When the dates for the Maharashtra assembly polls were formally announced in mid-October this year, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists in the remote corners of the state’s Gondia district weren’t just gearing up; they hit the ground running, armed with a meticulously crafted blueprint.

Waving saffron flags and sounding cymbals and conches, they marched through residential alleys in the early morning hours, reminding voters of their electoral responsibility. At the forefront was their leader, Devesh Mishra, clad in a black t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan batenge toh katenge (divided, we will suffer), delivering a rousing appeal. “On November 20, get out of your houses and go to the polling booths for Hindutva’s victory. If you want to save your religion, then make use of your votes, Jai Shri Ram.”

The upcoming elections were particularly significant for ensuring that Gondia gets its first BJP legislator. Located near the state’s land border with adjoining Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Gondia is the farthest district of east Maharashtra and a part of the infamous naxal-influenced ‘Red Corridor’. The district is home to a mix of Gond, Gowari, Halbi and Bhil Adivasi communities, as well as a large population of Hindi-speaking trading communities. Traditionally, it had been a stronghold of the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) until 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the Lok Sabha seat for the first time.

Mishra and his associates refrained from mentioning any political outfit, but his entourage’s saffron-infused symbolism made its political drift pretty evident. The prabhat pheris (early morning processions) were aimed at ‘awakening’ Hindu voters from their deep slumber of political and religious apathy, that is believed to have cost the BJP dearly in the Maharashtra Lok Sabha elections that summer. In one of its worst performances, the BJP won only nine of the 23 constituencies it contested in Maharashtra, where the party was a major partner in the outgoing Mahayuti alliance. The party lost because Hindus did not turn out to vote, echoed Mishra, the VHP co-convenor for the Vidarbha region. “Nearly 43 per cent of Hindus stayed home, while Muslims captured all the votes by casting their ballots one-sided. They did vote jihad.”

According to poll analysts, the narrative of “BJP amending the constitution and constitution in danger” floated by the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi—comprising the Congress, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar)—attracted massive support of Muslim and Dalit voters. A significant Muslim votes consolidated in favour of the Opposition Congress, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and NCP (Sharad Pawar). The minority votes helped the Mahavikas alliance win nearly 31 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats. The results of 240 seats out of 532 left a dent in the BJP’s numbers leaving it short of a majority in Parliament.

Concerned by the defeat, Mishra had emphasised that the VHP had devised a campaign filled with Hindutva narratives to unite Hindu voters for this year’s Lok Sabha polls. “We thought people would vote for PM Modi’s development agenda, but our Hindus were sleeping and didn’t vote at all. We had to awaken them.” Jaago Hindu became the central theme of the BJP’s Maharashtra campaign. Devendra Fadnavis, BJP leader and now chief minister, released a campaign song, Jaago Hindu Jaago, to urge Hindus to wake up and vote.

Poor performance of the BJP in the general elections in Maharashtra, the home ground of the RSS, was a wake-up call for both organisations to work together for the consolidation of Hindu votes. In August this year, the RSS invited all its affiliated organisations to prepare for the assembly elections. In consultation with its sister organisations, the Sangh developed the Sajag Raho (be vigilant) campaign to recover from the loss by unifying Hindu voters under the banner of Hindutva ahead of the assembly elections. The VHP, the ABVP, the Bajrang Dal, the Durga Vahini and other Sangh-affiliated organisations turned out in full strength.

“Over 15,000 activists have been on the ground in Vidarbha since August, holding rallies, conferences and door-to-door campaigns, calling on citizens to vote in national interest and for Hindutva,” said Prashant Titre, Nagpur-based convenor of the Vidarbha region. “We told people why they must vote and vote for Hindutva. We explained that if Hindus refrain from voting, a non-Hindutva ideology government will come to power, fanning love jihad, land jihad and vote jihad.”

In each of Vidarbha’s 62 assembly constituencies, over 400 meetings were organised to mobilise Hindu voters. Another 500 conferences were held for women, farmers and local villagers to raise awareness about voting. Bajrang Dal activists held 3,500 village-level meetings to inform people about the BJP-led Mahayuti government’s developmental work and welfare schemes. Their main pitch was ‘Look in India’—a spin on the Modi government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative. Its purported target was the class of politically apathetic citizens who benefit from government resources but are least concerned about their electoral duties. “There is a large class of such people who are ideologically blank. They are neither swayed by the BJP nor by the Opposition. We targeted such people,” Titre said.

As the campaign intensified, Mishra sharpened his rhetoric, building on the controversial slogan batenge to katenge. Reports of Muslim civil society members, social organisations like Marathi Muslim Seva Mahasangh and religious bodies such as the All India Ulema Board—Maharashtra chapter—endorsing support for MVA parties, bolstered claims from right-wing outfits, that Muslims were uniting to defeat the BJP. Their 17-point manifesto, which included laws to prevent atrocities against minorities, hate speeches, reservations in jobs and education and safeguarding the rights of Muslims, became a trump card for Hindutva organisations, which projected these demands as a quid pro quo to bring MVA to power.

“Muslims were coming in loaded ships from Saudi Arabia to Mumbai and were going to different parts of the state to vote for the MVA. We told Hindus they needed to use their votes to counter Muslims, or else they would install a Muslim-backed MVA,” Mishra asserted. He conceded that the oft-regurgitated claims of ships arriving from Saudi Arabia were exaggerated to create a fear psychosis and propel indifferent Hindus to vote.

The VHP also enlisted the seer and saint community, specifically the Warkari sect, to ramp up religious narratives against Muslims. Across the state, 94 large religious conferences were organised and nearly 30,000 Warkaris and renowned saints were enrolled to deliver the message of utilising their votes for the protection of Hindutva.

“Muslim religious leaders called it vote jihad and their people obeyed, leading to a huge impact. We realised that we could also enlist Hindu religious leaders to appeal to people to vote for those parties that work for the protection of Hindu interests and temples,” said a senior VHP leader. Maharashtra is known as the land of saints, where the anti-Brahmin Bhakti movement flourished from the 13th century onward. Warkaris and seers are an intrinsic part of the socio-religious culture. The enrolment of Hindu saints and Warkaris in the election campaign proved to be pathbreaking. “We did not make their enrolment political; they remained religious and spoke of safeguarding the Hindu religion. They told people not to be divided because of caste,” the leader said. It became the single largest factor in neutralising caste and sub-caste divisions, uniting Hindus in the name of religion. Slogans like “first dharma and country, then caste,” and “if dharma survives, caste will stay,” urged Hindus to prioritise their votes.

Marathwada, where the Maratha reservation issue had fuelled anti-BJP sentiment, became the central focus of this campaign. Warkaris and saints played a crucial role in helping the BJP overcome the fallout of caste politics. Manoj Jarange Patil, the leader of the Maratha agitation movement, had indirectly called for voting against the BJP and only electing Maratha candidates. The BJP lost all four Lok Sabha seats it contested in Marathwada while the Mahayuti alliance had lost seven out of eight seats in Marathwada. Fadnavis, then a deputy chief minister, was barred from holding any public rallies in the region. Marathwada also has a large Muslim population, which stayed away from voting for the BJP-led alliance. But in a bold reversal of the Lok Sabha outcome, the Mahayuti won 40 of the 46 seats, with the BJP alone winning 19. The Maratha caste issue became irrelevant as Marathas and OBCs united as Hindus and voted in large numbers for BJP candidates.

In the final phase, the VHP launched a door-to-door campaign to remind voters of the urgency of their electoral franchise. In Gondia, Mishra devised a plan to ensure maximum votes were cast in the constituencies’ 361 booths. The army of the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and other Sangh-affiliated organisations spread out with voter lists, knocking on doors and making phone calls to out-of-station voters. Every activist was tasked with reaching out to 12 voters, whose sole job was to ensure they voted. “We were micromanaging the campaign until the last day of polling. If a particular family hadn’t voted, we called them up and even organised vehicles to bring them to the polling station,” says Shivanshu Mishra, Devesh Mishra’s nephew, a young IT professional and VHP activist.

The voting campaign resulted in a turnout of 69.5 per cent in Gondia. In the rest of the state, voter turnout saw a significant rise to 65 per cent. On the day of the results, BJP’s candidate in Gondia, Vinod Agarwal, led with a winning margin of 1.43 lakh votes. The BJP won a total of 132 seats, the highest ever, surpassing its 2014 record of 122 seats, emerging as the single largest party in the state assembly.

Political scientist, Parimal Maya Sudhakar, of Pune’s MIT University, believes RSS’s campaign was a major factor in increasing BJP’s vote share. “The verbal campaign and ground meetings effectively reached BJP’s core voters and the undecided ones on the fringe. They publicly fanned the anti-Muslim narratives on the Waqf board and consolidation of minority votes in the Opposition’s favour in a big way,” he said.

Jayant Shukla, the head of the BJP’s media campaign in Gondia, said the Hindutva vote campaign had a significant impact on voters. It increased the number of votes and ultimately helped the BJP candidate. In 2019, Agarwal won as an independent candidate and contested the recent elections on a BJP ticket. “The BJP has been actively working in Gondia but when it came to elections, our candidate always trailed by a few thousand votes. This time, we had the right candidate and the right opportunity to secure this seat and the Hindutva campaign struck the right chord,” Shukla said.

For Mishra, Agarwal’s win at the polls symbolised Hindutva’s victory. However, Mishra stayed away from the BJP’s victory celebrations. “We did not put gulal on our heads when the BJP won, nor did we whine or cry when its candidates lost in the past,” he said, adding that Sangh activists do not participate in any political campaigns of the BJP. Their work ceased to exist the moment polling stations closed; after that, the democratic process takes over, he said. “We are the silent workers of Hindutva. We don’t seek political mileage. Our work continues silently on the ground to ensure maximum votes come in support of Hindutva.”

(This appeared in the print as 'The Silent Wave')