Tricky but interesting political premises:

Congress strategists are feeling they are effectively on the way to polarise the anti-Modi and anti-BJP Muslim votes in their favour and it manifests in party’s silence over Shakeel Ahmad’s tweet on Indian Mujahideen quoting an NIA report blaming BJP, RSS and 2002 Gujarat riots for the terror outfit origin. They would be aided by the premise that a communal Vs secular polarization would help them get over the huge anti-incumbency against the UPA government.

Narendra Modi would be feeling good that the Congress strategists are playing the game he has started exactly as per his designs as the main ruling party’s efforts to polarise the Muslim votes would help his efforts to polarise the Hindu votes in his favour. The polarisation of the divided Hindu votes along with the UPA’s anti-incumbency and Narendra Modi’s pro-development reputation would be a cocktail that several millions of voters would be tempted to try in a country where something like chronic political corruption is still not a decisive issue.

Some in the Congress are playing to look worried or some are worried believing in the hypothesis (hypothesis at the moment) that Modi’s image of Hindu fundamentalist and his vote-polarizing ability can unite the Hindu votes across the country to an extent to give the BJP a clear edge to form the government in the next parliamentary elections. And only Congress is not worried. If Digvijay Singh has to claim and cry that he is a practicing Hindu, Mulayam, too, has to come forward to say that he feels sorry for ordering the police to open fire on karsevaks in 1990.

Some in the BJP are also sounding cautious that the excess of Hindu nationalism and Hindutva would push burning issues like corruption, price-rise, failing law and order and bad condition of the economy, where the Congress and the UPA are on the back foot, to the periphery, giving the UPA strategists the opportunity to duck the answerability for the all-pervasive mayhem they have created.

It is an established fact that the Congress-led UPA government is a total failure. It has failed on almost every front that could easily kill the electoral prospects of any political outfit or coalition – price rise, corruption and law and order. Yet, it has scored victories in many assembly elections.

Such chaotic conditions provide for enough of ‘food for thought’ to every ‘thinking’ political strategy maker and every one feels he is thinking in the right direction until the outcome gives them some more food for thought.

Tricky! Isn’t it?

But, at the moment, the game looks headed the Narendra Modi way.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey –