This story first appeared in Bangalore Mirror

Senior journalist and SAWM member Radhika Ramaseshan traced back her stay at Lucknou and some of the darkest days in Indian history, the demolition of Babri Masjid and the agressive Hindutva politics of the RSS-BJP. Read this article to the days in past.

For the six years that I lived in Lucknow, Ayodhya became a second home. Not a week passed when I was not haring between Lucknow and this pilgrim town of rundown temples and scruffy mahants and sadhus to cover an event, set up by the VHP and the Hindu clergy, little foreseeing that topographically and politically, Ayodhya stood on the cusp of foretelling a fundamental change in India.

My Uttar Pradesh stint was bookmarked by two milestones: the “shilanyas” on November 9, 1989, that laid the foundation stone for a temple on the site of the Babri mosque, reclaimed by faith, might and right as Rama’s birthplace; and the mosque’s demolition on December 6, 1992. The intervening years were about watching Hinduism re-invented unrecognisably by the VHP and its votaries, internalising the jargon that interspersed the cacophony from Ayodhya, discovering political Hindutva and its rapid seepage in the national polity, and seeing a fade-out of UP’s celebrated Ganga-Jamuni “tehzeeb”.

There was communal violence, the BJP’s first government in Lucknow was sworn in 1991 and within little time, the manifestations of its agenda were visible: rewrite history texts, ban animal slaughter and close abattoirs, and rename cities with Islamic names. But nothing prepared me for the final assault on the mosque that winter, over a quarter of a century ago.

A week before the disaster, Kalyan Singh, then chief minister, gave me an interview in which he reiterated an “undertaking” he had given to the Supreme Court about leaving the 2.77-acre disputed area untouched and maintaining the status quo. Wistfully, Singh said he had completed a little over a year in office and had ambitious plans to revamp the administration and industrialise UP. Five years was too short a time to realise his aspirations, he said. I thought aloud whether he had an inkling that some disaster was about to happen on December 6, the date that was assigned for a “symbolic” kar seva in Ayodhya, that might take his job away. He laughed nervously and repeated the “promise” made to the court.

Ground zero held out ominous portents. Every inch of unoccupied land in Ayodhya was taken up by kar sevaks from all over the country, whose numbers swelled by the day. A colleague presciently remarked that this was no ordinary assemblage because the men and women looked angry and purposeful. A senior minister in the NDA government recalled years later that as a kar sevak, who slept in the open near the mosque, his “blood boiled” when he watched the silhouetted domes by moonlight. “When will they fall, I asked myself,” he said. Bands of VHP activists cleared the Muslim hamlets around the mosque of their residents and had the Muslim-owned shops closed. A few brave souls stayed on to guard their properties.

The tension that hung heavy warranted large-scale police deployment but unlike October-November 1990 – when Mulayam Singh Yadav had barricaded the town, fearing an attack on the mosque that he could not foil – in 1992, the BJP government mobilised only a couple of hundred state police and paramilitary personnel and a contingent of the newly formed Rapid Action Force that was posted on Ayodhya’s periphery.

On December 6, we journalists arrived early to see VHP patriarch Ashok Singhal and Faizabad MP Vinay Katiyar supervising the site of the “token” yagya, just outside the mosque. Singhal told us that the kar sevaks would come to the yagya spot in “jathas” (groups) from one side and leave from the other, without entering the disputed place.

We were directed to take our places on the terrace of the Manas Bhawan, a temple overlooking the mosque, but without our pens, notebooks and cameras. Remember this was the pre-digital era. It was another sign that something was about to happen. Our Muslim colleagues had foresight enough to identify themselves with Hindu names. What if we were asked to show our press cards, I wondered, and worried for the Muslim journalists. We weren’t, but that was no mercy because minutes later a couple of kar sevaks, saffron bandanas emblazoned with “Jai Shri Ram”, came up to me and asked where SP Singh, the legendary Hindi journalist, was. SP, obviously targeted for being “anti-BJP”, stood right next to me but I gathered my nerves and said I didn’t know who he was.

