Come to think of it, just a hundred days to go before the bugle is sounded again for the general elections to take pace. Yes, the parliamentary poll. That will in other words mean the Election Commission gearing itself all over again to conduct another chapter in history’s numerically largest exercise in a democracy. Which again doesn’t mean much given the backdrop of the just concluded elections to five States of the Union, an exercise that I would love to forget if only for the hate and other misgivings the ruling BJP’s highly communalized campaign has left behind as it lost control of some of the States. BJP’s approach to the just concluded polls is best summed by the schoolboy jibe ‘heads I win tails you lose’. Four years into power the party of Hindutva is yet to convince itself that India is a multicultural, pluralistic State and not Hindu Rashtra of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh’s dreams. And mind you these indeed are the worst of times with Mr. Modi and his saffron flock, led in Uttar Pradesh, which sends the largest number MPs to the Lok Sabha, by a bigoted priest, who as the handpicked Chief Minister of Modi, thinks nothing of innocent citizens, not from his faith being lynched, their bustees spread across the State reduced to ashes on the pretext of cow killings, killing the victims mostly harmless peasantry. And the man himself, Yogi Adityanath of the Gorakhpur Math, clad in saffron from top to toe, unflustered by the killing by uncouth cow bhakts of a Hindu Police Inspector because he was known for his alacrity in dealing with crime, anti-Muslim and its other manifestation, Over here in Gurgaon where I have been living for some time now I witnessed a crazy scene yesterday, performed with ritualistic zeal, by RSS volunteers. It was early Friday afternoon, and I saw scores of swyamsewaks appearing from nowhere, like mushroom, filling up an old maidan with water. I wondered why. Haryana is not particularly rich in water and Gurgaon, the fake millennium city, isn’t one either. A polite inquiry by your reporter and there I had the stark truth. These worthy men, all committed Hindutva protagonists, had discovered that Muslims working in that particular area of Gurgaon would congregate at the open space for Friday prayers. So these good cowmen decided to act. And what did they do to achieve the objective: pots and pans with the odd water container were opened up at the sport making it for the Muslim to pray. And this is no isolated instance. It’s become a routine in many places in the Hindi belt. And the young arrogant Chief Minister send for the cops family two days later, after protests all over, to promise the dead cop’s son a job. How about the killers? That’s the worrisome part of the upcoming parliamentary election. The Bharatiya Janata Party appears to me (hope I am wrong) have granted a general immunity to its goons, from whichever bhagwa front organization, to scare the minorities including the Dalits etc from showing up at the polling booths. I am no prophet of doom but am gravely concerned over the single-minded determination of the BJP, aided and abetted by the administration wherever it is in power, to try subverting the poll results. Many have noticed the new vigour which the party is injecting into its ranks not all a repeat of the just concluded humiliation the part y suffered in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan etc.One fears for the future of India, its position as a secular democratic/tolerant nation; the forces of Hindu Rashtra will not yield that as easily having once tasted power in a ig way. Modi and his alter ego Amit Shah have tested their tactics in the great lab in Gujarat and nearly perfected the art of silencing the opposition. See how all the accused in the Sohrabuddi case, including Shah, have been given a clean chit. How can one overlook the ruthlessness of the Modi Government in continuing its oppressive policies in Jammu and Kashmir. It remains a moot point if the increasing use of snipers by the forces on the LOC means fewer killings than even when blanket firing was the norm. Or, is it a pointer to even more sinister dimension to the seven-decade old military confrontation that appears to be leading neither protagonist forward Even political gains of muscle are marked by diminishing returns. Sadly the national leadership in India and Pakistan is too small to appreciate the human cost of lives wasted for notional gain.
mlk57media@gmail.com