How BJP's Narendra Modi won over Varanasi

By Jay Mazoomdaar

It’s noon at Varanasi’s Pahariya mandi. Not a single supporter of the Aam Aadmi Party, or any party other than the BJP for that matter, was to be seen outside the fortified counting centre. It would be another four hours before Arvind Kejriwal would formally concede defeat. But a bunch of young BJP supporters grinningly assured me that the body count would not rise at the city’s Manikarnika ghat where pyres burn round the clock by the Ganga.

During the count in 2009, Murli Manohar Joshi had lost the first two assembly segments -- Rohaniya and Sevapuri -- to his BSP rival Mukhtar Ansari. The setback gave one Sahuji, Joshi’s election manager, a heart attack. By the time the remaining three segments made Joshi victorious by a slender margin of 17,000 votes, Sahuji was dead.

“Suppose we topple the Modi applecart. The shock will keep the ghat busy for a few days,” a local AAP functionary cracked up the evening before D-day. Dismissing his darkly mischievous humour, I landed up at the ghat myself, only to be confronted by a burly middleaged trader at the edge of an ancient staircase.

“What do you mean by how big a victory we expect for Modi?” he challenged me. “Modi Varanasi se haar kar ke nahin ja sakta kya (Do you think Modi can’t lose in Varanasi)?” I did carry the thought as a journalistic curiosity from Delhi but none of the voters or functionaries across party lines I chatted in Lucknow, Raebareli, Amethi, Pratapgarh or Varanasi gave me any reason to nurture it.

Even a few AAP volunteers confided that they were looking at a moral victory by denying Narendra Modi a margin any bigger than 50,000. By noon, Modi took a lead of over one lakh. Six hours later, it would swell to 3.7 lakh. Not quite the record margin of Vadodara but enough to show “the upstart” his place. For now. Maybe it is the Amit Shah effect but a senior leader at BJP’s campaign headquarters in Varanasi quickly drew up the numbers.

“About 11 lakh votes were cast here. Let’s give the Congress, SP and BSP together some 2 lakh. Even if Kejriwal takes all the Muslim votes, say up to 1.5 lakh, he will still not cross 2 lakh. We estimate 5.5 to 6 lakh for Modiji. That’s a margin of 4 lakh,” he concluded matter-of-factly.

Kejriwal eventually crossed the 2-lakh mark but by only 9,000 votes Modi stopped just 19,000 short of 6 lakh. The margin of error in the BJP’s math was just 7%. By noon, it was time for celebrations in Varanasi.


Graph by Gramener.com

Two new leaders were born in Varanasi this election season. One galvanized his new cult as India’s undisputed man of the hour; another, till now primarily an urban politician, learnt to engage and be patient with the rural voter. It wasn’t easy for either.

“The party started thinking that they could nominate a tree and still win here. But 2009 gave them a scare. To make matters worse, Joshi did nothing for Varanasi other than widening a bridge here and laying a road there in five years. People were unhappy. Modi would have still won but ensuring a befitting margin was a challenge,” a local BJP functionary admitted at the party camp set up close to the counting centre.

The symbolism of a mega triumph at Varanasi gained from a masterstroke in politics: the way Modi turned around his party’s fortunes in Uttar Pradesh. Take the tech-savvy campaign, for example. Piyush Vardhan Singh, convener of the party’s regional IT cell, was an important spoke in the party’s giant wheel that engaged 10,000-odd mostly young professionals and students in UP alone.

“We had nine divisions in the state. We at Varanasi were looking after the city and 14 districts. That means working social media handles to send out the right message. On polling days, we doubled up as booth agents to help voters find their names in the revised rolls,” explained Singh, a full-timer with the cell.

If the likes of Singh ensured that nobody returned from the booth without voting, the arduous task of getting the reluctant voters, part icularly senior citizens, to the booths was taken up by the members of the Sangh. “Our parents and grandparents voted after many years. Varanasi is laidback. While people love to debate politics, not many turn up to vote. This time, Sangh members were also active in getting people out of their houses,” said a young BJP worker who along with his friends ferried voters throughout polling day.

The third triumph of Modi was in an unprecedented consolidation of the Hindu vote. With a large number of OBCs and Dalits backing the BJP, the party’s vote share jumped from 18% to 43% in the state and nearly doubled in Varanasi. It did not hurt that Modi flaunted his own OBC status.

“Modiji promised every sect -- be it the weavers of Varanasi or the Dalits and Jats of western UP -- something or the other and they all responded positively,” said a young marketing executive who returned to Varanasi from Lucknow to vote for the BJP. “But I don’t know if he will be able to satisfy all. Shayad sinni bana ke sab me thoda thoda baant denge (maybe he will make candies and distribute a few to each).”

Political opponents, however, accused the BJP of polarizing the voters on communal lines. Subtle (in stage décor) and overt (in speeches) use of Hindutva symbolisms and constant reminding of minority vote banks did influence a pan-Hindu consolidation.


“It is unclear if it was the promise of development or communal polarization that helped the BJP break the caste barrier,” said a rare Congress voter who found the names of his family members missing from the electoral roll on May 12. As the trends became evident on counting day, he marvelled at the BJP’s “give no quarters” approach. “Who knows, given the hype, maybe even my family would have voted for Modi,” he sounded both awed and rattled.