Congress invoking North-South divide is old Aryan-Dravidian wine in new bottle, will only script its demise

What does a person with no appetite for improvement do after a dismal performance? If he fails in a game, he blames the pitch, the weather, the umpire, or even the spectator. (Yes, Pakistan’s Director of Cricket Mickey Arthur did exactly that when he blamed Indian spectators for his team’s loss against India in Ahmedabad during the 2023 World Cup.) One sees a similar trend in Indian politics – of blaming everyone except oneself, of looking the other way when it is found faltering.

It happened on Sunday, soon after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) defeated the Congress in the three Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. To the grand old party’s solace, it secured a resounding victory in Telangana. While savouring the victory in the South, the Congress should have analysed the reasons why it is getting vanquished in the North, especially in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh where the GOP looked all set to gain power.

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Instead the party and its loyalists indulged in a “Progressive South vs Communal North” debate. Others talked about how “South is aware and North is lagging far behind”. Still a few focused on how the “South-North boundary line is getting thicker and clearer”. At the very outset, it must be said that this North Vs South narrative is just the repackaging of a long-discredited Aryan invasion/migration theory that detailed how the “fair-skinned” Aryans pushed the “dark-skinned” Dravidians down South and culturally colonised the land called Bharatvarsha.

The Congress narrative is problematic on both political as well as ideological fronts. Politically, it is a classic case of the Congress committing another hara-kiri where a political party questions the motive, ideology, orientation or even the educational qualification of the voter. It fails to realise that these very people had five years ago voted for the party.

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The North vs South debate also falters given the fact that the BJP is a rising force in the South. In the just-held Assembly elections, it has doubled its vote share in Telangana. Given the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the saffron party will be well placed to get more seats in the state in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. As has been the case, especially in recent times, a national party tends to do well in the Lok Sabha in comparison to its regional counterpart, more so if it is a ruling party with an unassailable election machinery like that of the BJP.

Likewise, the BJP remains a powerful party force in Karnataka. Congress sycophants seem to forget that the saffron party had won 25 out of 28 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. And despite the Assembly poll drubbing in Karnataka early this year, the BJP is likely to bounce back in the general elections next year. It may not get 25 seats, but one won’t be surprised to see the party topping the electoral chart next year. Even in Tamil Nadu, the party seems to be getting enough eyeballs thanks to state party chief K Annamalai’s proactive politics.

The North vs South debate initiated soon after the Assembly poll results on Sunday also ignores the fact that this is not a post-2014 phenomenon. The most glaring example was the 1977 Lok Sabha elections when the Indira Gandhi-led Congress was decimated in the North, but it performed remarkably well in the South. The idea of Bharat is too complex and complicated a phenomenon for a unidimensional Leftist ideology to comprehend.

As for the ideological aspect of the North vs South narrative, it’s unfortunate to see the Congress that had played a seminal role in the country’s Independence putting a big question mark on the idea of Bharat by manufacturing such a fake divide. But this transformation from being a nation maker to a potentially nation divider didn’t happen in a day.

First the party, under Harrow-return Nehru, chose to ride over the Leftist ideology to set the narrative of Bharat. It was more on the line of what scholar-poet AK Ramanujan would say: “One way of defining diversity for India is to say what the Irishman is said to have said about trousers. When asked whether trousers were singular or plural, he said, ‘Singular at the top and plural at the bottom.’” But over the decades, especially since the late 1960s, it is the ideology, of course Leftist in orientation, that has been riding the party to define the nation’s narrative.

The hold of the Left-wing ideology is so overwhelming that it has made the Congress incapable of turning the tide of electoral reverses. Since 2014, the party has faced several such setbacks in one state after another. The message has been clear and categorical: That the Congress will have to align itself with the pulse of the nation, comprising voters who are young and tech-savvy but are equally rooted to — and surefooted about — their civilisational past. But the party continues to stick to the policies that no longer inspire the young, aspiring Indians.

These Indians love their diversity but get upset when the same diversity becomes a ruse to undermine Bharat’s innate civilisational, cultural unity. Socially, they may still be operating in a caste-related setup, but they have moved on and are no longer confined to that identity alone. (This may explain why the Congress found no support for its caste survey pitch in the recently held elections.) Moreover, they now refuse to see themselves, their culture and identity, and of course their religion — Hinduism in this case — through the Western, Marxist parameters.

One can look at Tamil Nadu where the slow but steady rise of the BJP under Annamalai suggests the shift in state politics. The vestiges of Dravidianism can still be found there — as was recently seen with the Sanatana eradication comment by a senior DMK leader who also happened to be the son of Chief Minister MK Stalin — but the state has largely moved beyond Periyarian vandalism where Dravidian followers were openly exhorted to “go inside (a temple) and break all the idols”. Today, even Stalin, Tamil Nadu chief minister, would lash out at the Opposition led by the BJP for calling the DMK “anti-Hindu”. He would even recall his wife frequently visiting temples and how he had not once asked her why she was going there!

So, as the Congress leaders and acolytes lash out at the voters of the North to be “communal”, “illiterate” and “backward”, it’s time the party realised that the ‘northerly wind’ is slowly moving to the South as well. The Congress invoking the North-South divide is nothing but an old Aryan-Dravidian wine repackaged in a new bottle. If the GOP refuses to align itself with the needs and ethos of Naya Bharat, it would be relegated to footnotes of history. New India needs new politics. Where Bharat isn’t a dirty word. Where Hinduism is no longer a Brahminical conspiracy synonymous with crass communalism. And where the economy isn’t statist in nature, though pragmatic welfarism will continue to play an important role in a largely liberalised economy.

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.

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