Return of Ideology

The 2024 election campaign highlighted the ideological divide at the heart of Indian politics

- Rahul Verma

THERE is an overwhelming consensus that the campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections compared to the previous two was a more humdrum affair—issues that could raise the emotive quotient nationally were missing. This sentiment was reflected in the results declared on June 4, with most states having one clear winner, but different ones. There is no single overarching factor that can explain all of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) setbacks in this election and the gains made by the INDIA bloc, especially the Congress party.

However, despite the consensus that state-level dynamics played a greater role in shaping the verdict, the 2024 election campaign also highlighted the ideological divide at the heart of Indian politics. Comparing the campaign narrative of the Congress party and the BJP, political scientist Suhas Palshikar wrote: “The two registers are speaking about two very different ideas of India.” And, the leaders of India’s two main national parties, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, were the principal interlocutors of the two contrasting ideological images.

Ideology and Voter Mobilisation

The two very different ideas of India, as Pradeep Chhibber and I have outlined in Ideology and Identity: The Changing Party Systems of India, are rooted in the process of state formation in India that involved two simultaneous challenges of regulating social norms and redistributing property (the politics of statism) and giving marginalised castes, which had faced significant discrimination, their just place in the state-building process (the politics of recognition).

These ideological divisions on the appropriate role of the state, we have argued, have influenced party politics in India since Independence. And, the movement of political parties in the ideological space marked the transition from the Congress-dominant system to a multi-party competition to a party system centred on the BJP now.