The recent cacophony surrounding the Indian elections has seen one continuous demand on the part of the ruling party’s supporters: Asking about the prospective Prime Ministerial candidate on behalf of the opposition. This debate itself represents an immediate threat to not just a healthy political process, but also to parliamentary democracy. While the supporters of the ruling party would like to know the opposition’s candidate, only to further a more targeted approach to that person, there seems to be a latent problem that accompanies such an approach. An election focused merely on the merits or demerits of two people defeats the entire purpose of parliamentary democracy and actively instigates a dangerous form of personality-cult politics.
The Threat To Parliamentary Democracy
India’s republic mandates a Westminster-modeled parliamentary democracy. This means, that our general elections are unlike the ones in the United States where the race is almost between two people from two major parties. I do not want to indulge in the criticism of that system, however, that is what the Constitution of United States mandates. The people of the United States directly elect their President in the Presidential elections and it is justified that the entire election campaign surrounds the candidates and their politics.
However, in India, our general elections are based on a more decentralized model and when we vote, we vote for the representative of political parties from our constituencies. While voting at the constituency level (i.e. for the Member of Parliament), the immediate responsibility should be to assess the credentials of the candidates. The party or a coalition that attains a majority in the Parliament then stakes to form the Government; they then vote to decide their leader who eventually becomes the Prime Minister.
However, the recent electioneering campaign, primarily by the ruling party, hijacks the idea of India’s Parliamentary democracy and, in turn, replaces it with a brutal top-down system. To argue that one ought to vote for “Modi Sarkar” is dangerous. Firstly, if people would do so, it would completely disregard the credentials of their respective Members of Parliament and his or her only virtue would be belonging to “Modiji’s party”. Secondly, the precedent it sets will slowly take India from being a field of political pluralism to becoming a public fight between two individuals and their coterie of supporters. The supremacy of Parliament then suffers a severe blow and the Prime Minister becomes the sole repository of government power.
My contention is that if you condition the people of India in this manner and the opposition also plays into the narrative that the ruling party has set, there are more losses than gains. Add to that, the importance of issues related to poor governance on the part of the government then becomes less effective in comparison to the “relative weakness” of the opposition’s PM candidate. And, this would primarily be the strategy on the side of the ruling party.
How Personality-Cult Politics Hijacks Indian Democracy
Politics is rightly called as a war of ideologies and ideologies are not ingrained into one person, but rather it is ingrained into many people who believe in common principles. This belief in common principles with regard to policy, society and governance leads to the formation of a political party. The MPs and MLAs fielded by the political parties get their identity not entirely from what they are, but also from the kind of politics they represent. Thus, in a Parliamentary democracy, one not just votes for the candidates in his or her constituency but also for a certain framework of governance he or she believes in. And that framework is represented by the political party.
Unfortunately, there is now a prominent danger of personality-cult politics that is clouding this system of political and ideological pluralism. While mostly practised in non-democratic regimes, personality cult politics refers to the portrayal of a heroic and god-like leader in politics who becomes the centre of the universe for his followers. No affiliation is greater than him and he represents no one but himself.
The brand positioning such as “Abki Baar, Modi Sarkaar” actively highlights that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become bigger than the party he represents and that perhaps BJP represents Narendra Modi now. “BJP Sarkaar” is no more appealing to the people, which is apparent from the Prime Minister’s photo on the front page of the BJP Manifesto. While the BJP may or may not understand the dangers that lie in such an attitude, the primary victim of the personality-cult has been the BJP itself. Its prominent leaders or the ones who spearheaded the party are now being pushed into the abyss of oblivion. Stalwarts like LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Arun Shourie never had a personality, but they embodied the party and its ideology. The sidelining of these leaders is just another example as to how this cult of personality engulfs dissenters. And this is being done by the supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and not necessarily by the “supporters of BJP.”
Even the ideological inconsistency on the part of the Prime Minister now becomes a non-issue within the party and all voices of dissent lead to the sidelining of the dissenter. Once a party becomes a coterie of followers of a particular individual and not the ideology in general, it reduces itself to a limited glory confined to the life of its supreme leader and, if at all there is a successor, it would lead to another personality-cult. The party, hence, loses its distinctive existence and plays second-fiddle to that of the supreme leader. Important lessons must be learnt from the AIADMK’s position after Jayalalithaa’s death. The entire structure of AIADMK collapsed, split and continues to be in a state of bedlam. In all of this, what suffers a fatal blow is not just the party, but also the Indian democratic setup in general.
If the Opposition thus chooses to play this game of personality-cult by announcing its Prime Ministerial candidate before the election results, it will spiral off a never-ending cycle in Indian politics. It will thence destroy the Parliamentary system of democracy by not just subordinating the Parliament, but also creating a harmful political precedent where issues of governance, policy, and security are sidelined to uphold the charisma of political candidates.