Opinion - Editorials   

Discordant notes from Nagpur

The Nagpur meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party was meant to showcase a party on the threshold of wresting power from its rival. The slogan that it highlighted ahead of the conclave, “change at the centre,” indicated its confidence in its impending destiny. But the political vision that it unveiled in the conclave appeared to hark back to the hackneyed past of its Ram Mandir campaign, minority-bashing, and Pakistan phobia. The failure to offer new ideas to add ress the mounting national challenges was glaringly apparent. In his inaugural speech, the BJP president, Rajnath Singh made a startling claim that the sangh parivar alone had proven true to the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. He asserted that the Congress had “nothing related to Gandhi except a family name while we are the ones who are carrying forward his crucial work.” For a party that has taken pride in being the heir to a Hindu nationalist tradition strongly critical of Gandhi, the sudden desire to lay claim to the Mahatma’s legacy was inexplicable. Yet soon enough, even this posturing was abandoned with party stalwarts reverting aggressively to the abrasive themes of the past that had caused it to lose considerable political ground in the earlier election. Typically, the litany of complaints against the United Progressive Alliance government had particular emphasis on issues designed to suggest that the UPA was indulging in minority appeasement, such as communal budgeting, the Sachar report and, above all, a reluctance to attack Pakistan.

While berating the Congress party for its perceived lack of political will in tackling terror, in the same breath, Mr. Rajnath Singh dismissed the entire controversy over the Malegaon terror trail by labelling it “the hoax of Hindu terror.” Other speakers adopted much of the same tone and tenor. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi could not resist taking his usual potshot at Muslims by flinging the barb that there was “inside help” in the recent Mumbai terror attacks. Prime Minister-in-waiting Lal Krishna Advani returned to the rhetoric of “Jai Shri Ram.” Despite earlier indications that Mr. Advani was eager to recast the BJP in a more secular mould, at Nagpur, the signals he sent were to the contrary, with his insisting that “we [BJP] never left Ram.” Conscious of India’s growing pool of young voters, BJP strategists have lately tried to project it as a youth-friendly party. But with only months to go before the 15th general election, the image it has projected is of an obscurantist party with unidimensional agenda. How much momentum the BJP can really gain if it campaigns on such a politically uninspiring platform remains an open question.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Discordant notes from Nagpur
Managing food abundance
Mumbai attacks: anatomy of a failed strategy
The new normal in Pakistan
Economic ripples as business trips are scaled back
Corrections and clarifications
Ram temple issue
Sri Lankan crisis
Hindu Taliban

Copyright © 2009, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu