Progressive politics defeats majoritarian narrative

The resounding victory of Arvind Kejriwal led Aam is one way or the other defeat to BJP’s hyper nationalism and a victory for progressive politics. Significantly the results of Delhi assembly elections is also the outright rejection of the BJP’s majoritarian politics focused on citizenship amendment act, bifurcation of erstwhile muslim majority Jammu & Kashmir state into two union territories and the continuing row over the proposal for a new citizenship law called NRC (National Register of Citizens). Inflammatory statements of top BJP leaders including Union Home Minister Amit Shah was part of an attempt to instigate religious polarization for wresting the political control of Delhi from Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party (AAP). For BJP religious polarisation over the protests against the controversial citizenship amendment did not work the way article 370 abrogation and triple Talaaq scrapping went against it in Mahrashtra and Haryana at the fag end of year 2019. With the non stop loosing trends making it difficult for the BJP to stop shrinking political space across the country , the shift in public responses to BJP’s politics of hypernationalism is gradually heading to the rise of regional political forces in the country. In Mahrashta Shiv Sena pushed BJP out of power even after becoming the single largest party in the state assembly and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) foiled Safron party’s politics of splits for forming a government in alliance with handpicked proxies. The top BJP leaders who tried to form a government by defections in Mahrashtra were part of the high pitch poll campaign in Delhi but failed to stop the surge of Aam Admi Party for the third time in a row. It looked as if the survival of the central government commanded and controlled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was stake as top party leaders including even the Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself , the Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath the Chief Minister of the most populous state UtterPradesh besides party’s 200 influential parliament members hit the campaign trail in Dehi for over a month.
Banking upon the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the politics of religious polarisation can’t be an all time advantage for BJP and the Delhi verdict has sent out a strong message to BJP top brass this time. The saffron party had to bite the dust in Delhi assembly poles because of its failures to project leaders of comparable political potentialities and contest the elections on the planks of progressive politics instead of propagating majoritarian politics.