AT 6:00pm Indian Standard Time on Monday, May 12, the last of 930,000 poll booths were closed and the six-week-long biggest democratic exercise and voting procedure in history finally came to an end. There were 814.5 million registered voters in a total Indian population of 1.25 billion. Over 8 million security personnel were deployed to assist with the election. More than 15,000 litres of indelible ink was used to mark the fingers of 551 million people who actually voted.
From the restive Jammu and Kashmir to the festive Tripura and Goa, the polls to elect 543 parliament members have been a prolonged collective voyage of a massive numbers of voters, most full of hope, aspiration and anticipation, but also of concern, trepidation and reservation. Considering the complex nitty-gritty, one has to admire and applaud the successful handling of the enormous, intricate and strenuous process.
Both the sheer number and percentage of voters created new records. The 66.38 per cent voters shattered the old 64 per cent voting record of 1984-85. In a few states, the proportion of votes cast neared 80 per cent. This is in comparison to a dismal 5 per cent voter participation in the fake and freakish January 5 Bangladesh elections.
For safety and security, India has a phase-wise election, similar to the recently held and utterly tarnished Bangladesh upazila elections. The outcome of each phase of local government elections here was announced shortly after the voting. The final result of all phases of Indian national election will be collectively announced on Friday, May 16.
This way one phase of election cannot influence the subsequent phases, as was unfortunately the case in Bangladesh. After the ruling party’s crushing defeat in the first two phases of the upazila elections, an unholy nexus was formed among government candidates and their goons, the subservient Election Commission, compliant local election officials in addition to law enforcers, who combined to snatch victory through unsavoury means such as widespread violence, vote-rigging and ballot box stuffing.
The long-drawn-out Indian election has been described as relatively peaceful with sporadic violence and rare attempts of vote rigging. There was unrest in the disputed Kashmir where various groups, seeking freedom and separation from India, had called for a poll boycott. A series of attacks by Maoist insurgents, targeting security forces and election officials, resulted in several casualties among police personnel.
The worst violence took place in the adjoining state of Assam where the main targets were Bengali settlers who were accused of voting for the wrong candidates, somewhat similar to the January 5 election here where even in a mainly one-party election some religious minorities were accused and assaulted on the same excuse. Over 40 persons were killed in Assam. Dozens were injured in clashes in West Bengal during the final phase of election. Most parties blamed Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress activists for provoking the violence. Trinamool denied the charges.
Earlier Mamata Banerjee had a confrontation with the venerable Election Commission. The commission had instructed the West Bengal government to transfer a number of officials. Mamata at first declined and voiced her severe objections against the EC instruction. The commission quietly warned of grim consequences and Mamata swiftly backed down.
Overall, it was a bitter, petulant and contentious campaign and contest, full of vitriol, personal attacks and mudslinging between the rival sides. The main rivals are the ruling Congress party and the frontrunner Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
The ruling Congress Party, like the Awami League here, has been tainted by corruption allegations, scams, bad governance, indecision and economic downturn. The economic growth in the last two years has crawled to half of the previous hefty rate resulting in rising unemployment, lack of investment, despair and dissention.
Similar situation prevailed in Bangladesh with the ruling Awami League prior to the general election here. The ruling party overcame the discord, dissent and widespread unpopularity by holding a farcical one-sided election, sidestepping the main opposition party, in collusion with the docile and submissive partisan Election Commission. That might have been the only way that the Congress party would win.
Even though the Congress party provided the backing and patronage to the ruling party here in the sham election, such charade is not possible in India due to a strong and esteemed election commission among other things. So the Congress party had to walk straight and narrow. It ran a campaign trying to vilify the Hindu nationalist opposition and its controversial communal leader, apparently with not much success.
Various credible polls and surveys had showed that Congress was facing a devastating defeat, as did similar surveys in this country with respect to the increasingly unpopular Awami League. The ruling party here averted the defeat by holding the election under its direct control and manipulation which the main opposition and most other parties boycotted. In India, the ruling Congress party did not have this convenient Machiavellian option. No truly democratic country does.
The BJP, led by the controversial 63-year-old Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, downplayed the party’s traditional Hindu supremacist stance and the traditional religious and cultural revivalist policies. Instead, it stressed the economic growth, job creation and honest government outlooks and the Congress failure to achieve these.
Modi is an intensely polarising figure and religious minorities, especially the Muslims, do not trust him. They have ample reasons for it. Modi, as the chief minister, has been accused of not only failing to prevent or obstruct but boost and promote the 2002 Gujarat sectarian violence and religious riot. About a thousand Muslims were killed in that riot. Modi has denied his complicity in it and judicial investigations have found inadequate evidence to support the serious charges against him.
As Modi touted the Gujarat growth model under his rule and stressed economic growth, job creation and good governance, some of his closest aides stooped low and played the religious, sectarian and Pakistan-bashing cards. One of them threatened that anyone, mainly implying the Muslim minority voters, not voting for BJP will be deported to Pakistan. Another one said that this is an election to extract revenge, again implying Muslims and recent Muzaffarabad religious riots.
Modi himself played the low-caste Hindu card by claiming that the Sonia Gandhi daughter Prinka Gandhi’s remark that his politics and electioneering is of low and sordid quality was an affront to his low-caste origin. That obviously is quite a stretch and a cheap shot. The campaign has ranged between sublime and ridiculous but mainly and overall it has been of inferior crass quality and attribute.
The Modi comment that is of apprehension to this country is his threat that once elected he will expel and return the so-called illegal Bengali settlers. The West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who had earlier thwarted the Teesta water-sharing treaty, has staunchly opposed Modi in this. One only hopes that Modi made this rabblerousing comment mainly as a cheap election stunt because if he carries out the ominous threat, Bangladesh will face dire and bleak aftermaths.
There is every reason to believe that Modi and his Hindu nationalist party will win the election. Four exit polls released by private Indian TV channels have indicated that BJP will sweep to power with impressive results and the ruling Congress party will suffer its worst defeat. The similar probably would be the outcome in a free, fair, participatory and credible general election in Bangladesh. But due to deceit, tricks and ploys of the ruling party, the fair outcome was not realised.
The outcome of Indian election is of intense interest to us. The Congress party has not been a bed of roses. It failed to deliver on the Teesta water-sharing treaty and border demarcation pact among other things. It actively aided and abetted a very unpopular party to illegitimately continue to rule here. It has exploited this country to the fullest extent and gobbled up all the benefits unilaterally without reciprocation.
As for Modi, the main concern is that his religious prejudice will encourage religious extremists here. In 1947 India had elected Nehru, a suave, sophisticated, highly educated, secular and progressive man of good sense and wisdom as its prime minister. Sixty-seven years later, the largest democracy is about to install a coarse, insensitive, demagogic Hindu nationalist alleged religious riot instigator as the new prime minister.
It is extremely disappointing, disheartening and disconcerting for India, especially the religious minorities, and its neighbouring countries.
Omar Khasru is a former university administrator who writes on contemporary political and social issues.