Not just his master's voice: Decoding new BJP president Amit Shah's speech

Everyone knows Amit Shah, the new BJP party President, is there in the job because his boss Narendra Modi wanted it so. Narendra Modi wanted a trusted lieutenant to run the party and expand its reach while he ran the government. But with his spectacular achievement in the recent Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh - where the BJP in alliance with Apna Dal won an unequalled 73 of 80 seats - everyone also knows that Shah is not just his master’s voice. He has arrived as a political Chanakya in his own right. Today, even as the BJP National Council meeting ratified his stewardship of the party for the next three years, it was a confident Shah who spoke the language of winning. “We have to get into the habit of winning,” he told his party simply and succintly. There were no extra words to his speech, few emotion embellishments a la Modi.  Just a statement of ambitious goals and how to get there. With four assembly elections scheduled over the next few months - in Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra - Shah said the BJP must win them all. In fact, the party must take all elections seriously to win them all - from the panchayat upwards to the state assemblies and finally the Lok Sabha - after 10 years in opposition, he said. Calling the BJP’s Lok Sabha win as a victory for its ideology, Shah said the projection of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister was instrumental in ensuring the support of the poor for the party. However, he warned party cadres not to allow their massive win to make them complacent. In fact, this very victory had caused the party’s opponents to realise that they had to band together to challenge the BJP. He exhorted party cadres to work harder, to strengthen the BJP across the country, and take every election seriously. Here are the main takeaways from his speech: [caption id=“attachment_1657053” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] * Amit Shah has an eye on the East and South The BJP has never really been a factor in the East beyond Bihar, but Shah sees no reason as to why this should remain so. The signs are propitious for the party’s growth. Although both Mamata Banerjee’s TMC and Naveen Patnaik’s BJD won convincingly in terms of number of seats (the TMC won 34 of West Bengal’s 42 seats and the BJD 20 of the 21 seats in Odisha), the BJP made considerable gains in terms of vote share. In West Bengal, the BJP won 16.80 percent of the vote and two seats, a significant improvement from the party’s showing in 2009. In Odisha, it came even closer, winning 21.5 percent of the votes but only one seat. Shah said the challenge was to convert vote share into seats. What this signals is that the BJP has the potential to become a factor in the east. What it needs in order to do so in this post-poll scenario, however, is a viable organisational plan. And this is just what Shah seems to have in mind as well. “Today we can say that the BJP is truly a national party. But there are other states which are still not Congress-free. There are many parts of the nation where the party still needs to be strengthened, like West Bengal and Odisha”, he said. The fact that he chose to mention both states signals a definite intention to work harder there. Mamata Banerjee and Patnaik have to watch out. Shah did not outline any plans for the south, where he mentioned the weak organisational presence of the party in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. He promised the local party units in these states all support from the national organisation. * Jammu & Kashmir is important to the new BJP chief Shah also seemed to be extremely passionate about recording a BJP win in Jammu & Kashmir. In the Lok Sabha election, the BJP - unexpectedly - emerged as the single largest party in terms of vote share, and won three of the six seats (Udhampur, Jammu and Ladakh). While Shah stressed the importance of winning all four assemblies that go to the polls this year, it was Jammu & Kashmir that found special mention in his speech. One reason for this could be the BJP’s special interest in abrogating article 370 and bringing J&K into the national mainstream. So Shah launched an all-out attack on the two families which currently dominate J&K politics - the Abdullahs of the National Conference and Muftis of the PDP. Though PDP has been a bit soft on the BJP after the Lok Sabha polls, Shah probably realises that no Kashmir Valley-based party can politically afford to align with the “Hindu” BJP. Hence his emphasis on the BJP achieving a majority on its own. “The conditions in Jammu & Kashmir are very sad and the current government is running an establishment filled with corruption. It is not only the responsibility of state BJP activists but every activist in every state to ensure that the BJP wins there. Both the political families of the state have misused the money meant for progress”, he said.   * In Jharkhand and Haryana, Shah sought a majority for the BJP without allies - but didn’t rule out the need for them. The last BJP-JMM coalition led by Arjun Munda did not cover itself with glory, and the state government is currently run by JMM with outside support from the Congress and independents. Former NDA Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha appears to be making a bid for leadership of the party in Jharkhand, but it is not clear if the party will go with the idea of projecting him as leader when Arjun Munda may be wary of it. In Haryana, the BJP won seven of the 10 Lok Sabha seats, but is not sure if its will retain its partnership with the Haryana Janhit Congress, which lost in all seats, but which was earlier promised a larger seat share in the assembly polls. The Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), whose boss Om Prakash Chautala in now in jail after being convicted for corruption, won two seats based on a strong Jat vote.The BJP is torn between going it alone with Congress defectors, and tying up with either of the two (INLD and Haryana Janhit Congress). The chances are it will go it alone and seek a post-poll alliance, if needed. Shah talked about winning both Jharkhand and Haryana without touching on the leadership issue too much. “I appeal to the people of Jharkhand to give us a chance (single party majority) and I promise we will make it as good as Chhattisgarh.  The Haryana unit should work to ensure the party comes to power on its own. We can look at an alliance, if needed." * On Maharashtra, there was no mention of the Shiv Sena. While it is well known that Shah favours retaining the alliance with Shiv Sena, he emphaised the need for a “BJP” government in Maharashtra. “After 15 years of UPA rule (he meant the Democratic Front, Congress and NCP alliance), the people of Maharashtra have shown their intent to elect a BJP government.” He obviously wanted the party to capitalise on its Lok Sabha showing. In the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had a better strike rate than the Sena. * No mention of Delhi assembly elections Shah spoke of only four assembly elections, leaving out a potential fifth. The Supreme Court has asked the government to decide its stand on holding elections in Delhi within five weeks. Delhi’s assembly is in suspended animation since Arvind Kejriwal quit in February. This suggests that the BJP is not sure of its final stand - whether to try and form a government with defectors or call for fresh assembly elections. This means there is some degree of nervousness on whether the BJP can win again in Delhi after sweeping all seven Lok Sabha seats in the state last May. * On Bihar, Shah is watching the Lalu-Nitish alliance closely. Shah said the BJP should try and win all 10 assembly bypolls in Bihar due later this month. Depending on how the BJP fares against the Nitish-Lalu combo, he will have to rethink his strategy for the future. The party is currently in alliance with Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP and the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party of Upendra Kushwaha. The aim will be to form a single-party BJP government, or have a BJP-led alliance in power in Bihar after assembly elections in 2015-end. The Nitish-Lalu marriage of convenience is based on caste-religion arithmetic, but the bypoll results will tell us if arithmetic is more important than chemistry. Till recently, Lalu and Nitish were at daggers drawn. The BJP-LJP alliance did well due to the split in the anti-BJP vote in western and southern Bihar, but the alliance did not do as well in eastern Bihar, where Muslim votes went en bloc against the BJP-LJP-RLSP alliance. * He is aware that the BJP will come under consolidated attack Shah said: “We should make our party strong in every state to ensure we can come to power no matter when polls are held. We need to take every election from panchayat to Parliament seriously. First it was Congress Vs everyone else, but now it will be BJP Vs everyone else. An example of this is in Bihar where Nitish Kumar, who was strongly opposed to Lalu Prasad, is now in an alliance with him. We should expose Nitish Kumar to the people when the polls are held in the state”.   We had earlier  warned of this very phenomenon : “The two big truths about being Indian are an acute consciousness about power and who wields it, and the prioritisation of power over principle. Principles are brought into play only when they are convenient. This means concurrence or consensus on any issue is almost never about ideology. It has to be bargained, bought, bartered – or bludgeoned.” The Nitish-Lalu alliance is about preventing the BJP from consolidating power, and this is why Shah talked about sustaining the winning momentum by taking all elections seriously. Ten assembly seats are at state in Bihar’s August bypolls, with some MLAs having become MPs in the recent Lok Sabha elections. * He wants to propagate the BJP’s ideology across India  Shah said that the BJP’s victory was also a victory for ideology. This is probably his attempt to speak to the Sangh parivar, which has been wary about having two politicians from Gujarat - Modi and Shah - controlling both government and party. “For decades only the Congress school of thought has dominated politics and society. We are going in a new direction. It is only after 1980 that our ideology began to be accepted by the people of this nation”, he said. “It is now time that our school of thought is also spread in the nation.” While his opponents will call this ideology Hindutva, Shah himself talked about Deendayal Upadhyaya’s philosophy. He said: “We won’t get a better chance to take our ideals to the people. We need to introduce the people to the ideologies on Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay. We also need to strengthen the party’s organisation. We cannot stay in power long otherwise”.   In this same vein, the BJP President stressed on rejuvenation of the Ganga - indicating that emotional tugs to the Hindu voter are also important. “If there is one issue in the manifesto that I want to highlight it is the rejuvenation of Ganga. It is tragic that we can’t preserve the Ganga with which our culture is so closely linked. If the Ganga  abhiyaan  is a people’s movement then the river wouldn’t be in this condition. Take the Ganga  abhiyaan  to the people and make it a people’s movement." It was a strong speech, pregnant with ambition and purpose. Shah has announced his arrival as a political powerhouse in his own right, though there is little doubt that he is working in tandem with Narendra Modi. But he is not operating only in Modi’s shadows. Quite clearly, the Modi-Shah partnership will be the defining power alliance of the next five years, combining mass leadership capabilities with organisational abilities to build a new natural party of governance.