The 2025 Bihar elections are no longer a regular contest amid BJP’s political march on the drumbeat of hateful narratives.
This doctrine intricately weaves together religion, repres-sion and the calculated construction of external threats to consolidate power. Bihar, a state historically known for its social movements and caste politics, has become the testing ground for this new experiment in political control and ideological uniformity.
The recent election campaign of the BJP in Bihar is, as usual, rhetorical and reflects a significant shift—moving away from development (vikas) to heritage (virasat) and faith. Party leadership is cunningly merging religious symbolism with political strategy, invoking Hindu pride, cultural revivalism and national security to charm voters. This shift is deliberate, leveraging deeply entrenched caste divisions in Bihari socio-political dynamics vis-à-vis the fragile economy to fuel public sentiments.
There is hardly any space or tolerance for dissent. Tough suppression of opposition has be-come a hallmark of the BJP’s electoral strategy. Opposition leaders are targeted with cor-ruption cases and procedural investigations, while a major part of the media, constrained by economic and political pressure, has been pushed to amplify the narratives of the ruling BJP regime. The neutrality of the state machinery is largely evaporating, thus obliterating the lines between the state and the ruling party.
The anti-Pakistan narrative has expanded from national security debates to local election rhetoric. References to Pakistan sustain a heightened emotional climate, deflecting atten-tion from domestic failures. This diversionary narrative equates dissent with disloyalty, re-casting opposition parties as conspirators and framing electoral choice as a moral test of patriotism. It is not an overstatement that BJP’s election strategy reflects a broader redefini-tion of democracy in India. Elections are no longer about governance or policy outcomes; rather, the whole contest revolves around moral binaries like nationalism versus betrayal and faith versus threat.
This reorientation has started compromising key democratic institutions, including the Elec-tion Commission, civil society and the judiciary. Opposition parties, including the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress, face formidable challenges in building a cohesive counter-narrative amidst religious polarization. Their focus on governance and social justice finds limited traction in an environment polluted with hateful appeal.
The real cost of this transformation is borne by ordinary citizens. Bihar remains one of the most deprived states, with limited industrialization, high unemployment and a persistent exodus of young workers. Structural problems require sustained policy focus, but the politi-cal conversation is consumed by cultural symbolism and fabricated threats. The BJP’s election strategy in Bihar is nothing but a combination of religious exploitation, repression of dissent and fabrication of external threats—linked to a self-sustaining cycle of emotional politics. This approach sidelines the language of rights, equality and governance, demonstrating that political success in contemporary India depends less on policy perfor-mance and more on transforming fear into faith for subsequent vote-grabbing on election day. The Bihar state elections scheduled in November will test both the political wisdom of the BJP and the moral fiber of the Indian democratic system, which seems to be crumbling under the weight of Hindutva ideology.
The writer is a freelance contributor based in Islamabad.
