If the BJP’s success in Uttar Pradesh, and also in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur in the assembly elections in five states - which many pundits saw as a "semi-final" to the national election in 2024 - emphasizes the party’s continuing popularity on the basis of a clever mix of nationalism and its distinctive interpretation of Hinduism which demonises the minorities, the "outlier" Aam Admi Party’s (AAP) victory in Punjab points to a bulwark against the BJP’s agenda.

The victory of the comparatively fledgling AAP - which was so far confined only to Delhi - in the border state of Punjab is a sign that an alternative does exist in the political sphere and that India is yet to become an “electoral autocracy”, as Sweden’s V-Dem institute fears. It has to be seen whether the AAP can counter the BJP elsewhere as well outside of Delhi and Punjab, but the BJP’s critics cannot but draw some satisfaction from what the AAP has achieved in Punjab.

In this respect, it has joined parties like the Trinamool Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party, the Shiv Sena, the DMK, and the CPI(M)  to underline the spirit of sub-nationalism which shows signs of being free of the kind of Hindu nationalism which drives the BJP.

It is this freedom from religiosity which was Congress’s hallmark as a secular party. But the party’s latest losses show that the voters are turning to other parties in search of this ideology which is diametrically opposite to that of the BJP. It goes without saying that the sole reason why the   Congress has lost ground to the AAP, Trinamool Congress, DMK and the CPI(M) – and perhaps also to the YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) – is poor leadership at the central level. 

The decline of Congress

Neither Sonia Gandhi, who undercut the Manmohan Singh government on the advice of her left-leaning friends in the National Advisory Council; nor the brother-and-sister duo of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi (who were called “inexperienced” by former Punjab chief minister Amrinder Singh) measures up to the challenge of presenting an intellectually coherent and ideologically sound alternative to the BJP.

In addition, the siblings also have the habit of shooting the party in the foot as was seen when they removed Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on the advice of a maverick like Navjyot Singh Sidhu to whom the brother and sister turned apparently because Amarinder Singh did not kowtow sufficiently to the Congress’s first family because of his aristocratic background as a scion of the Patiala “royal” household.

It is now almost a certainty that the AAP will replace the Congress as the BJP’s main challenger in Gujarat later this year, marking its emergence as a major alternative to the BJP at the national level. It is position that the Trinamool Congress has been seeking for some time. But the party appears unable to make its presence felt outside of West Bengal, not even in Tripura.

Like Trinamool, the DMK appears incapable of extending its sway outside Tamil Nadu. In fact, the inroads which the BJP made in the state’s local elections cannot but be a worrying sign for the DMK lest the “north Indian” party should replace the AIADMK as the DMK’s main opponent in the state.

BJP dominance - and consequences

It is too early to say to what extent K Chandrashekar Rao’s TRS, the ruling party of Telangana, will be able rally a sufficient number of allies to fulfil his ambition of leading charge against the BJP at the central level. To succeed in this endeavour, Rao has done well to rope in the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi’s Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. But there are far too many oddballs in this project – Rao himself with the track record of having hobnobbed with the BJP in the past; Thackeray who was once the BJP’s ally – to expect Rao to hit the ground running. Among others, Akhilesh Yadav, the BJP's main challenger in UP - is too young to play a major role in national politics.

For the present, the BJP is in an almost unassailable position over large parts of the country. Given this dominance, there is every possibility of the party ratcheting up its pro-Hindu rhetoric. The party’s first target may well be the mosque built by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in Mathura in order to complete the party’s pledge to take over the three mosques in Ayodhya (which has already been “acquired”), Varanasi and Mathura, which it wanted the Muslims to “hand over” to the Hindus, a community over which the BJP believes it has proprietorial rights.

It wouldn’t be surprising if the BJP’s anti-Muslim line becomes more strident in the coming weeks. The party has realized the political efficacy of this approach which has enabled it to tide over its failures on multiple fronts, mainly in UP – the shortage of oxygen at the height of the pandemic, the sight of corpses floating down the Ganga, high unemployment.

The chief patron and beneficiary of this anti-Muslim stance was UP’s hardline chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, whose stocks in the BJP are now higher than ever as he led the party to its first re-election victory in the country's most populous and politically consequential state that sends the largest number of MPs to the national parliament.  The speculation about the saffron-robed, Hindu monk-turned-politician Yogi, 49, being the party’s next prime ministerial candidate - in case Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 71, decides to step down in the distant future - is likely to become stronger, sending a chill down the spine of the secularists. The world, too, will wonder whether India’s tilt towards autocracy will now become more pronounced.

(The author is a current affairs commentator. Views are personal)