Politics of India on the 69th year of independence
August 14, 2015
Published in elections.in (http://www.elections.in/blog/politics-of-india-on-the-69th-year-of-independence/)
The nation celebrates its 69th Independence Day on August 15. This is the second time that Prime Minister Narendra Modi unfurls the national flag at the historic Red Fort.
This reminds me of his first
appearance at the Red Fort as Prime Minister last year when he delivered a
highly acclaimed speech from its rampart to spell out his vision of ‘Make In
India’, ‘Digital India’, and ‘Clean India’. He announced scrapping of the
Planning Commission of India that was thereafter replaced by NITI Aayog. He
urged the Members of Parliament to adopt villages as part of his Sansad Adarsh
Gram Yojna.
They did sound like the “mantra’ to
emancipate Indian society from poverty and class divide. Yet the most
significant of Modi’s announcements was a call for a 10 year moratorium on
communal and caste violence. After all, communal hatred andcaste bias continue
to afflict Indian society and polity even after 69 years of Independence.
But Modi himself being a product of
right wing ‘Hindutva’ politics, his call for communal harmony sounded
apocryphal to many, considering his own rise in the political firmament from
the communally polarised Gujarat that saw a deadly riot during his own
tenure as the state’s Chief Minister in 2002. To Modi’s credit, there was no
further communal riot in the state after that.
It may be mentioned that Indian
political history is replete with instances of communal disturbances and riots.
Remember how just a couple of days before Modi’s maiden Independence Day
speech, right wing hooligans of some obscure ‘Hindu swadeshi’ outfit had
vandalised three two-hundred-year-old life-sized statues of Queen
Victoria in a museum in Mathura on the grounds that they were “symbols of
British colonialism”!
Besides, for years Modi’s own party,
the Bharatiya Janata Party, has itself been accused of flaring up latent
sentiments, communal frenzy and building up mass hysteria along communal lines.
The demolition of the Babri mosque and its justification by the Hindutva forces
that they had liberated Lord Ram’s birthplace, did have political overtones,
too, as it is needless to say that the whole Ramjanamabhoomi movement revived
the sagging fortunes of the BJP and transformed it into a major political
force.
This doesn’t mean other parties are
not guilty of their complicity. As noted writer Arundhati Roy observed, “The
Congress has historically played covert communal politics in order to create
what in India we call vote banks where you pit one community against another
and so on in order to secure votes.”
The Congress hand in the anti-Sikh
riots of 1984 is well chronicled resulting in long drawn legal battles. Only
this month, an inquiry commission report blamed the Congress for the Bhagalpur
riots of 1989.
Time and again, politicians and
rulers have raked in the moolah by flaring up communal passion and this trend
has continued from the medieval times. Hence Modi’s I-Day call for the
moratorium did look preposterous on its face. It could not stand scrutiny as
his own ministers returned to inciting people over religion, conveniently
ignoring the PM’s appeal for communal peace. His minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti
tried to rake up communal passion before the Delhi state elections with her
“Raamzaada (sons of Lord Ram) and “Haraamzaada” (“illegitimate sons”) comment
at an election rally. Following widespread protests and Parliament logjam, Modi
was compelled to reprimand her. There were further attempts to instigate
communal flare-ups in Delhi colonies before the Delhi assembly elections by the
right wing Hindutva forces. There were even attacks on Churches in Delhi for
which Modi assured to “act strongly”.
As it goes, not much has changed in
the way politics is communalised in the country in the last 69 years and the
direct, indirect involvement of political parties into sectarian and communal
politics has led to the coining of a curious new term ‘pseudo secularism’! As
polarisation along communal lines seem complete, even terrorists today are
being termed as Hindu or Muslim terrorists – much akin to the ‘bad terrorists’
and ‘good terrorists’ standpoint of Pakistan – the hotbed of world terrorism.
Consider All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin
Owaisi’s lamentation that the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict Yakub Memon was
punished because of his religion!
Similarly, consider how the
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Yadav desperately wanted the caste census data
to be made public by the Centre before the upcoming assembly elections in
caste-ridden Bihar. Obviously castes and religions continue to be the two major
considerations for success at the hustings and the issue of ‘development’ at
best remains a façade!