As the clock ticked away, chants of “Jai Shri Ram” filled the place and with that, Kalyan Singh’s “promise” and Singhal’s claim of a regimented show were tossed out. The kar sevaks went for the photographers and then the Faizabad journalists they had marked out as adversaries. One petite but doughty woman was tossed into a pit. The cops mutely watched the kar sevaks break through a wooden barricading protecting the mosque, barge into the disputed area and go to work on the structure with shovels, iron rods, pickaxes, and whatever else they could lay their hands on. Singhal made a gesture to rein them in but it was obvious from the faces of the top RSS and BJP leaders – LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharati and KN Govindacharya included – who watched the spectacle from a specially built watchtower, that they savoured those moments. It took three hours for the three domes, perched on a hilltop, to come down.

Delirious with joy, the kar sevaks danced, chanting “Ram Lalla hum aayen hain, mandir yaheen banayenge”. Uma Bharati egged them on with, “Ek dhakka aur do, Babri masjid ko thod do”. Five hours of pummelling and battering was what it took for the 16th century mosque to be reduced to rubble. The hundred-odd Muslim men, women and children who remained in the town were packed into a small room at a police outpost, too frightened to say anything.

Joshi beamed with Uma perched on his shoulders. Advani cried. Were they tears of joy or regret? The latter, I think, because with the mosque gone, Ayodhya as a political programme never regained its old traction for the “parivar”.

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This story first appeared in Mumbai Mirror

The Supreme Court of India has given out the much awaited verdict in Ram mandir-Babri Masjid issue. There are mixed reactions  across the country. Senior journalist and SAWM member Radhika Ramaseshan delves deep into the history of the Ram mandir movement and how that led to this much controversial verdict.

Almost everyone who played a pivotal road in the Ram Mandir movement, 27 years on, finds themselves rendered redundant in the eyes of the ruling dispensation.

Among the myriad paradoxes dotting the political landscape of Ayodhya, perhaps the most striking one is that of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) — the RSS’ militant arm — that nurtured, fast-tracked and sustained a “movement” for the construction of a “bhavya” (magnificent) Ram temple on the mythical birthplace of Rama. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) spearheaded one of the most successful campaigns in independent India, which assumed the size and shape of a warlike operation, culminating in the demolition of the Babri mosque, until the project was seized upon by the BJP which harvested rich political dividends from Ram. As the BJP soared to undreamt-of heights, the VHP faded out, almost in inverse proportion, pinned on the hopes that a legal verdict on the disputed land in Ayodhya will give it a fresh lease on life.

The VHP’s only living link to the memory and legacy of its patriarch, Ashok Singhal, is an eponymous foundation that is ironically located at Gurugram — not Ayodhya — which was second home to Singhal, a resident of Allahabad. Singhal’s mug — in the Sangh’s black cap, his forehead heavily smeared with sandalwood paste and a tilak, which embodies his lifelong commitment to the RSS and an embrace of political Hindutva — looms over the website. The only representatives from the Sangh and the VHP in the foundation are the former’s second-in-command, Suresh ‘Bhaiyya’ Joshi and Champat Rai, the VHP’s vice-president.

The construction of the Ram temple tops the foundation’s charter, a throwback to the power that Singhal commanded in the late 1980s and ’90s until LK Advani emerged as the preeminent protagonist of Ayodhya. Singhal died in 2015 and Advani turned 92 on November 8. One left without seeing a closure to the dispute while Advani — singed, hurt and sidelined by the “parivar” for praising Muhammad Ali Jinnah on a visit to Karachi — might live off sepia tinged (not saffron) memories because he’s out of the current BJP order.

Another supreme oddity in the Ayodhya saga is that it fell on a “mahant” — Yogi Adityanath — to preside over the administration of the state and the epicentre of a potential political seism as the Uttar Pradesh chief minister. Adityanath’s political “guru”, Mahant Avaidyanath, was the Hindu clergy’s face of the temple agitation. His monastery at Gorakhpur was the RSSVHP’s war room to draw up the launch the blueprint that ended in the first assault on the Babri mosque in 1990 and the final decimation in 1992. In a sense, Adityanath, who was involved in the developments as a young protégé of Avaidyanath, is the only living player in a vast troupe that shaped contemporary history in its own way — but with far-reaching consequences — and then dimmed and disappeared from the spotlight.

Most of the characters died, while those who are around have become expendable, although they probably hope that the arc lights might turn on them again on Saturday. So, who are they?

