Can strength be a cause of weakness? The question is neither rhetorical nor a riddle. The Bharatiya Janata Party and its lieutenants are great advocates of strength, be it of citizens or of the nation. There is the constant metaphorical allusion to the prime minister’s chest — all of 56 inches — by his admirers. Recently, the national security advisor argued forcefully that the nation must have a strong government at the helm for the next decade. Prowess is, indeed, an admirable quality. But only a thin line separates brawn from belligerence, the kind that can threaten the regulatory mechanisms that are central to the democratic edifice. Unfortunately, the BJP — its supposed electoral invincibility is to blame — is incapable of making this distinction. In keeping with this spirit of belligerence, the party president, Amit Shah, thundered that BJP workers would uproot Kerala’s elected government, which has been attempting to honour a decree of the Supreme Court on Sabarimala. The finance minister added, albeit on a different occasion, that the primacy of an elected government must not be diluted in favour of the ‘non-accountable’. Arun Jaitley was presumably referring to institutions that are vested with the constitutional authority to serve as checks and balances in a democracy. Such aggression is undoubtedly powered by the spirit of unilateralism which is — does the BJP agree?— antithetical to the code of democracy. The BJP’s eagerness to confront and allegedly subvert regulatory and autonomous bodies — be they the central bank, universities or even the court — could erode the fulcrum of parliamentary governance. A ‘strong’ government, at least the kind that the BJP endorses, may end up weakening a democracy.
Authoritarianism does not threaten India only. Ironically, it may turn out to be a threat to the BJP’s political prospects too. The Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh, now a former ally, seems to have deserted the National Democratic Alliance’s ship on account of the BJP’s bullishness. Representatives of credible institutions that had once done the government’s bidding are speaking up as well. All of this, the BJP’s opponents would be hoping, could coalesce into a churning on the ground before the next general elections. Numbers, the BJP must remember, may not always be a sign of strength.