Every society leaves behind symbolic as well as material debris. A symbolic archaeology can be as fruitful as the material archaeology of moving around debris of old monuments and ruins. In fact election time would be a good time for symbolic archaeology to examine which slogans and symbols survive and which get transformed. Indian election slogans revolve around ideas of unity, stability and innovation. They are meditations of how parts fit into a bigger whole. Thus, we had the great slogans of garibi hatao, roti kapda aur makan, jai jawan jai kisan, or Rajiv Gandhi's 'India in the 21st century'. Each was a statement of how India was to be united; each a commitment to a nation-state project. Most of the 50 years of Indian independence were dominated by the Congress Party living off its nationalist symbols like the Nehru cap, the Gandhian charkha, Sardar Patel´s integrity or decisiveness, the large dams as temples of modern India, or the Green Revolution. The question is how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) enters this symbolic space. It is a parvenu. It realises its own symbols would not take it too far — the lotus is hardly the Ashok Chakra or the khadi in terms of emotive power. It has to indulge in the politics of brand management. True, it does not have the Sumantra Ghosals or David Ogilvy by its side but it knows it has to fight a semiotic war to redefine nation, state, history, economics and geography.
The semiotic war that the BJP fought was conducted at four levels. First were the present Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani's rath-yatras (the age of 'Toyota chariots') that were generalised events. They galvanised the party more than the people. It used modern mediums to capture old symbolic domains. The second battle was conducted by appropriating Congress Party symbolism. If the Congress gobbled up nationalism, what would be left for the BJP? What it generated therefore were acts of mimicry where Vajpayee was projected as a Nehruvian avatar and Advani as his Patel clone. The shades were subtly different. The BJP was the party of patriots, from Subash Bose to Tilak, and from Lajpat Rai to Patel, and Jawaharlal was only a variant on the theme. It was brilliantly done. Congress president Sonia Gandhi was caught up with the 'foreign origin' issue while the BJP was stealing her domestic symbolic ware.
The third move was more sinister and fought out in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots. One had to create symbolic legitimation for the riots and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi managed that through a set of symbolic binaries – secular versus religious, inside versus outside, Delhi versus Gujarat, English language versus regional papers, the Westernised elite versus Gujarati people. The secular press, including NDTV, played into the internalisation of these appositions and created a constituency for Modi. The ordinary Gujarati felt he had been misunderstood by Delhi. As Modi put it in "their" collective voice, "What does Delhi think, that 50 lakh Gujarati's are murderers and rapists?" Semiotically he was home with his cosy communalism hiding its genocidal Janus face. He thanked the English language press especially NDTV for letting him romp home during the elections. But Advani, along with Arun Jaitley (Union Minister for Law, Justice & Company Affairs) and Pramod Mahajan (the BJP General Secretary) realised that these old controversies and symbols alone would not do. The BJP had to look more global, more youthful, more achievement-oriented. BJP politics had to promise consumption accessible to more. It had to be user friendly — not the party which kept mobilising the past, but the party which was an invitation to the future. Talking about Bharat was a loser's strategy. It struck a whining note of those left behind or left out. Also Jai Shree Ram was hardly a visiting card to be handed out to the new generation. One had to fuse time and space, and especially generations, in a new way. It was the Congress that was to have the handicap of history. The campaign could not be conducted negatively — it was not enough to show that the Congress combination of socialist realism and dynastic rule led to a stifling of both history and the future. It was not enough to hint that Omar Abdullah (son of National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah), Sachin Pilot (son of late Congress leader Rajesh Pilot) and Jyotiraditya Scindia (son of late Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia), the polished new Turks of the Congress were also dynasts still suffering Oedipally from Congress rule.
The BJP needed a new myth, a picture of India as a new set of coalitions in virtual reality. It could not be a summons to religion, caste, tradition or language. One needed a language which was open-ended but not secular; that was hospitable, but offering a notion of values and productivity; that smelt not of envy but of success; that was an invitation but worked like a summons; that represented a fraternity and not a club where everyone wanted membership. A notion of India that made one feel good, which smacked not of corruption, disasters and nepotism but of untrammelled success — not local success but global success. Only four things talked this language – cricket, Bollywood, the Diaspora and the IT / IIT industry. Each was unapologetically Indian but globally resonant. A notion of unity that was not civilisational but material, a combined supermarket of dreams and values. Something that Doordarshan could screen and MTV would not be embarrassed about. Semiotic wars are not easy, and the BJP had got it right again. It was called shining India. It was a new friendly hypothesis on India. It had the makings of a surrogate myth.