Why ‘Haryana 2014’ Was A Greater Triumph For BJP Than ‘Haryana 2024’

For a decade now, a few political cognoscente have maintained that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) thumping victory in the Haryana assembly election of 2014 was its best ever.

The party’s remarkable, and avowedly unexpected, triumph in the recent 2024 assembly election may seem like an excellent reason to revise one’s views because, on paper, sweeping a state that a party was expected to lose badly surely ranks higher, right?

After all, even if the opinion polls, exit surveys, ground reports, and one’s own fabled intuition had the BJP slumping to the twenties and thirties, the trends reversed faster than you could say ‘khatakhat’.

But that would be unwise.

The BJP’s triumph in Haryana in 2014 would have to rank higher because, as this piece argues, while the victory of 2024 will be discussed for years to come, 2014 will retain pole position on two counts: It marked both the advent of the party in the state and the commencement of a transition phase at the pannational level. That is a rarity.

The BJP’s Advent In Haryana

Going by legislative history, such debuts have more often been followed by stinging reverses rather than by an enhanced consolidation of a party’s vote base — like the BJP in many states, Mahanta and his students’ party in Assam, or the two Yadav parties of the Gangetic Plains.

Examples of the latter are not too common — the Dravida Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and the communists in West Bengal and Tripura spring to mind.

Note, however, that neither the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha nor the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal count, as they and their leaders were already established electoral figures before the election in which they first secured a simple majority.

To top it all, Haryana has always been one of the toughest states to win for any party, tougher to govern impartially or efficiently without rapidly soaring up the unpopularity charts, even tougher to secure a second successive mandate in, and the toughest to prevent an utter washout in once the electorate gets fed up with you. The fortunes of three political dynasties in the state are evidence enough.

'Haryana 2014' was an arrival election for the BJP, and a rather unique one on a number of counts.

One, it was a particularly satisfying triumph since it was wrested sans compromise with the party’s age-old approach of not wooing the dominant caste in that province (a ‘failing’ which has frequently restricted the BJP from doing as well as it might have).

Two, it was a microcosm of a broader, then still nascent, digital age where a savvy party could use new media to augment its messaging and attract fresh votes in droves — something which the BJP did to stunning effect by adopting a technology-driven campaign to amplify the Modi effect. (And that begs a question for the ages: what might the results of 2014 have been if those elections were carried out in the radio age?)

The Shift In 2014

To explain: the mid-1920s marked a paradigm point when everything that happened before came together with the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1925.

That force took its time — many generations, in fact — to find its feet and grow. And through that relentless toil, everything that happened since — foreign, domestic, provincial, local — came together in 2013 when Narendra Modi was finally appointed, after a bruising intra-party struggle, to lead the BJP in the 2014 national polls (yes, in 2013, since 2014 was only the effect of what happened before).

Following this, the course changed in 2014. 

State after state started deviating in diverse ways from past, well-established trends in voting patterns, as they too, either reactively or conformably, started reverting to a new mean set in 2014.

To qualify: this change does not mean that the BJP would now win every election it participated in, but rather that voting preferences would be increasingly dominated by a ratio of choices between those with whom the message of the preceding century resonated unambiguously and with those who were repelled by it for a spectrum of reasons ranging from ignorance, incomprehension, to existential fear.

In short, this is India deciding to actively exorcise itself of the strictures imposed during its actual and subsequently surrogate colonial past because it sees much benefit in doing so.

In a sense, this is also a description of the ‘polarisation’ which the usual suspects gripe about, because the expression of such choice, in such decisive proportions, is going to institute irreversible changes by marginalising them whether they like to or not.

And these changes will range from matters as fundamental as how we secure our national aims and interests to the morals that we shall be guided by.

So, for example, if in that process, the overarching popular choice is to give unto ourselves a constitution composed by the rituals, customs, morals, and ethics that we practice in our traditional way of life, rather than a quiltwork assortment hastily cobbled together because we needed a document to become a republic, everyone will have to first accept it and then either move on or be left behind.

And this expression of choice, in a parliamentary democracy like India, can and will happen only at the ballot box. Indeed, it is already happening.

What will Phase Two look like? We simply don’t know. We can’t. If we couldn’t know that the rough period between Swami Vivekananda and the Moplah Riots would result in the creation of the Sangh, how can we make a forecast when we don’t precisely yet know where we will reach in the next 20 years?

After all, India does not live in isolation; so, as we evolve, so will other powers evolve their interactions with us — again, either adaptively or otherwise. 

Thus, this new era of flux is an exciting test of our intellect. And also the reason why 'Haryana 2014' was a greater triumph for the BJP than ‘Haryana 2024’.