But they are ours...!

‘Yahya maybe a bastard but he is our bastard’.

A supposed comment made by the US President, Richard Nixon, when the facts of the Pakistani army’s war against the Hindus and Awami League supporters in East Pakistan became known.

To the genteel, such comments may seem horrifying, particularly when this b****** was committing a genocide in East Pakistan. However, what gets missed is that even if in varying degrees, each one of us is blessed / cursed with such sentiments. For one, parents are supposed to be oblivious to shortcomings of their children, friends are supposed to stand up for each other even when in wrong. After all, what are bonds if they are so weak that they cannot stand the strain of some human frailty!

Yet, human culture celebrates as heroic those acts, where actions and their consequences are weighed for their intrinsic worth. Those instances where a mother overcomes her maternal instincts to turn over a renegade progeny aka real life Mother Indias, where a wife kills her husband for his crimes, where one overcome your patriotism and attempt to kill a monster aka Count Stauffenberg, are stuff which legends are made of. The very fact such instances are few indicate that ordinary humans find it easier to turn a blind eye or rationalize acts which seem condemnable when committed by others.

Very soon after the Indian National Congress (not the current namesake but the vanguard of National struggle for Independence) had tasted power in the provinces, it was clear to both the leaders and the general public that the Indian office bearers were not very different when compared to their British counterparts as far as arrogance and a proclivity to enjoy the fruits the fruits of power were concerned. In fact, many of the office bearers saw no harm in using their new found powers to indulge in acts which even in the politest forms, would be called acts of nepotism and corruption. While these developments dismayed Gandhi, other leaders with a high moral quotient and the general public, there was little which they could do. At one level, there wasn’t any alternative to the INC and probably even more importantly, condemning the rogue acts would have been an admission that their beliefs in greatness of their leaders was misplaced.

Such trends continued and with hardening of political identities, party supporters very frequently find themselves indulging in all sorts of reasoning theatrics in attempting to defend the indefensible. This does not necessarily mean that all these supporters have a misbalanced sense of the right and the wrong. The reason could be as mundane as one’s perception of lack of better alternatives, belief in a particular ideology or a probably a deeper instinct of self preservation which makes people unwilling to accept that they had made bad choices. However, the ability of a human being to condone faults and overlook mistakes being limited, it does not take long before a vocal defence makes way for a sullen indifference.

For those who supported the Hindu Mahasabha, the RSS, the Jana Sangh and even the Swatantra Party, BJP’s ascendancy to power was seen as culmination of a decades long struggle. Hence, all these people who supported this political stream with all their might even in years when it had no chance to come to power, were willing to condone a tactical stepping back on those issues which made the BJS/RSS/BJP different from all the other options available in the market. However, which each passing blunder – Tehelka arms sting, the Kandhar hijack, China border agreement give-away, the erstwhile unalloyed support started giving way to convoluted reasoning, chiefly around a comparative logic – ‘Just look at the Congress, they are much worse’. What happens when such logic is stretched to the extremes? You start resembling the one you despise.

Most of the time, exceptional performance in the field of arts, sciences and sports are not a result of a breakthrough but of incremental improvements – a tweak here, a betterment there. It is the collective impact of all minor but continuous improvements spread over a period of time, that differentiate the exceptional from the ordinary.

What holds true for incremental improvements, holds equally true for decremental changes too. A compromise here, a mis-step there, a blunder at yet another occasion – all these together ensure that your USP is lost. The same way, the six year old Vajpayee government, though better in relative sense (vis-à-vis the current dispensation), came to be seen as a Congress clone. The result was a silent disassociation of its core support base and loss of its innate appeal to its natural constituency – the youth, the middle and the intermediate classes.

What we are seeing today is a manifestation of the same phenomenon. The AAP surge was powered by the youth, inspired by its promise to fight corruption. Today, the party is seen to have started adopting those very practices which it stood against – pandering to communal and casteist emotions, tokenism, readiness to grab loaves of office, willingness to compromise with corruption etc. The very vocal volunteers, who have invested so much in making the party a success, are even more vocally defending the party against criticism. The point is – for how long? AAP is running the risk of diluting its core plank of corruption and be seen as another clone of the Congress. If only its supporters realize even if the transgressing b****** is our b******, some course correction is required, for its own good and for the greater good of the country!

AAP aaye bahaar aayi

The election debacle of 1993, when the BJP could win only two of the five assemblies, was in effect a decisive turning point for Hindutva politics in India. Even though the BJP later broke new ground by forming the first saffron Government in Maharashtra, the reality of its limited geographical reach across vast swathes of the country, made the dream of a BJP Government seem very distant. True, the PV Narasimha Rao led Congress Government seemed thoroughly discredited in that summer of 1996, and all polls pointed to BJP becoming the single largest party in the Parliament; still, there seemed little chance of Atal Bihari Vajpayee becoming the Prime Minister, on account of the BJP’s ‘majestic isolation’. Hence, the act of the then President, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, in going by the rule-book and inviting Vajpayee to form the Government, was seen differently by different shades of opinions.

For the secular establishment, it was a travesty of constitutional politics that a party with no chance of obtaining majority being asked to form a Government, for the non-committed, an open invite to the worst forms of political bargaining, and for the BJP supporters & sympathizers, a shot at fulfillment of a decades old dream!

On a personal note, I recall watching the live telecast of the swearing in ceremony, with tears in my eyes. Those were of course, tears of joy for even though a BJP supporter ever since my political consciousness took shape, I had not really thought that a BJP Government was possible for the next many years. Many newspaper reports of those days record wild celebrations and emotions mirroring mine. In many ways, this swearing-in was a proof to people that the BJP, which promised hope, a different governance, could indeed come to power!

