Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the world’s finest military minds ever. If I had to pick the three best military commanders globally all over the course of the history, the list would include Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Napoleon Bonaparte.
While Alexander and Genghis Khan favored the heavy use of cavalry in their battle tactics, Napoleon relied more on his guns and his unit composition. He reorganized his army into smaller corps, each with their own cavalry detachments, artillery and supply carts. These corps were headed by Marshals, general officers handpicked and trained by Napoleon himself. Most of his strategy and war planning focused on isolating and defeating enemy units. His famous battle strategy was the famous “Move onto the rear” in which his army would endeavor to cut the opponent’s lines of communication and force them to accept a battle on Napoleon’s terms. His Marshals sought out enemies arrayed in a wide line, multiply the army’s battlefront manifold and if an enemy was encountered, all efforts were made to destroy the opposing force while the corps marched to “the sounds of the guns”. These strategies enabled Napoleon’s army to fight and defeat forces much larger on his own.
NarendraModi is indisputably India’s most powerful politician today. With a clear majority of his party in the lower House of the Indian Parliament, a majority within sight in the Parliament’s upper house, state governments in 18 of India’s 31 regional assemblies and over 1500 MLAs, there is no second guessing Modi’s power. Unlike the remaining Indian political parties, Modi’s party, the Bhartiya Janata Party, the world’s largest political party, fights every election as a battle for its own survival. Legions of trained and dedicated volunteers seconded from the RSS, the BJP’s ideological mentor and the world’s largest non-political organization, ensure that the BJP maintains its touch and communication with the grassroots. With a competent reserve bench and competent Marshals leading from the front, Modi’s war machinery is brutal, lethal and nearly unstoppable.
Modi’s home state, Gujarat goes to polls in the next week and the results will be announced in the next one. A keenly watched and brutal battle is being fought for the regional assembly of Gujarat. The BJP has been in power for over 22 years and Modihimself was the head of the state from 2001-2014 till his elevation as India’ Prime Minister. Gujarat was what made Modi the man of the moment and losing Gujarat will deal a strong blow to Modi’s ambitions to continue beyond 2019. While most exit polls and pundits predicting a comfortable BJP victory, the BJP’s top brass are taking these results with a pinch of salt. They know better to be safe than sorry. After all, elections in India are impossible to predict. The pundits were horribly wrong in predicting the results of Uttar Pradesh’s election and they severely underestimated the magnitude of BJP’s victory. The good response to Rahul Gandhi’s, the soon to be appointed President of the Indian National Congress and Modi’s bête noire, rallies have rattled the BJP top brass. The caste dynamics of the state has thrown up some key challenges to the BJP. Gujarat has the laboratory for Hindutva (the right-wing Hindu) politics and the RSS is keen to retain its stronghold. Unlike the past, Congress has managed to reduce the politics into a caste slug fest. The traders of Gujarat, BJP’s strongest supporters have been hurt by the hasty implementation of the Goods & Services tax and the Demonetization of the Indian currency notes. Their anger has the potential to cost the BJP dearly.
Napoleon was known to defeat his enemies in detail. Defeat in detail also referred to as divide and conquer, is a military phrase for the tactic of bringing a large portion of one’s own force to bear on small enemy units in a sequence, rather than engaging the bulk of the enemy force all at once. That exposes one’s own units to many risks but allows for the eventual destruction of an entire enemy force. At Waterloo, Napoleon took up a position in between the forces of the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian Marshal Blucher. He has planned to defeat each force separately. His past actions in the fields of Quatre Bras and Ligny had broken these forces and a decisive action would destroy them for sure, sealing a path for total victory. However, while defeated the forces of Wellington and Blucher withdrew from the battlegrounds of Quatre Bras and Ligny, respectively relatively intact and were in full communication with one another. Napoleon deputed Marshal Grouchy to shadow the Prussians and “hold a sword to their back”, thereby not allowing them to interfere with Napoleon’s planned destruction of Wellington’s forces. At Waterloo, the weather, never an ally of Napoleon, played spoilsport and delayed Napoleon’s attack, allowing Blucher to link up with Wellington. Grouchy, in a direct violation of the standing orders of marching to the sound of the guns, kept running after an imaginary tail and deprived Napoleon of a big body of his forces. Napoleon’s forces were overwhelmed with numbers and Napoleon himself was unavailable to command most of his forces due to a headache, the command was left to Marshal Ney. When the French forces started to buckle, the vaunted Imperial Guard was committed. Alas, even these tough veterans could not save the day for Napoleon. At Waterloo, Napoleon’s Imperial Guard died but did not surrender. So ended, the reign of Napoleon, one of the greatest military mind and social reformer.
Modi, like Napoleon, defeats his opponents in detail. His divide and conquer strategy involves the fragmentation of the opposition’s vote bank and the consolidation of his own. This has enabled him to achieve majority even with a meager vote share of 31% nationwide. This strategy is being put to test in Gujarat where the opposition is trying to consolidate the various factions opposed to Modi, which are aplenty into one. To top this off, there are 22 years of anti-incumbency and the twin shocks of GST & Demonetization. Youth require jobs and Gujarat are parched. While the Modi government has made tremendous strides in Urban Development, the rural Gujarat still lags behind in several critical parameters. The battle for Gujarat is tough indeed. Modi, like Napoleon, is a fine strategist and is a charismatic orator but are his Marshals, his subordinates just as capable as him. Will Vijay Rupani, the CM of Gujarat, an able replacement for Modi. Will the BJP continue its victory march or will NarendraModi meet his Waterloo? The answer for this will become clear one the votes have all been tallied in Gujarat.
