The use of historical politics in interparty competition in contemporary India: the transformation of Indira Gandhi image in 2014-2019

The perception of key leaders in Indian modern history and its transformation within the contemporary political landscape constitutes a significant element of the political struggle between the country’s two major parties - the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Since coming to power, the BJP has consistently pursued a strategy of historical revisionism aimed at reassessing established narratives about INC leaders. This study focuses on examining the transformation of Indira Gandhi’s public image using digital big data analysis methods, including sentiment analysis of texts from major Indian English-language media sources from 2014 to 2019. The research hypothesis states that critical discourse concerning Indira Gandhi intensified following the BJP’s rise to power, with a particular surge in criticism during election periods, when historical figures are instrumentalized as tools of political contention. The application of sentiment analysis enabled the identification of periods of peak criticism of Indira Gandhi, which correlated with anniversary dates and election campaigns. The findings revealed an almost symmetrical distribution of positive and negative sentiment, indicating a polarization of views among Indian intellectual elites, who constitute the primary readership of the analyzed English-language media. The results of the media discourse analysis aligned with the outcomes of the 2024 parliamentary elections when BJP encountered substantial opposition resistance and got fewer Lok Sabha seats than expected. This study confirms the efficacy of digital methods for analyzing political processes and demonstrates that historical politics has become a key arena of contemporary political contestation in India.