The Hand & The Sinking Ship
“People never leave a sinking ship until they see the lights of another ship approaching.” ~ Buckminster Fuller
Ashok Chavan pressed the escape button first. Then we heard about Kamal Nath trying to paradrop into the BJP. Now they say P Chidambaram, Manish Tiwari, and Navjot Singh Siddhu are scooting soon. “Aakhir, chal kya raha hai?” you may wonder. Well, India mein election season chal raha hai and we have a sinking ship battling it out with a super-sized warship.
‘Aaya ram, gaya ram’ is fair game during elections. But still the scale of the exodus is intriguing many. What has happened for so many Congressmen to contemplate abandoning the mothership? It’s not Modi — he’s been spooking the Congress party since 2014. It’s not Rahul — he’s been tormenting the party since 2004. So why are leaders from the opposition throwing in their towel even before the first shot is fired? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.
THE SAFFRON WIND IS BLOWING
2014 was won because of Modi + Development. 2019’s victory could be attributed to Modi + Nationalism fueled by Balakot. 2024, in all probability, maybe won due to Modi + Widespread Hindu Awakening. The seeds for the awakening were sown when Article 370 was scrapped. When the Modi government consigned Kashmir’s special status to the dustbin of history, he was demolishing India’s most overt sign of Muslim appeasement.
Having found a way out of a seemingly impossible constitutional imbroglio, Modi & Shah, then turned their attention on weeding out the Bangladeshi immigrant problem with the cleverly conceived Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
Modi’s second term began with the banning of Triple Talaq mounted on a Supreme Court Verdict. The term ended with the watershed event of consecration of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya, mounted on yet another landmark Supreme Court Verdict.
Triple Talaq, Immigration, Love Jihad, and Appeasement are the pet peeves of your average Saffronite on the street. In just 5 years, Mr. Modi removed nearly all these barriers. And delivered the 500-year-old promise of the Grand Ayodhya temple, which even neutral Hindus viewed as a healthy sign of overthrowing centuries of cultural subjugation.
All these ‘masterstrokes’ have firmly projected BJP as the party to root for to champion the cause of Hindus.
THE GROWING PERCEPTION OF A MINORITY CONGRESS
In sharp contrast, let’s study the strange postures of the Congress party on matters that matter most to the hardcore Hindu voter.
The Triple Talaq Act was opposed by the Congress as a ‘Historic Mistake’. The party while claiming to support the Supreme Court verdict took a contrarian stance with the lame excuse that they didn’t support the criminalization of instant divorce. A golden chance to fight for gender equality among minorities was sacrificed at the altar of opportunism possibly triggered by electoral worries over Wayanad and Rae Bareli.
As regards CAA, in Assam, the Congress party was up in arms vowing to scrap the law if they came to power. While in Bengal, they were far more muted. A politically wise approach would have been to welcome the accelerated pathway for citizenships to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians, and Parsis from neighboring countries while arguing strongly for inclusion of Muslims on the ground of religious discrimination.
The Hand party’s reaction to Article 370 abrogation was most muddled. When the act was abrogated, its leaders portrayed a grave picture of ‘constitutional murder’. They allied themselves with the Gupkar alliance demanding autonomy for the region, all for a few seats in J&K, forgetting the larger ramifications across the country. What was comical was the U-turn made by the party when the Supreme Court endorsed the abrogation. They welcomed the judgement but demanded immediate restoration of statehood! A classic case of ‘na ghar ka na ghat ka’.
On Love Jihad, the Congress view has been at variance with the Hindu vote bank’s thoughts. The outright denial of the existence of ‘love jihad’ continues to irk many a Hindu.
The party’s biggest goof-up has been how it handled the Ram Temple pran pratishta ceremony. Although the party leadership were invited for the consecration, they declined the invite citing the ‘religion is a personal issue’ clause. By staying away, they allowed BJP to hog all the limelight around the Mandir. Thanks to the leadership’s call, not only are they seen as unsupportive of the Mandir movement but also unwilling to countenance anything Hindu.
When one takes a bird’s eye view of the decisions made by the party in the last 5 years, not even once have they even barely seen as voicing the Hindu view point. On the contrary, they’re always speaking up for the Muslim minority. Which is probably why, from being a secular liberal party the Congress is now viewed as a mainstream version of Asauddin Owaisi.
That took some doing from the Gandhis!
It is this change of perception from a tricolour party to an islamic green party that has damaged its reputation so badly that now all leaders who are proudly Hindu are looking to bolt at the first available invitation.
