No excuse now not to implement RSS cherished dream of Hindu Rashtra
By Faraz Ahmad,
Gujarat chief minister Narendrabhai Damodardas Modi has triumphed over all his critics to gift a resounding success to his party the BJP and the RSS which has been fondly dreaming of this day since the 1920s when it was formed by Dr B S Munje and Dr K B Hedgewar, inspired by German Fuehrer Adolf Hitler and Italian fascist Benito Mussolini, on whom Munje paid a personal call. It is now their opportunity to create an exclusivist, militarist, Aryavrat land, turn India into the biggest super power of the world which is what our aspirational class, more so the young first time voter has so enthusiastically voted Modi for, chanting “Modi, Modi.”
This “aspirational class” has little patience with the unwashed masses of Dalits, backwards and poor multiplying Muslims living in their squalid ghettoised slums. These are a drag on the fast pace of India’s growth, the aspirational classes eagerly and anxiously look forward to. If they cant be disenfranchised, which would no doubt be the best option before the nation, the least what needs be done is to cut the “doles” the UPA government was lavishly bestowing upon these wretched scums of the earth and squandering the wealth of the nation earned with effort and determination by the wealthy and the aspiring classes, which should have been deservedly spent on economic growth of the country and arming it with the most modernised weapons to make it appropriately into a super power. Now Modi has to achieve all this.
Narendra Modi
And the results show that this is a vote for this singular objective. As Shekhar Gupta wrote “This is a mandate for India’s self esteem” and elaborated it by stating that, “This result..is also a devastating popular rejection of outdated Congress-style povertarianism: I declare all of you Indians hungry and wretched and will throw food at you. I will feed you a free meal at school…This has been dumped down the garbage chute now.” This is therefore a vote for “No free meals.” What is the implication or sub-text: Do away with or start cutting down on MNREGA, free mid-day meals for poor school children in the villages and all the welfare schemes proposed by Sonia Gandhi and her National Advisory Council (NAC) and implemented by the UPA government. Of course Modi was admired by the PLUs (People Like Us) mainly for his “courage” to reject the Central schemes like scholarships for poor Muslim students, the MNREGA and return the money back to the Centre for it to be better spent. That is the Gujarat model. That is the admirable quality which endeared him to the aspirational classes. And we hope that Modi will implement at the earliest with much gusto Shekhar Gupta’s cherished dream.
But while there is still time let us try to understand how Modi achieved this stupendous feat which even Atal Bihari Vajpayee failed at after three or four successive attempts. Vajpayee with a stature, with nationwide acceptability could at best achieve 182, while a man known only for polarizing people into sharp pro and anti-camps won exactly 100 more seats for his party the BJP and another 54 for his allies. Amazing!
But more sinister is the fact that all those perceived by Modi/Amit Shah/Sangh as inimical to Modi or in other words, who the saffron brigade believed could possibly put spokes in Modi’s wheel of “development and progress” in the 16th Lok Sabha, have all been decisively trounced. Not a single candidate of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) made it to the Lok Sabha. Both Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) bit the dust, with only two JD-U candidates winning and just four RJD. RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s wife and former Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi lost to political lightweight Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
But the milk of human kindness is flowing from Modi. Even though he won each and every seat in Uttar Pradesh, he spared Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi on the one hand and the five seats where Mulayam Singh Yadav and his immediate family members contested. How magnanimous on the part of Modi! But this generosity couldn’t be extended to Lalu or his family members for here the rivalry goes back a long way. It was necessary to rub his nose in the dirt and the foolish, short sighted Lalu failed to see what he was up against. Instead of consolidating his visibly revived mass support he squandered it by letting old loyalists like Ram Kirpal Yadav to go over to the BJP by fielding his daughter from Patliputra.
In Bengal the real resistance to Modi could have come from the Left, because Mamata Banerjee’s much publicised angry exchanges with Modi were all part of a fixed fight. She was after all a Modi ally from 2002 to 2005 and was actually supporting Modi’s stand on Bangladeshi immigrants in the Lok Sabha in 2005. Nobody could imagine. Left doing in Bengal worse than in 2009 simply because in last three years of being in office, Mamata has lost much of her sheen and there was no visible reason for the Left to lose further. But it did? Curiously even though by and large Modi was unsparing towards the Congress party and in such a situation one would imagine Congress should have been wiped out in West Bengal. But no, even the not so bright son of the Indian President, Abhijit Mukherjee won from Jangipur, whereas Pranab Mukherjee himself entered the Lok Sabha first time just ten years ago from Jangipur with tacit Left support. Additionally Adhir Ranjan Chowdhry, Abul Hasan Choudhary and Mausam Noor also returned unscathed to the 16th Lok Sabha.
Andhra Pradesh is in the process of being divided into two states Telangana and Seemandhra. Congress created Telangana after much cajoling and being pushed around by Telangana enthusiasts led chiefly by the BJP. The BJP passed a resolution just before the 1998 mid-term polls, in Kakinada promising “One vote two states.” All through BJP leaders, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh and others were going to Telangana and addressing public meetings, charging Congress with insincerity towards Telangana and declaring, “We will create Telangana when we come to power.” Seemandhara people were supposedly angry with Congress for dividing Andhra Pradesh and therefore punished the Congress. Makes sense. Congress of course did not benefit much in Telangana either winning just 2 of the 17 seats there with 11 going to TRS. On the other hand Seemandhra issue put new life into a moribund Telugu Desam Party (TDP). Yet it was well argued that its leader N Chandrababu Naidu had committed a serious blunder by aligning with the BJP a vocal supporter of Telangana exposing himself as insincere in opposing Telangana, because of which he would be wiped out this time again. Similarly BJP’s alignment with TDP should have cost the BJP in Telangana But no, miraculously Babu won 15 seats and two went to BJP as well in Seemandhra. Defies all political logic.
Even in Jammu and Kashmir where the BJP seemed to have little influence beyond Jammu and Udhampur, while it won both these seats and another surprising victory from Ladakh, the more important thing is that the National Conference together with Farooq Abdullah ended up with a big Zero. The PDP of Mehbooba Mufti whose appreciation of Modi had once been made an issue by chief minister Omar Abdullah returned triumphant, winning the other three seats in J&K. Farooq Abdullah and son Omar said nasty things about Modi and they were trounced. In effect the Muslims of Kashmir have through this vote stated that they have no problems with Narendra Modi and the extension of this corollary is that they cannot now take umbrage to scrapping Article 370 of the Constitution.
The media said corruption was a big issue with the people and that coupled with arrogance humbled the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi. The Congress-NCP alliance was routed in Maharashtra. The other day a Maharashtra based woman journalist said the people were angry and upset with Ajit Pawar’s arrogance and the Congress corruption. However while Congress got only two seats, Ajit Pawar’s party had double the numbers-four. Of the two seats that the Congress won, one was by former chief minister Ashok Chavan, implicated in the Adarsh Housing scam. Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan opposed fielding Ashok Chavan from Nanded. But he won. Within a year of the UPA-II government taking over, the Adarsh Housing scam broke in Maharashtra and Ashok Chavan had to resign. Sonia Gandhi replaced him by Prithviraj Chavan, who may have many failings but is squeaky clean. Yet the stigma of Congress-NCP corruption did not go? How come?
If corruption really rankled the Indian aspirational class, it should have punished the BJP and Modi at least in Karnataka, where Modi had no compunction in bringing back B S Yeddyurappa and B Sriramulu facing corruption charges. But both won. The BJP led government was ousted in the state barely a year ago and there was no negative point for Siddaramaiah led Congress government. BJP numbers did come down compared to 2009 when it swept with 18 seats out of 28. This time with a marginal fall it still won 13.
The other commonly floated line was people were sick of dynasty rule. That’s a load of shit. Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit Mukherjee, a bit slow on the uptake has successfully retained his seat from Jangipur in this so called Tsunami against the Congress party. Yashwant Sinha’s son comes from abroad, resigns his fancy job, files his nominations and wins. Anurag Thakur, the son of former Himachal Pradesh chief minister, a pugnacious character with the stigma of corruption cases, won handsomely on the sole strength of pedigree. Vasundhara Raje’s son won from family pocket burrough Jhalawar. But most interesting, while it seemed people had got disenchanted with Lalu Yadav for fielding simultaneously his wife and daughter and justifiably so. Perhaps that is why he was punished. But then how come Ram Vilas Paswan was so handsomely rewarded by the same set of voters. The BJP allotted him seven seats in Bihar. He fielded six family members and one last minute defector from Congress Mahboob Ali Qaisar because his own Muslims had deserted him and for tokenism he wanted to field a Muslim candidate. Paswan won five seats, but apart from Qaisar all the four are family members—he, his son Chiragh Paswan, and two brothers. The father-in-law of his daughter from the first wife, also a LJP candidate, lost.
Talking of cleanliness and development,the media was going overboard praising Nitish Kumar sky high and eulogising his incorruptible style of functioning, his model of development as against the Gujarat model, till the JD-U was an alliance partner of the BJP in the NDA. The day Nitish decided to break away from BJP, suddenly he was painted as the worst chief minister by the same media. Remember this is exactly how the same media berated Lalu Prasad in 1991 when he too broke away from the BJP. But then thankfully he was riding the social justice wave and he vanquished the BJP successfully till the year 2000.
One line of thought is that people were angry with the Congress party and therefore not just the Congress but all those who supported the UPA government even if they did not participate in it like Lalu, Mulayam and Mayawati were punished by the voter. But Left did not support the UPA-II government at any stage since it withdrew support to the UPA-I in 2008 Then how come the Left did not benefit from this anti-Congress wave in Bengal and sufficiently enough in Kerala? Because again for all its opposition to the Congress party, there was no way it could ever support a BJP-led government, Modi or no Modi. Same is true of Lalu and Mulayam, who could strike under the table surreptitious deals with the BJP but cannot support a BJP government overtly. Mayawati could but then she had given her word not to support a BJP-led government under any circumstances. So she was reduced to Zero.
On the other hand all those who were perceived as allies or possible allies of the BJP, even if they did not formally join the NDA all did well. Look for instance at Om Prakash Chautala. He and his son Ajay Chautala are both convicted and serving jail sentence. The BJP also did not overtly strike an alliance with Chautala’s Indian National Lok Dal (INLD). Instead it was an alliance partner of Kuldeep Bishnoi. But in aside BJP leaders said that it makes little difference to them whether Bishnoi won or Chautala. Eventually Bishnoi lost to Chautala and Devi Lal’s great grandson Dushyant Chautala defeated Bishnoi and the analysts don’t tire of telling us this was a vote against corruption and dynasty. Eventually whoever the BJP could count upon in case of a possible outside support,swept. So we have Jayalalitha sweep Tamil Nadu with 37 of the 39 seats. Two seats not in her kitty went to BJP and its ally the PMK. Like wise in Odisha, Naveen Patnaik broke his own previous record winning 20 of the 21 seats with one seats going to BJP. In Andhra Pradesh all three, namely TDP, Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSRCP and TRS could possibly help out the BJP and so all three did well.
If its really a vote, then its decisively a vote against secularism and social justice. It is another thing that those trusted with carrying forward social justice with secularism abandoned it long ago and that is why a Modi could hoodwink the subaltern castes, by shouting from the rooftops: Main chaiwale ka beta hoon,main neechee jaati mein paida hua (I am the son of a tea vendor and was born in lower castes).