It is perhaps no secret that the BJP’s plan for India is not just a Congress-mukt Bharat, but a Vipaksha Viheen Bharat. The recent defection of seven Members of Parliament from the AAP is part of a long chain of extra-electoral measures the BJP has taken to defang any Opposition party that might even slightly challenge it. At one level, it is hard to grudge any political party wanting to acquire and consolidate power. That is one of the core aims of politics. It is also a rule of politics that no one “deserves” power: Power is what you can create. Any serious political party must take this aspiration seriously.

The BJP also has revolutionary aims: Reordering the entire constitutional order through the use of current instruments of state. It is inherent in the logic of a party that wants far-reaching constitutional changes that it seeks to command all the legislative power to do so. The play for the Rajya Sabha is hugely consequential. It also, like all dominant parties, wants all social conflicts to be mediated within the party rather than between parties. As a party, it also wants to dominate all non-electoral institutions, from capital to civil society, so that there are fewer countervailing sources of power left in society. To criticise the BJP for seeking total power, as if it were a normal political party in a pluralist competitive system, is to misunderstand its nature: Its version of national change requires unchecked authority.

It is the case that if large sections of the Opposition are opportunistic or cowardly or both, in some fundamental........

© Indian Express