a few days away. He also told them not to forget or forgive the “sinners” who had turned their backs on Ayodhya.

Two days later, at rallies in Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh and Balaghat in Madhya Pradesh, he demanded strictures against all who had insulted Lord Ram. The opposition alliance did not care “about the country’s heritage”. By declining to participate in the grand consecration at Ayodhya, parties of the opposition had shown their contempt for the consummation of five hundred years of striving; exposing the “hatred they had long harboured” for the Ram temple.

In the days following, Modi switched strategy. Opposition politicians, he declared, had caused enormous hurt to Hindu sentiment by consuming meat and fish during months of mandated abstinence. The intent behind those conspicuous acts of consumption was to emulate Mughal emperors and their lackeys in the past, who were not just content with destroying Hindu temples but doing so in a manner that caused maximum emotional injury.

Playing on fears of majority faith

From then on, the tone of the Modi campaign became more aggressive, explicitly playing on the fears and anxieties of the majority faith. Suggestions flew that the Congress, in pursuit of an economic justice agenda, intended to take away property (including livestock and jewellery) from ordinary households and distribute them among “infiltrators and those who breed profusely”, both coded references to people of the Muslim faith, easily understood within the BJP discourse.

Then came the accusation that the Congress would take away the preferences that certain people in the Hindu faith have in jobs and educational opportunities. Though the Congress manifesto suggests no such intent even remotely,  Modi, with strident certainty, warned that the Congress would take these away and gift them to people of the Muslim faith.

A few days before Karnataka’s second and final phase of the election, an animation circulated by the state unit of the BJP conveyed the same message, showing a bird captioned “Muslim” battening on handouts from Congress leaders while a bunch of emaciated birds captioned after underprivileged people of the Hindu faith, looked on helplessly. In its final sequence, the animation has the Muslim bird invading the nest and gleefully expelling all other birds while Congress leaders gaze on indulgently.

Promoting communal propaganda

The electoral officer in Karnataka ordered the animation off, but it stayed up because social media managers saw no reason to comply. Finally, literally minutes before the polling wrapped up in Karnataka, the Election Commission of India ordered platform X to remove the animation.

The very first article of the “Model Code of Conduct”, in force immediately after the election schedule’s announcement, reads as follows: “No party or candidate shall indulge in any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic”.

While announcing the election schedule, the Election Commission of India (ECI) stipulated that all advertisements released by political parties and candidates on audio and visual media would undergo “pre-certification”, i.e., that empowered agencies will screen them at the district level.

The same stipulation would apply to advertisements sent over voice messages and bulk messaging services or placed on internet websites and social media.

Obviously, none of these strictures or regulatory processes were of any consequence when they really mattered.

(Sukumar Muralidharan is a print-media journalist and journalism instructor in the Delhi region. Views are personal.)

(Edited by VVP Sharma)