BJP victory is not a historical trend!
See history, political evolution and much else!
Readers of this column must be aware that the writer is not a professional journalist or an academic person. Rather we come from a rural, land-owning family and also educated at Santiniketan and Oxford, UK and also a former member of the then Madras Legislative Council. As such we are very much into active politics and are deeply involved in articulating the political trends, inside and outside the country. Keeping this background in mind we like to see the current massive sweep of the BJP outfit and the turning of the tables, so to say, over the entrenched Congress dynastic hold on the country’s politics and the recent Congress regime under the previous power-holders, namely, Sonia-Manmohan Singh led rule that ended in series of corruption cases only could have produced the 2014 election results and now after 5-years rule of the BJP, again a repletion on a much more larger scale could not have been a surprise. What is the surprise in the post 2019 is the utter decimation of the 135-year old party not able to stand up or speak out!
Since the day the election results came out not one word, not one decision had been taken by the Congress party! What is the reason, we ask you, Sonia Gandhi and your lieutenants not able to collect your wits and decide things in keeping with your offices you still nurture to retain?
Why don’t you dissolve the Congress Working Committee as a first step?
Why didn’t you show some semblance of moral responsibility that you ask the members whose names were taken by Rahul Gandhi squarely responsible for the rout? Should we name the names? Or, the other old and long-time members who must have felt utterly ashamed to have occupied the seats at the high table?
Or, other close loyalists, gentlemen and ladies too, must have felt terribly embarrassed, must have offered to make room for some new comers?
Only those who are total outsiders to the Congress party inner circles know why it is, things inside the party, are what they are. The party, the AICC set-up are all totally exhausted and there is no fire at all left in the party which has variously over the years become a set of long retired occupants of old Lutyen’s colonial bungalows and the AICC outfit is also a reflection of this deteriorating party culture where merit is never the consideration nor democracy is not a word uttered never even once in one’s lifetime.
It is the utter absence of any public cause, let alone any belief in self-worth that moves the people right there. We don’t want to sound offending any particular individual or individuals but it is a fact that everyone there entrenched in a sense of self-importance that this jolt came timely, we feel.
But politics doesn’t stop for anyone’s wishes. It moves on, rather relentlessly and so we have to act and Sonia Gandhi has a personal responsibility to sort out things.
We ourselves have written to Rahul Gandhi and some of the critical state leaders, the incumbent or former Chief Ministers outlining the priorities to be adopted to enliven the mainstream politics in all its gravitas!
What are the priorities? For a non-BJP alternative politics?
We have given deep thought to politics in our own times? Here inside India and also for the current international trends, as for instance we have seen from the recent European Parliament elections? Politics in France, Spain, Italy and also in Austria and, why, even seeing the current turmoil in the UK and USA?
There is a rightwing turn to politics in our times. Why? Many reasons. In Europe and the USA, there is this migration of non-Europeans, refugees and economic migrants and also the rise of racial, other phobias against ‘foreigners’ etc. Economic slowdown and unemployment etc too. So too within India too.
Inside India the dynastic politics practiced by the Sonia Gandhi leadership of the Indian National Congress had outlived its utility. Peoples’ aspirations, as seen by the new generation younger voters and also, by the female voters are new factors. And, the Congress politics is in utter disarray. Many may now know that some of the old States like Bihar, UP and Maharashtra where there have been a long-time tradition of Congress politics of high order, as even in Tamil Nadu, under some of the great veterans whose names even now evoke great deal of nostalgia as we recall the names of Gandhi, Nehru and others, so too the names of Maharashtrian, Tamil and Telugu leaders, why Bihari and UP leaders have all given way to new comers with no loyalty tests.
Under Sonia Gandhi and now under Rahul too there are more deteriorations, rather than improvements. Some DCC offices even in Tamil Nadu where giants like Kamaraj worked are under lock and keys!
How many openly criticised Rahul and left the party?
Why so many old hands sit at the CWC for 20 or even more years. It is time Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi must step aside and become one of the office bearers, but not the sole authority! Some of the senior Congress leaders, past and present can be brought back into the CWC. We have written to some of them asking them to consider coming back to the Congress fold.
Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee and even Chandrababu Naidu and some others can be asked to come back and help to create a strong united Opposition Party.
India is too big a country to run a large democracy and India must count in the world. Our many policies, economic, social and parliamentary procedures have evolved over the years. The Hindutva is a new doctrine; it was not there during our freedom struggle. The Indian National Congress had also evolved but over a longer historical period. India had passed through two world wars. Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini had left their legacies, we have the legacies of fascism and Nazism. All these great political doctrines, Socialism and Communism, the world has seen through.
So, what new the Hindutva, an aberration at best, after ALL, CAN DO TO CHANGE THE MAIN POLITICAL course?
So, we request the stake holders to bury their narrow egoisms and come out as saviours of the great Indian nation, the hapless people.