Election results, particularly when they unsettle familiar narratives, are quickly assigned a label. ‘Polarisation’ is the most convenient of them all – a tidy explanation that requires little introspection.
The recent outcomes in West Bengal, Assam and Puducherry have been similarly filed away. Yet, to describe them as mere polarisation is to confuse cause with consequence. What is unfolding looks less like division and more like consolidation – slow, cumulative, and perhaps overdue.
The long indulgence
For years, political practice across parties – national and regional – has flirted with, and often embraced, minority appeasement. It has been dressed up as inclusion, occasionally justified as social correction, but rarely questioned for its excesses.
The language has not always been subtle. In Tamil Nadu, remarks equating Sanatan Dharma with diseases and epidemics were not exactly crafted to soothe. In Telangana, declarations linking a party’s identity almost exclusively with one community did little to inspire confidence in broader representation.
In West Bengal, the discourse has been sharper still – allegations of political violence, accusations around illegal immigration, and a governance approach that critics say preferred selective silence. Whether each charge holds in full or in part is almost secondary; the perception has taken root.
Resentment against neglect
The Congress and its regional counterparts – the Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Trinamool Congress, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Aam Aadmi Party – have long been accused of cultivating dependable minority vote banks. It was seen as smart politics, even necessary arithmetic.
What perhaps went unnoticed was the parallel accumulation of resentment. Not always vocal, not always organised, but steadily building.
Hindu voters, unlike their minority counterparts, have rarely behaved as a cohesive bloc. They have split along caste, class, region and ideology – often to the benefit of precisely those parties now expressing surprise at the results. That fragmentation may be thinning.
The quiet shift
What we are witnessing now is not a sudden surge of religious fervour, but a quieter shift in political behaviour. A section of voters appears to be responding less to direct appeals and more to a lingering sense of imbalance.
Ironically, while minority leaders often make open calls for community-based voting, Hindu voters have traditionally resisted such linear mobilisation. They have preferred political identity over religious identity.
The recent results suggest that this distinction, while not erased, is no longer as firm as it once was.
The inevitable reaction
None of this makes religion in politics any more palatable. It remains a blunt instrument, and a risky one. But when political messaging repeatedly leans on identity – when it signals preference, even inadvertently – it invites a counter-response. Not because voters seek confrontation, but because they recognise patterns.
The takeaway from these elections is not that one community has triumphed over another. It is that prolonged political signalling has consequences.
For years, the strategy rested on a simple assumption – that Hindu voters would remain too divided to respond collectively, and too indifferent to notice the pattern. That assumption is now being tested.
If parties persist with overt appeasement, selective outrage, and casual disparagement of belief systems, they may discover that the electorate has begun to keep its own ledger – quietly, patiently, and without the need for slogans. And when that accounting is done, the verdict does not arrive as rhetoric. It arrives as a result.