Corruption continues to remain a
hallmark of our political system and the way this year’s Monsoon Session of
Parliament was wasted over the issue of corruption, it reflects poorly on the
inadequacies of our political system per se. Not much has changed yet even when
governments changed. As mudslinging and personal accusations fly high, our
politicians continue to be projected as power brokers instead of true
torchbearers of healthy democratic practices. In the process, development takes
a back seat — consider the logjam in Parliament monsoon session prevented the
clearance of the crucial Goods and Services Tax (GST) proposal!
As it goes, the Opposition parties
are gunning after Modi for a number of reasons – his studied silence over the
,‘Laltigate’ and ‘Vyapam’ scams that dog the BJP ministers including the
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, and Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh Chief
Ministers, Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan (- See more at: http://www.elections.in/blog/modi-silence-on-scams/#sthash.KT4rvD9a.dpuf);
while the Congress-led Opposition paralysed the entire monsoon session of
Parliament over the issue, the issue has become highly personalised, skeletons
have started tumbling out of closets, exposing corruption at high places within
our democratic establishment. A defiant Sushma Swaraj, herself pushed to a
corner by the Congress over allegations that she and her family members
benefited monetarily from fugitive businessman Lalit Modi, targeted the Gandhi
family stating over certain dubious deals – “I want to tell Rahul Gandhi – you
love holidays. On your next one, read up on your family history and come back
and ask ‘Momma (Congress president Sonia Gandhi), how much money did we get in
the (Alleged Bofors middleman Ottavio) Quattrocchi case? Why did daddy (former
Prime Minister late Rajiv Gandhi) let (1984 Bhopal Gas tragedy accused Warren)
Anderson go? Why the quid pro quo?”
As it shows, in the 69th years of
Independence, political discourses have stooped to a level of personal attacks
and counterattacks, with politicians conveniently sidetracking facts and
issues. Consider the BJP’s general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya calling the
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi “manhoos (ominous)” or the RJD
supremo Lalu Yadav terming Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “bad omen” — “Modi
went to Nepal and months after his visit, a devastating earthquake ruined the
Himalayan country. Similarly, Bihar was having heavy rains…but it vanished
after Modi started visiting the state.”
Politics could never have hit such a
rock bottom. Allegations and counter allegations are flying high this time.
Modi is facing flak for not honouring the pre-poll commitment of bringing back
‘black money’ surreptitiously kept offshore in Swiss banks and other tax
havens, “in a hundred days”; for his failure to curb food inflation and
so on. His favourite schemes are yet to take off. The ‘Make In India’ drive,
statistics reveal it is yet to pick up and the Department of Industrial Policy
and Promotions(DIPP) that functions under the Union Commerce Ministry figures
are far from encouraging. They suggest while the number of IEMs(Industrial
Entrepreneurs Memorandum) filed dipped from 2,365 in 2013 to 1801 in
2014, the value of proposed investment fell 24 per cent from Rs. 529,828 crores
to Rs. 404,339 crores in 2014. In the first four months of 2015 only 452
IEMs with a proposed investment of Rs. 87,393 crores were filed and of
these as many as 202 IEMs with proposed investment of Rs. 45,328
crores were in April alone!
So is the Modi magic diminishing
now? His detractors would like to believe so particularly after the
humiliation the BJP faced in the February Delhi elections. Yet, to write him
off would be foolhardy considering the way he had singlehandedly scripted the
victories of the party not just at last year’s general elections, but in
subsequent state elections in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Jammu and
Kashmir. However, the ensuing Bihar elections would be the true test of his
policies and charisma. As the BJP banks on his persona to win there, it is
going to be a tough proposition considering the stiff challenge from the ruling
Janata Dal (United) and its alliance partners, the RJD and the Congress. As it
is, caste and religion will again play a decisive role in the Bihar elections.
Yet, the only silver lining is that
our electoral process and elections, in spite of their limitations, remain the
greatest vanguard of our freedom in the last 69 years, irrespective of decadent
politics.
- See more at:
http://www.elections.in/blog/politics-of-india-on-the-69th-year-of-independence/#sthash.K7qIjcHR.dpuf
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