It was a short-lived government. Snide comments like ‘Inhone to sirf tareekh mein naam darz karane yeh sarkar banayee thi’, abound and many within the BJP had started talking about the ‘blunder’ and how it had harmed the image of the party.

Hindsight proved that forming that Government, even if for a fortnight, was a masterstroke. By providing the masses with a teaser of a full-fledged government and more importantly, proving that the BJP was a serious contender to power, BJP polled incremental votes from those who were unsure about it. The party’s vote-share, which hovered at around 20% in both the 1991 and 1996 polls, shot up to over 25% in 1998, which incidentally, remains its best showing till date.

How relevant is reminiscing on a decade and half old events?

Very much relevant, because, on a smaller scale, history was repeated at Ramlila Maidan on Saturday, December 28, 2013.

While some may compare the exploits of NTR with that of Arvind Kejriwal, the fact remains that the 1983 victory of Telugu Desam was driven on the wheels of a charismatic God-like personality, who promised to salvage the wounded Telugu pride. On the other hand, the Aam Aadmi Party was led by a virtually faceless individual with a campaign built around mundane issues of corruption and civic amenities, hardly the stuff which manage to arouse passion in voters.

Thank God that Arvind Kejriwal had more sense than the numerous ‘specialists’ found in abundance in television studios. Had he listened to them, he would have buried his movement many a times over: first when he co-shepherded the anti-corruption movement, second, when he launched his solo fast, again, when he launched his political party, once again, when he campaigned against high electricity tariffs, yet again when he decided to run against Sheila Dikshit, over again when he committed the ultimate sacrilege of asking people’s opinion on accepting Congress’s support! Many of these experts have denounced the last act to be a mockery of democracy. If democracy is indeed the will of the people it belies understanding on how can reaching out to people for their opinion be declared a mockery? Is it that we have become so attuned to being treated as vote-casting machines that any exercise of opinion in between those five years seems so much out of the ordinary?

Whatever be the story a few months or years down the lane, as of now, we have lived through a defining moment of our lives when a rank outsider, riding on support of those disdainfully dismissed as non-consequential, has achieved which only weeks back, seemed an impossible dream. As of now, it is difficult to visualize that politics, the way it is practiced will not undergo any change in the days to come.

Had it not been for the AAP, it is quite likely that the insipid Vijay Goel of the BJP would have won the race to the chief ministership. Given that its 15 years exile from power has been extended yet again, it s understandable that much of the BJP’s vitriol has now been directed towards the AAP. Perhaps it fears that the success of AAP, if replicated even on a limited manner Nationally, would seriously impair its quest for power.

What the BJP seems to be missing out is that its attacks on Arvind Kejriwal and AAP more and more resemble the establishment’s campaign against Narendra Modi. Many BJP sympathizers claim that Modi is despised more because he does not ‘belong’ to the inner circle and his coming would draw curtains on many a cosy arrangements within those hallowed groups. If a four term chief minister who had even otherwise spent decades in those byzantinian lanes of Delhi could be termed as an outsider, then someone like an Arvind Kejriwal could well claim to be an alien from the outer space!

If constant tirades, ill founded in logic were a weapon enough to sway voters, then BJP has certainly adopted the right strategy. However, if that be true, then the BJP risks losing much more as the Congress, JDU and many others have adopted precisely the same strategy against it.

The BJP would do well to recognize that the vote for AAP was not a vote against Congress alone. It was a strong rejection of the BJP as well. The masses who voted for AAP did so amidst genuine fears of a Congress comeback on account of the anti-Congress votes getting split in between the AAP and the BJP. That people took this risk in their stride should be a powerful enough indicator to the BJP top brass that in public imagination, it was seen as being in cahoots with the Dikshit Government. In the last 15 years of Delhi and the last 10 years at the Centre, what exactly has the BJP done to prove that it is truly an opposition party? Which major decision of the UPA has the BJP opposed and opposed till its logical conclusion? Its campaigns against the UPA have seemed half hearted and fought more in television studios and in form of Parliamentary disruptions, rather than getting manifest on the street, fighting for issues impacting the common man.

In the recently concluded Parliament session, the BJP had a good chance to bring down this Government by pushing for a no-confidence motion. But for reasons known only to a few, it decided that the Government had lost its ‘moral majority’ and hence was as good as out of power. Is it so? And now, when the UPA comes up with another fiscally disastrous budget/vote on account or manages to promulgate some anti national ordinances, can the BJP really claim that it was not a party to those acts?

An opposition which does not function like an opposition does not deserve to be ever in power. The BJP has a clear choice – of identifying the ‘enemy’ and going for its jugular or of falling back to the act of a loyal opposition. It cannot continue to act as if Nuclear Deal, 2G, Coal Scam, Vadra, CWG, Black Money, are issues one moment and non-issues the other. Blessed with such an opposition, is it a wonder that we have had UPA 1 followed by UPA 2?

In the next few months, the Nation too will have to weigh two choices when opting to boot out this disgrace of a Government; one – voting for a sub-optimal choice in form of the BJP, and two – of voting for AAP and many other parties who one believes are best suited to resolve the Nation’s issues.

If a large chunk of the electorate opts for the latter option, it would be fair to say that the Congress has a very high chance of returning to power. Neither AAP nor any other contender has even a truncated all-India presence and all these entities would find it much easier to prop up a Congress led Government. For all our faults, India certainly does not deserve a UPA 3 and it would be an understatement to call this a tragedy if it thus happens.  

It is for the BJP to decide if it wants to be perceived as a worthy alternate to the UPA. It is neither AAP nor any motley group of activists, but its own sense of hubris, which is standing in its way to power.