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ABSTRACT
The rise of populist welfare politics with the distinct flavour of Hindutva-inspired nationalism seems to have replaced pluralistic and class-based politics. However, Hindutva has been around for decades now, and until 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had never won a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha. The 2014 election outcome cannot be explained by Hindutva-inspired new caste alliances only. This study suggests that what has changed is the social context of the information ecosystem in which election rallies are at the centre of campaign strategy. To illustrate the role of the campaign in the BJP’s victory in northern India, this study analyses and compares main themes from the rally speeches of Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi in 2019 as well as how the two parties leveraged their organizational strength to disseminate campaign messages and narratives to the electorate.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Press Trust of India, “Election 2019: Modi Addressed 142 Rallies, Rahul 145 Plus Eight Pressers.”
2. CSDS report, “Social Media and Political Behaviour.”
3. Gonsalves, “Lok Sabha Polls: Who are Star Campaigners.”
4. Verma, “Policing Elections in India.”
5. Chhibber, Democracy without Associations: Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India; and Yadav, “Electoral Politics in the Time of Change: India’s Third Electoral System, 1989–99.”
6. Roy and Sopariwala, The Verdict: Decoding India’s Elections; and Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Head Counts in India.
7. Verma, “Development and Governance Trump Caste Identities in Uttar Pradesh”; and Rai and Kumar, “The Decline of the Congress Party in Indian Politics.”
8. The meaning of the term ‘Hindutva’ is contested. The BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have argued that it means Hindu way of life or ethos and have equated it with cultural nationalism. The Indian Supreme Court in its judgements has supported the RSS view that Hindutva should not be equated with religious Hindu fundamentalism and it would be wrong to assume that it promotes attitudes hostile to other religions. However, critics and detractors of the BJP and the RSS have argued that in practice Hindutva promotes a majoritarian political ideology. Recently, the Indian Supreme Court has shown a willingness to revisit the issue of Hindutva. See Mahapatra, “Supreme Court to Consider Revisiting ‘Hindutva’ Definition Case.”
9. Gupta, “Misreading Hierarchy and the Illusion of Numbers.”
10. Neyazi et al., “Campaigns, Digital Media And Mobilization In India.”
11. For year-wise data on social media usage see https://www.statista.com/topics/5113/social-media-usage-in-india
12. Ahuja and Chhibber, “Why do the Poor Vote in India?”
13. See note 10 above.
14. Hasan, “Manufacturing Dissent: The Media and the 2014 Indian Election.”
15. Sardesai, Elections That Changed India; and Palshikar, Electoral Politics in India: The Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
16. Pardhan and Mahurkar,”Maximum Campaign: Modi Unleashes Blitzkrieg Never Seen Before in Indian Electoral History.”
17. Kumar, “Modi Wave or Modi Hype: A Paradigm Shift in India Democracy.”
18. Pai, “The Indian Party System under Transformation: Lok Sabha Elections 1998”; Chhibber, Democracy without Associations; and Chandra, “The Transformation of Ethnic Politics in India: The Decline of Congress and the Rise of the Bahujan Samaj Party in Hoshiarpur.”
19. Chengappa and Deka, “Newsmaker of the year: Evolution of Rahul Gandhi, from political novice to primary challenger”; and Rai and Kumar, “The Decline of the Congress Party in Indian Politics.”
20. Ganguly and Dwivedi, Amit Shah and March of BJP.
21. This was further supported by what BJP workers said in interviews conducted in June and July of 2019 in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh Bihar, and Jharkhand. The BJP workers talked about how they felt the recruitment drive seemed well-executed, like a sales plan.
22. See note 20 above.
23. Interviews conducted by the researcher in June–July of 2019 with booth level workers and panna pramukhs in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
24. Sharma, “How Project ‘Shakti’ Misled Rahul And Deepened Congress’s Lok Sabha Rout.”
25. Arora, “Problem of Party Membership: A Case Study of the Indian National Congress.”
26. See note 20 above.
27. Jeffrey and Doron, The Great Indian Phone Book: How The Cheap Cell Phone Changes Business, Politics, And Daily Life, 2013.
28. See CSDS Report, “Social Media and Political Behaviour.”
29. For example, the Indian Express newspaper was following the BJP and the Congress campaigns and had curated a data set with videos of Modi and Gandhi rallies. This rally tracker dataset was used to validate the search on YouTube. https://data.indianexpress.com/rally-tracker
30. Altheide, Qualitative Media Analysis, 1996; and Neuendorf and Kumar, “Content Analysis.”
31. “Radical Hindu Units Bigger Threat Than LeT: Rahul Gandhi.” The Economic Times.
32. Kothari, Caste in Indian politics.
33. Roy, The Verdict: Decoding India’s Elections; and Rudolph, Explaining Indian democracy: A fifty year perspective, 1956–2006.
34. Roy and Sopariwala, The Verdict: Decoding India’s Elections; and Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Head Counts in India.
35. Heath and Ziegfeld, “Electoral Volatility and Turnout: Party Entry and Exit in Indian Elections”; Kroh and Selb, “Inheritance and the Dynamics of Party Identification”; Mainwaring and Zoco, “Political Sequences and the Stabilization of Interparty Competition: Electoral Volatility in Old and New Democracies”; and McAllister and Kelley, “Party Identification And Political Socialization: A Note on Australia and Britain.”
36. Health and Ziegfeld, “Electoral Volatility and Turnout: Party Entry and Exit in Indian Elections.”
37. Nadeau et al., “Election Campaigns as Information Campaigns: Who Learns What and Does it Matter?”
38. Vezzoni and Mancosu, “Diffusion Processes and Discussion Networks: An Analysis of the Propensity to Vote for the 5 Star Movement in the 2013 Italian Election.”
39. Nie et al., The Changing American Voter; and Gerber and Green, “The Effects of Canvassing, Direct Mail, and Telephone Contact on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment.”
40. Johann et al., “Thomas, Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication”; Banducci et al., “Knowing More from Less: How the Information Environment Increases Knowledge of Party Positions”; Farrell and Schmitt-Beck, Do Political Campaigns Matter? Campaign Effects in Elections and Referendums; and Neyazi et al., “Campaigns, Digital Media And Mobilization In India.”
41. Lazarsfeld et. al, The People’s Choice.
42. Katz and Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in The Flow of Mass Communication.
43. Jeffery, India’s Newspaper Revolution, 47.
44. Kumar, The making of a Small State: Populist Social Mobilization and the Hindi Press in the Uttarakhand Movement.
45. Vezzoni and Mancosu, “Diffusion Processes and Discussion Networks.”
46. Kanungo, “India’s Digital Poll Battle: Political Parties and Social Media in the 16th Lok Sabha Elections”; and Chakravartty and Roy, “Mr. Modi Goes to Delhi: Mediated Populism and the 2014 Indian Elections.”