The writer is a journalist in Delhi whose work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times. He tweets @DilliDurAst
In 1980, Advani gave an interview to Panchjanya, an organ of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. In this interview he said, “... in India, a party based on ideology can at the most come to power in a small area. It cannot win the confidence of the entire country ... The appeal (of the party) increased to the extent the ideology got diluted. Wherever the ideology was strong, its appeal got diminished.”
In other words, the moderate-extremist tensions in the BJP is play acting. They are trying to confuse us by playing good cop and bad cop. How conscious this strategy is, is explained by how well thought out it is in Advani’s mind — and that is how the original hardliner can become a moderate!
Not that Narendra Modi is not alive to the power of being a chameleon. In an interview some weeks ago, he was asked if he was a Hindu nationalist. He replied that he was a Hindu and a nationalist and thus he saw nothing wrong in calling himself a Hindu nationalist. How very smart! In one sentence, Narendra bhai told us that he had two identities and they forged into one in his being. If you simply say nationalism, it is deemed that you are talking about Indian nationalism. If you say Hindu nationalism, it is deemed you are talking about making India a Hindu state. If you complained about Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism, his supporters could turn around and say that all he said was that he is a Hindu and a nationalist. They would add that your problem with that is that he is not ‘ashamed’ of calling himself a Hindu, unlike ‘you bloody secularists’! Thus, even while championing Hindu nationalism, they can pretend to be victims of a secularist, supposedly an anti-Hindu ideology.
Questioning the Congress party’s secularism is how Advani made the BJP mainstream. Growing up in the ’90s one constantly heard about the Congress party’s appeasement of the Muslim vote bank. Why did they ban Satanic Verses to appease the mullahs? What about freedom of speech? Why are they nullifying a court verdict granting a Muslim woman alimony? If they are secular, why do they spend taxpayers’ money subsidising Hajj for Muslims? Why can’t Hindus get their Ram Mandir ’back’?
For these reasons, Advani said the Congress brand of secularism was pseudo secularism. So I thought the BJP was the real secular party — the party of righteous truth. But then I saw how the BJP junked the Ram Mandir agenda to form a coalition government. It has only used the north Indian Hindu upper-caste vote bank to come to power. I saw how Modi looked the other way in 2002, then used the pogrom against Muslims to become electorally strong and politically unassailable. I saw how the Muslims say they don’t want the Hajj subsidy and how none of the non-pseudo secularists never complain about the government spending hundreds of crores of rupees in organising the Kumbh Mela. I saw how the BJP made the hanging of Afzal Guru an election issue but the Narendra Modi government is not asking the courts to give the death sentence to his former minister Maya Kodnani and Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi, convicted of the Naroda Patiya massacre in Gujarat in 2002.
The BJP told us the Congress only fools Muslims, it doesn’t mean them well. As a Hindu, I think that is how I feel about the BJP today.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 13th, 2013.
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COMMENTS (11)
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@Rajinder
Very well said. But the author has also been disingenuous on Kumbh Mela. Govt. do not organise Kumbh Mela. Kumbh Mela is older than Govt. of India and even older than Mughal empire. What Govt. does is that it facilitates a conducive environment for the pilgrims in respect of security, law and order, prevention of health hazards, control of traffic, medical facilities etc. etc., which any responsible Govt. would do in a gathering of such magnitude. I think the Saudi Govt. does the same for Hajj pilgrims. But the difference is, Saudi Govt. do not send air tickets to prospective pilgrims. .
@Author
Wrong premise, actually dishonest and mischievous. There is no Hindu vote bank as such. Only if a community vote in unison, in favour of a particular party, or vote solely on the basis of its narrow communal/sectarian interest, it can be called as a vote bank. If Hindus voted merely as Hindus BJP would have ruled all the States (barring J&K, Kerala and North-East) and the Centre since 1984. In context during 2009 election BJP got about 18% of all votes polled. You had to invent a Hindu vote bank as a counter narrative of Muslim vote bank. It seems there is no limit to pseudo-secular thuggery.
Do your homewoak maaan ...
As an observer and although it is very early, my view is that this coming election it will be upto the BJP to loose it.............and in politics today nothing is impossible.
Fooling the Hindu vote bank? There is no Hindu vote bank! . Yes, there could be caste based vote banks especially like those prevalent in UP, Bihar and some other states. But Hindus rarely vote en bloc. Even then it is rare to see Hindus vote for the same party each time. The recent results for Yeddyurappa, a prominent Lingayat leader, should prove that.
the big question is can you fool the people all the time, somehow i think not......this fooling of people has been going on too long.......socialist indira was educating her sons in britain when millions of ordinary indians lacked basic schools......socialist bhutto was educating his children in britain when millions of ordinary pakistani children had no access to schools at all.
And it took you so many years to understand the politics of congress and BJP!! Congratulations on your new found intelligence.
BJP knows it cannot come to power on Hindutva and likewise congress is aware that people understand its appeasement policy very well. The common folk is way smarter. If BJP wins election it will be only because of better governance promise. Honestly, I dont see we have any other choice. The UPA 2 has been disaster, the worst govt in 64 years.
Modi's main draw is good governance
what about congress fooling the muslims vote bank ?????? what wrong in calling the HINDU NATIONALLIST..................