The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) bags are packed for 2019 and the party leaders know it.
The telling signs of failure are everywhere.
To begin with, it’s in the cacophony of sold out news channels when a debate is more of a shouting match and guest panelists are shouted upon and shamed for holding opposing views.
One hears it in the vitriolic tweets when Twitter trolls viciously attack you the minute you put up a critical post. The word “anti national” is too chewed a term for the BJP, and thus a new word is now doing the rounds – “urban Naxals”.
So who are the urban Naxals? As per the BJP’s perceptions, any thinking, well-read, critical person, the conscientious citizens must be urban Naxals.
There are serious charges against Sadhvi Pragya, Lt Col Shrikant Purohit and Swami Aseemanand in the Malegaon Blasts case, and then there are terror outfits like the Sanatan Sanstha with their supporters’ alleged links to Gauri Lankesh’s murder. Members of various fringe Hindu radical groups – apparently linked to the Sanatan Sanstha – were believed to be planning to carry out attacks in Mumbai, Pune, Satara, Solapur and Sangli.
But instead of cracking down on the actual enemy of the State, the government needs an imagined foe so they end up framing concocted charges against dissenters – professors and intellectuals – and in doing this, the government has not only done a disservice to civil society, but has discredited itself as a credible government that safeguards the pillars of the Constitution.
An interviewer in an online portal recently asked a filmmaker (the questions were placed tongue-in-cheek) to define “urban Naxals”. Was it anti-Indian, anti-Hindu, anti-humanity, intellectuals or feminists? That makes us wondering who are not on the list? According to the filmmaker (who claims that journalists like Ravish Kumar should not go out in public lest they get lynched) if one needs to save one’s skin one must speak in favour and shower praises on the government.
One look at the interview proves that not only the filmmaker in question desperately tries to be on the right side of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he seems to have completely lost his marbles.
After stirring the communal cauldron for years, the BJP has now trained its guns on the intellectuals of the country.
BJP needs to realize that they have been elected for a five year period. And that does not make them custodians or zamindars of this land. Serfdom has long been abolished. The real owners of this land are the farmers, peasants, tillers, adivasis and the toiling middle class of the country.
A few hours ago a student got arrested as she allegedly shouted slogans and used the word ‘fascist’. Tamil Nadu BJP president Soundararajan filed a complaint against a 28 year old woman after she allegedly shouted “fascist BJP government down, down’’. This is just one of the chilling and glaring examples of highhandedness of the party in power.
After shaming the seculars by calling them ‘sickular’, Muslims as ‘jihadi’, the BJP has started a new game of shaming activists and intellectuals by calling them tukde tukde gang, break India gang, award wapsi and the likes, the motive being that India would regress into a dark abyss of ignorance, superstitions and irrationality.
A few months ago the government was on a discrediting spree of our freedom fighters right from Mahatma Gandhi to Jawaharlal Nehru, then they travelled further back in time by defiling the Mughals. In doing that they ensured that there was no space left in their new narrative for a just and able Muslim ruler.
This brings us back to the issue of the government’s move that destroyed startups and small businesses of the country. The leaders turn the other way when people are lynched across the country, maintains silence on the alarming situation of women and the girl child but pretends to empathise with “suffering Muslim women”.
After tearing the country apart on communal lines and discourses ably aided by “their” media channels, the BJP is running out of ideas and looking for new ploys and games that would engage the public till the general elections.
If you oppose the present regime or PM Modi you are a jihadi, anti Hindu, anti national and now, urban Naxal.
After this worrisome trend, perhaps it’s time one needs to amplify one’s voice and call out to the real ‘tukde tukde gang’. After all what does one call people who polarise the country on communal lines, helps bank defaulters to abscond, silently gives stamp of approval to lynchings, promotes hatred in the name of cow vigilantism?
The BJP has several failures under its belt, its only fear is the questioning, thinking public who would in time ask the government about jobs promised and other hollow promises made during elections. And until then the government is biding time and trying to detract public attention by keeping the ante up on public discourses from love jihad, ghar wapsi, gau raksha, triple talaq, nikah halala, Jinnah, surgical strike, “plot to kill Modi”, anti-nationals, “Rahul Gandhi bad mouths India abroad”, “national anthem to be played in cinemas” and countless other idiocies that do not concern the youth of the country.
Perhaps it’s time to zero in on the real anti nations of the country who are making concerted efforts to muffle the dissenting voices.
[The views expressed belong solely to the author, and may not reflect the opinions of the editorial team]
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