national politics
All is Fair in Politics
Suicide by the ex-armyman has crashed all hopes of the BJP’ s nationalist card post surgical strikes while the hopeless opposition has stooped down to its nadir to cash-in on
By DANFES
Gangadhar Dolui’ s father Onkarnath had to borrow `10,000 from neighbours to perform the last rites of his son, an army jawan who was killed during the Uri terror attacks. A proud father, Onkarnath rejected the `2 lakh recompense promised by the Mamata Banerjee government, the same amount which is paid as ex-gratia for hooch tragedy victims in West Bengal. Gangadhar died defending the border but not a single politician drove in or flew down to attend his funeral.
As the media and political parties go into a tizzy over the suicide of one Ram Kishan Grewal, there were no OB vans to live telecast the funeral of another Ram( Shankar Yadav), the head constable of Bhopal Central Jail whose throat was slit by SIMI operatives while they were attempting a jailbreak. The 58-yearold Yadav was scrambling money for his daughter’ s wedding.
Ex-serviceman Grewal would never know that a battery of OB vans and an army of reporters have descended on Bhiwani, his hometown, to‘ live’ broadcast the proceedings and a clutch of politicians— from Derek O’ Brien, Arvind Kejriwal to Rahul Gandhi— have rushed to the Haryana hamlet to perform the last rites of Indian democracy.
It may raise disgust but shouldn’ t invoke surprise because the compulsion that forces politicians to differentiate between the deaths of Jawans is politics. And politics is a game of perception. When Subedar Grewal consumed poison leaving behind a suicide note that disgruntlement over OROP has forced him to take the extreme step, he may have unwittingly also sounded the death knell for BJP’ s nationalist politics. If BJP is perceptive enough
it would have already realized that it’ s positioning as a party running a‘ nationalist government’, riding a wave of popular patriotism fuelled by the exploits of Indian Army, is over. It may kiss the plank goodbye.
One of the biggest problems BJP has had while seeking to present itself as a pan-Indian alternative to the Indian National Congress is its ideological confusion. It never possessed an ideological knife to cut through the heterogeneity and regional complexities of this vast nation. Unlike the Congress, which had a legacy to bank upon and later came to position itself as one big tent and had something for everyone, the BJP repeatedly found its national ambitions stonewalled beyond the Hindi belt by the limitations of its platform, a curious amalgam of cultural unity and socialism.
The limitations of the Hindutva platform and the fate of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was voted out despite implementing reforms and ensuring robust economic growth would have taught Narendra Modi a valuable lesson— economic growth and development is a chimera in India.
Selling dreams of acche din may catapult one to power but it is hardly enough to ensure an encore. Modi successfully tapped into the anger of a young populace frustrated by the corruption and dole-based politics of the UPA regime but he was smart enough to understand the transient nature of electoral success. He quickly figured out that BJP’ s 2014 electoral mandate needed an ideological foundation to be translated into a substantive, tangible benefit that may enable BJP to break through the regional and cultural barriers. Or else the party will be buried under the very expectations that it raised during the 2014 campaign.
But when it came to an ideological foundation, what were the options? The BJP and the RSS tried their hands at appropriating
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The Dayafter November 16-30, 2016