Will Chandrababu’s Newfound Love For Hindutva Help TDP RESURRECT?

In a bid to resurrect TDP, vanquished at the 2019 hustings, party supremo Chandrababu Naidu has embraced an aggressive brand of Hindutva politics. Surprisingly, Chandrababu Naidu is now perceiving more virulent strain than the BJP. Never before, TDP supremo has lashed out at YS Jaganmohan Reddy projecting himself as the champion of Hindus and Hindu shrines. Naidu as the chief minister ordered the displacement of several temples in Vijayawada, which remains a political controversy.

Describing himself as an unflinching secular leader, Chandrababu Naidu distanced himself from the BJP only to come back to the saffron fold in 2014. Yet again in 2018, he divorced BJP expecting electoral losses in allying with the party that blatantly denied special status to the beleaguered state of Andhra Pradesh.

After suffering ignominious defeat in the 2019 polls, Naidu is moving heaven and earth to stay relevant. Thus, he is investing in aggressive Hindutva brand politics. But, will it help revive TDP’s political fortunes?

Contemporary Indian polity is replete with examples of how copycat identity politics did not benefit so much.

During the movement for separate statehood, political parties across the spectra willy-nilly espoused the Telangana cause. But, the people of Telangana gave the mandate to KCR as he held the original patent to revived Telangana identity. Congress lost both states. The BJP, despite supporting the bifurcation, did not do well in the Assembly elections post bifurcation. The TDP suffered heavily though it embraced Telangana demand as early as in the 2009 elections when it allied with the TRS.

Rahul Gandhi in a vain bid to imitate Modi demonstrated soft Hindutvan by resorting to temple hopping in full media view. But the ‘Shivabhakt’ could not outsmart ‘Rambhakts’.

The CPI(M) in Telangana has adopted caste and class emancipatory politics by floating the Bahujan left front. The result was neither the underprivileged caste nor the exploited classes backed the CPI(M).

At a time when BJP led by Modi juggernaut is on a massive expansion drive across the state, Chandrababu’s aggressive Hindutva politics may benefit the saffron party more than the TDP. Shivsena, which espouses a more aggressive Hindutva brand has to stumble as BJP surges. Thus, Chandrababu Naidu is playing a risky political game perhaps with the hope to come closer to the saffron party. But, this need not necessarily materialize as BJP chooses its allies based on its electoral arithmetic, rather than ideological chemistry as evident from Maharashtra.

By Prof K Nageshwar

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