The Transition To Complete Dominance
What does the
Bharatiya Janata Party stand for? Is it patriotism, nationalism with a saffron
hue, and economic welfare of all? This will have to be made clearer. Others,
allies and opponents both, are falling by the wayside. Political space is being
ceded. And not by just those of the Lohiaite or Socialist persuasion.
The challenges have
begun to come from BJP allies themselves. One in particular, that even professes
Hindutva moorings. But, when the ideological position of the ruling
dispensation, including its integrity, is challenged, a change must come.
An “ally”, may now be
in apparent cahoots with their so-called political rivals. It is time to speed
things up. Is this just brinkmanship?
Can the pre-poll
alliance towards formation of the government in Maharashtra be stabilised by
influential quarters from Nagpur?
But how much of the
situation has been provoked by ideological drift, both in the BJP and the Shiv
Sena, and how much is just a political battle for survival on the part of the
latter?
How so ever the
immediate situation pans out, in future it needs to be remembered that an assertive
Hindu nationalist BJP provides proof of commitment and maintains its
credibility. Being all things to all people is a political position that has
long belonged to Congress.
The Congress has portrayed
itself as liberal and inclusive. However the reality has unravelled over time.
It is actually tightly dynastic and partisan. It bases its political power, what
remains, on the 170 million or more Indian Muslims including a soft attitude
towards separatists and terrorists rather than the Indian armed forces in the
Kashmir Valley, and even a sympathetic, collusive view on Pakistan and China.
In addition, there
are the numerically poor but vociferous and educated liberal-leftists of all
hues and creeds fanning the flames.
There is, in common
with almost all of the political landscape, the rank opportunism of the
political draw that makes for instability and very strange bedfellows.
And then, there are
the other minorities, including the small but influential number of Christians,
particularly in a Western context.
This manipulation of
people on the margins, against majority interests, over several decades since
independence, has angered the vast Hindu nation.
This includes the OBC
and Dalit masses, even though some of these sections enjoy reservations and
other affirmative action benefits. Together with the upper castes, Hindus
comprise, even today, nearly 80% of the populace.
The Congress-led
partisanship has lost it, the UPA, and even its other allies in the erstwhile
loose Mahagatbandhan, many votes. That, and its massive corruption.
In 2019, it is seen
that the Congress also suffers from a vacuum caused by the lack of charismatic,
articulate, intelligent leadership beyond its ageing seniors.
The public may have
largely lost patience with Congress and its friends including the Communists,
but a revival in its political fortunes might be forming. This is largely in
reaction to the absence of a clear cut ideological position in the BJP.
However, the
reforming of the status of J&K in Modi 2.0, and the imminent decision,
probably favourable, on the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya have taken care of two long
pending issues.
But to go the whole
hog, the Uniform Civil Code is a must, as is the nation-wide implementation of
the NRC and a concerted move towards a Hindu Rashtra to replace the false
secularism we have known so far.
Prime Minister Modi
did start his consecutive second term in 2019 with an enlarged mandate. But
strangely, in the very first flush, he floated an extension to his winning
slogan of 2014-namely ‘Sabka Vishwas”. This took many of his supporters by
surprise, but wasn’t believed by his detractors either. Was it, in fact, a
political experiment?
It was interpreted to primarily mean an
inclusion of the Muslims, in particular, into the BJP’’s vision of “Vikas”. Did
it intend to introduce special measures to exclusively help Muslims, just like
the Congress? Was it an attempt to reboot the BJP image by edging from the
right towards the middle? But why? Why, for that matter, did Modi 2.0 expend so much political energy on passing the strictures
of Triple Talaq into law? Does the BJP expect to garner much of the female
Muslim vote? Is this a realistic aspiration beyond a weak 10 to 15 percent of
Muslim women? Is the effort put into
Triple Talaq, by casting it in terms of women’s empowerment, commensurate with
the political returns?
Try as it might, the opponents of the BJP
including most Muslim leaders, never tire of depicting it as “divisive”. Echoes
of this position come from parts overseas, not only from Pakistan, but from left-leaning
journalists, intellectuals and academics in the West. But can this leopard ever
change its spots irrespective of the inducements?
Could there not have
been time saved and better yields from promoting Hindutva and right-wing
economics for the faithful?
The present leadership of the BJP is honour
bound to promote the core agenda of the RSS, which has long supported and
inspired BJP. And straying far from this path makes it look very much like the
Congress. Moving away from its core beliefs also confuses its solid mass of
voters.
The Modi-Shah led BJP
would have the public view the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A and the
formation of two union territories where J&K state once stood in purely
nationalist terms.
But many, amongst the
libleft and the minorities see it as a curtailment of Muslim freedom, and human
rights violations. All this is projected as a political battering ram against
the BJP. There is no acceptance on its part of the BJP line that it is a
visionary move to foster the better development of the region. A reform designed
to take the region away from the scourge of Pakistan sponsored terrorism. But
what about promoting a demographic shift in the Kashmir Valley as the Chinese
have effected into Tibet?
BJP wants the nation
as a whole and the international community to see the changes in Kashmir as the
setting right of a historical mistake. But, to make it stick it has to push
onwards. Minorities need to be protected but the majority must assert irself.
The behaviour of the
Shiv Sena in the formation of the new government in Maharashtra is a harbinger
of things to come. More NDA allies are
likely to worry about being thrust into oblivion, via the submergence of their
own distinct identity. This, more so, because their bases are in one or the
other state of the union, rather than a national presence.
Shiv Sena was born
and bred in Maharashtra. And even though it laid claim to the mantle of
national Hindutva, this started slipping away to the BJP right from the start.Even
as it was indeed the Shiv Sainiks who brought the domes of the Babri Masjid
down in 1992.
And today, days
before the decision by the Supreme Court to allow a new temple to come up in
its place, the Shiv Sena itself is apparently about to self-immolate. If it
bows its knee to BJP for the sake of government formation, it will be steadily marginalised
for its extreme disloyalty. And for having used up most of its political
capital.
If it forms the government with its
ideological enemies, the NCP and the Congress, it will definitely be short-lived.
Others in the NDA,
most notably the Akali Dal, currently out of power in Punjab, with grave
alleged charges of corruption against it, could in time, also become history.
This, not just because of its loss of power to the Congress, led by the popular
Captain Amarinder Singh of the Patiala royal family, but because they stand
rejected by the Punjabis and Sikhs.
But even as regional
parties in the NDA alliance discredit
and marginalise themselves, the resurgent RSS backed BJP has to fulfil
its own promises. It must shake off other ideas and prepare to go it alone to
fulfil the aspirations of its voters.
(1,331 words)
For: Sirfnews
November 5th, 2019
Gautam Mukherjee
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