Gujarat Assembly elections | Victim of its own success, BJP searches for the right campaign tone Premium

The expanding consensus on Gujarat model in recent decades has narrowed the distinction between BJP and Congress, which is more of a problem for the former than the latter now

Elections in Gujarat are usually boisterous, with political parties at daggers drawn. But this time, the campaigning is uncharacteristically muted — largely due to subdued electioneering by the Congress. In marked contrast to the 2017 Assembly election, when the Congress attempted a blitzkrieg led by Rahul Gandhi against the ruling BJP, its campaign in 2022 has been restrained. The party believes a diffused campaign has denied the BJP an easy route to framing the election as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

From 2002 onwards, it was around the Congress party’s high-pitched attack on him that Mr. Modi had built his politics and persona. The BJP campaign this time, too, centres around Mr. Modi, with Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel finding little space even in the backdrop. But the Congress’s attack is not focused on Mr. Modi. The absence of Mr. Gandhi, and omission of grand themes have created relatively more space for conversations on governance in the State.

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With the Congress piping down, the BJP is in need of a worthy adversary to animate its base. Medha Patkar, who was the face of the campaign against the Narmada dam, which is now a piece of Gujarati pride, the Muslim man who allegedly killed his Hindu live-in partner in Delhi in a savage manner, and alleged insults by the Congress directed at Mr. Modi in previous campaigns have all featured in the BJP’s attempt to conjure up a threat to Gujaratis and Hindus. However, Gujarati Hindus are far from feeling threatened at this point — the BJP has made them so self-assured that the party faces the threat of being a victim of its own success.

The BJP is the lead custodian of what political scientist Mona Mehta of Ahmedabad University calls ‘Gujarat consensus’ — a common sense of the State’s Hindus regarding the cultural, economic and political order of the State. “There is no contesting that consensus in the Gujarat elections,” Ms. Mehta said. “This consensus may be driven by the urban, upper caste middle class of the State, but there is large buy-in from all communities.” With economic, religious and caste order so entrenched, politics in the State is more about management and less about transformation.

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Gujarati sub-nationalism blends well with Hindutva, but the takeover of India’s national politics by two politicians from the State — Mr. Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah — appears to have weakened the potency of the cocktail. The Hindutva takeover of Delhi has fundamentally changed Gujarat’s relations with the national capital. Until 2014, Mr. Modi used to accuse the ‘Delhi Sultanate’ of disparaging the State, and then he became the Prime Minister. Victimhood and exceptionalism used to ferment the combination of regionalism and Hindutva — the self-image that the State thrived on despite the discrimination by Delhi. This time, that narrative is the weakest in the last 25 years — the Centre has tilted the scales to ensure that three mega projects originally planned in Maharashtra moved to Gujarat ahead of the election, including the Tata Airbus aircraft manufacturing and Vedanta-Foxconn semiconductor manufacturing facilities.