The Opposition’s Existential Question

While democracy needs a credible opposition, it is not the BJP’s responsibility to create one.

Elections in India since 2014 have increasingly generated an engaging debate- the “lack” of a political opposition to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Barring a few setbacks, especially the 2024 general elections, most electoral contests since 2014 have recorded a steady and spectacular march of the BJP. The post-West Bengal iteration of this debate has an even graver existentialist tone over the state of the political opposition to the BJP. Admittedly, the BJP’s Bengal conquest is monumental, epic in its symbolism and style, and given the BJP’s impressive track record in holding on to states it has won for long durations, it portends doomsday dimensions for the opposition. As the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and other members of the anti-BJP ecosystem come to terms with this realisation that the BJP is here to stay in Bengal, it’s an opportune time to revisit this debate over the “lack” of a political opposition.

There is nothing wrong in expecting a credible political opposition in the interest of the general health of a democracy. But the debate gains momentum when the BJP has won an election and loses steam quickly to resurface only when another opposition party bites dust in some election. It is almost as if the issue deserves only an electoral life and does not merit sustained attention. The boringly ritualistic and cynical tenor of this debate adds no value to the discourse over the role, position, and politics of the opposition parties in India. There is another self-destructive aspect to this “opposition-mukt” refrain. It is presented and argued in a way as if it is the BJP’s responsibility to find an opposition to itself.

Lazy Narrative

The argument that the BJP is working towards an “opposition-mukt” India finds resonance with much of the mainstream media including some international outlets, political analysts, and even in how most opposition parties react to each of the BJP’s electoral triumphs. This narrative almost denies the BJP the very agency as a political party. It is a political party’s job to win elections by defeating its political opponents. That the BJP contests every election seriously and in a methodical manner cannot be its disqualification. It is obviously not the BJP’s job to find itself a credible opposition. It is the opposition political parties’ job to become a credible, serious, and worthy opposition and alternative to the BJP.

Once India’s opposition parties recognise this simple truth, they could learn from the BJP and its previous avatar, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, itself. Post-Independence politics in India has not seen a better opposition party than the BJS and BJP. How has the BJS-BJP gone from being just one of the opposition parties with a small social footprint among some upper caste Hindus to become India’s party of power, governance, nationalism, and spread over a socio-political map that not only rivals the Indian National Congress (INC) in the 50s and 60s but is even better than that in the context of a more complex, more diverse, more aspirational, and more demanding India? That is the question any serious political party and analyst in India needs to ponder if the debate is to rise above the mediocre level of “opposition-mukt” India.

To be sure, the BJS-BJP did not set out to become an opposition party. It established itself as a serious political party which aspired to win power electorally, a simple but essential ambition for a political party in a democracy. In pursuit of this ambition the BJS-BJP, and the larger Sangh Parivar ecosystem, were prepared to grind, fight, introspect after every loss, learn, imagine, aggregate, regroup and reorganise, and live another day to fight another electoral battle. The BJP still does it, regardless of the fact that it now rules the Centre and 21 states. BJP’s opponents had pronounced West Bengal an impossibility for the BJP. The BJP did not think so. It fought on. Amid all this strife spanning decades and the march towards becoming India’s natural ruling party, the BJS-BJP has stuck to its ideology, mission, and larger goals, with only smaller concessions and some flexibility that it thought was politically necessary at the time.

Mindless Opposition

Now, even a cursory look at almost every political party currently in opposition to the BJP gives an impression that opposing whatever the BJP and the BJP-led government stand for is their idea of their job description. Except for the Left parties, there is hardly any sustaining and credible ideology any other opposition party consistently stands for and fights elections on. Starting a venture named ‘Aam Aadmi Party’ with the proprietor living a life that has progressively appeared as distant from the aam aadmi as does the real life of a film star from the common man he plays or smugly opposing a strategically important and critical national security project like the Great Nicobar Island just because the BJP-led government is executing it does not make an opposition party a credible voice of opposition. It just makes for a sad spectacle.

(The author is a senior journalist and Executive Director of Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini. Views personal.)