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What the Tripura Victory Signifies for the BJP
The Bharatiya Janata Party is jubilant after its performance in the assembly elections in Tripura. However, while it was relatively simpler for the party to find success in Assam and Tripura because their politics essentially follows the trajectory of “mainstream” India, cracking the other states in the North East may be complex and a long haul. In the meantime, theBJP will make peace with the regional forces and forsake or dilute the Hindutva-specific agenda according to expediency. It helps to have a government at the centre that can dangle and deliver carrots from time to time.
This article was earlier published on EPW Engage.
With only 59 assembly and two Lok Sabha seats, Tripura is just about visible on the political map to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Independently or in conjunction with other parties, the party rules over electorally high-yielding states such as Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. On 3 March, hours after the trends in Tripura’s assembly electionsestablished a conclusive victory for the BJP, the party broke out into a celebration that was matched in scale and enthusiasm with the jubilation that marked its sweep in the 2017 Uttar Pradeshassembly polls. The new multi-storied BJP office with 70 rooms—its grandeur approximating a top-class corporate headquarter and purportedly surpassing the offices of political parties the world over—could not have heralded its arrival more grandiosely.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s victory speech to the BJP workers appropriately used an architectural analogy to explain his party’s full-fledged victory in a second north-eastern state after Assam. He said that vastu shastra (or the Hindu system of architecture) considered the corner facing the north-east as the “most important” part of a structure because of which the north-east formed the pivot of an edifice. “My country’s north-east has come forward to lead our onward journey (‘yatra’) of development,” he declared, implying that he and his government were indeed on the “right” track.
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