The new theme song of development and its benefits percolating to all people in UP irrespective of their caste, creed and community identities being sung by the BJP leadership after the party’s historic success in the just concluded Assembly polls is baffling. For the communal overtone of the poll campaign, spearheaded by party mascot Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that actually clinched the results, was too loud to be mistaken or denied as the BJP leadership is now doing.
But after decimating all the regional parties in the Hindi heartland, forming government in three more states ~ Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur ~  and virtually sending the Congress into coma,  the BJP can now afford to speak loudly about development to bring the entire country under its hegemony. It’s not a sudden shift of agenda, but part of a well thought out tactic that no other party in the country could even dare to formulate. It’s too risky a formula ~ a heady cocktail of communal sentiments and delivery mechanisms to get entrenched in power.
At long last the defining moment for the saffron brigade has come. For the first time during its decades of struggle to capture power by playing on the communal sentiments of a large number of the country’s majority population, the BJP has succeeded in virtually wiping out its opponents in the Hindi heartland and spreading its influence in a maximum number of states from north to south and east to west.
This has become possible for two reasons ~ ideological and leadership quality. Never before since Independence has the country seen such a bankruptcy of ideology and dearth of leaders of  stature in the parties opposed to the BJP. The BJP is using to the hilt this ideological and leadership vacuum.
The Congress came to power after independence on the strength of its image as being instrumental in freeing India from British rule. That brought the whole country under its sway for the first three decades after freedom. But, its claim of being the party to overthrow the yoke of foreign rule became blunted over the years as it became a fountainhead of corruption. The series of scams during the Congress-led UPA government surpassed all previous records of loot and thuggery. The party’s ideology has now degenerated into slavish worship of the Nehru-Gandhi family.
What is galling to the people of the country is that the Congress has become so spineless that takes orders from a relative political infant named Rahul Gandhi. The party has forgotten that even the “gungi gudia”, the name given to Indira Gandhi during her early years in power when she couldn’t speak well, served as a junior minister after her father died. She learnt the ropes the hard way and became an astute politician over the years.
 When the Congress was using its contribution to the country’s independence as its main ideological tool, the Left ~ which at one stage became the second largest bloc in Parliament ~ was sharpening its Marxist-Leninist ideology to first capture the hearts of people and then power. Using ideology imported first from the USSR and then from China, they could strike a chord in the hearts of people effectively only in three states ~ Bengal, Kerala and Tripura ~, while they had pockets of influence in a few other states.  But once in power, the Leftists indulged in corruption and control of the state machinery to further the interests of party leaders and functionaries. As a result, it is almost a spent force in Bengal with virtually no credibility, while it manages to cling to power every alternate term in Kerala and continues to stay in power in tiny Tripura. Among the other strong regional parties opposed to the BJP, the SP and BSP are in tatters because of their ideological bankruptcy, corruption and sickening personality cult. The AIADMK and the Trinamul are too individual-centric with hardly any ideology worth their name and revolving round the personality of one leader ~ Amma and Didi respectively. Both parties have now their backs against the wall battling corruption charges.
 By contrast the BJP has both an ideological weapon and an organisation ~ the RSS ~ that has over the years been throwing up one leader after another, the latest being Mr Modi. The ideology is what is called Hindutva or an unabashed manipulation of the majority Hindu psyche warped  by antipathy to the Muslims for historical, political and geographical reasons. This has become far too deeply ingrained in the outlook of the dominant group. The policy of appeasement to Muslims for garnering votes needed for capturing power followed by almost all  non-BJP parties over the years has only accentuated  the communal divide. 
 The BJP  used it so well that its confidence level is now at its peak. This explains the decision to make Yogi Adityanath the UP chief minister because he with his saffron attire is the most eloquent statement of the BJP’s or the Sangh Parivar’s political credo.  His talk of development and measures to pamper majority Hindu sentiments constitute the magic formula that the BJP can flaunt as the only national party that makes “appeasement to none” a euphemism for minority-bashing ~ the  cornerstone of its political creed. 

(The writer is Coordinating Editor, The Statesman, Kolkata.)