LK Advani, 92

Consigned to the BJP’s “marg darshak mandal”, which some in the party uncharitably call a ‘pensioners’ home’, Advani is usually remembered by the present-day brass, on November 8, his birthday. The BJP evolved a norm to keep those who turned 75 out of active politics. Although he was given a Lok Sabha ticket in 2014 from Gandhinagar, which he won, he was not considered for a place in the Cabinet. If and when the BJP’s history is written objectively, Ayodhya and Advani should justifiably get equal space because if he had not got on to the Ram chariot that traversed the country and ignited the imagination of large sections of Hindus, the Congress would have been in a happy place forever.

Murli Manohar Joshi, 85

He never had Advani’s stature and appeal, although he aspired to stand on a lofty pedestal. The one memory that’s forever etched in minds, is of Joshi beaming when the Babri mosque came down, with Uma Bharati perched on his shoulders. In 2017, a special CBI court charged him and Advani with criminal conspiracy in the 1992 demolition. In 2014, he too was put out to pasture, although he won the seat from Kanpur. He was not given a ticket in 2019.

Kalyan Singh, 87

He was the BJP’s first UP chief minister, who, in his heart of hearts, did not want the mosque to go, because he knew his government would go with it. The “Hindu hriday ka samrat” moniker, often used for Narendra Modi, was coined for Singh, who nearly became the third angle of a triangle, the two other parts of which were Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Advani. Singh never quite made it there eventually. He was the Rajasthan governor in Modi’s first government and is nowhere now. His son is an MP, while a grandson is a minister in the Adityanath government.

Uma Bharati, 60

She got a kick from being called a “sexy sanyasin” and outspokenness proved to be her downfall. Uma could never reconcile her twin personas as a Hindutva votary and a leader of the Lodh-Rajputs, the backward caste to which she belonged. The dilemma turned out to be a bane in a shortlived stint as the Madhya Pradesh chief minister. Advani indulged Uma to the extent he could, but she was a handful and he briefly suspended her from the BJP when he headed the party. She had no such luck with Modi. In his first term, he inducted her as Ganga Rejuvenation minister. Uma did not contest the 2019 election. She was in the news recently for speaking out against the induction of the infamous Gopal Kanda, an independent MLA, in the BJP’s Haryana government. She probably realised she had nothing to lose.

Vinay Katiyar, 64

The former Faizabad-Ayodhya MP was Singhal’s favourite because he was an agent provocateur who could stoke the crowds in A political strategist par excellence, he headed Advani’s cabal of strategists for a long time. Vajpayee never took to him and Govindacharya was eased out of the BJP when Vajpayee was the PM. He played the swadeshi economics card for a while, but that got him nowhere once the BJP embraced reforms.

KN Govindacharya, 76

A political strategist par excellence, he headed Advani’s cabal of strategists for a long time. Vajpayee never took to him and Govindacharya was eased out of the BJP when Vajpayee was the PM. He played the swadeshi economics card for a while, but that got him nowhere once the BJP embraced reforms.

Swami Chinmayananda, 72

An alias for infamy. Thrice a BJP MP from various UP constituencies, he was discovered by Singhal, who admired his capacity to mobilise crowds as well as resources. Chinmayananda was appointed as the convenor of the Ram Janmabhoomi Mukti Sangharsh Samiti, created to take the movement to the streets. He has been in jail in Shahjahanpur after he was convicted for the rape of a law college student. He is considered to be a “guru bhai” of the UP chief minister, although they are separated by 25 years. Adityanath tried to bail out his soul brother but failed against public outcry.

Nritya Gopal Das, 79

He’s the head of Ramjanmabhoomi Nyas, the VHPsponsored trust, which was set up to build the Ram temple. He is the custodian of Mani Ram ki Chavani, Ayodhya’s largest temple, which has a pillar engraved with the entire Bhagwad Gita. Unlike his combustible predecessor, Mahant Ramchander Das Parmahans, his articulations are more nuanced and he gave an impression that it was essential to bring the Islamic clergy on board the temple, to the VHP’s dislike.

Sadhvi Rithambara, 55

She competed with Uma Bharati in coining and chanting inflammatory slogans. She receded from the VHP’s radar with time and now runs a state-of-the-art gym and therapy centre in East Delhi and a martial arts school for women in Vrindavan.

Acharya Dharmendra

His distinguishing sartorial mark was the white toga-like drape that he wore with his dreadlocks. Dharmendra was an integral part of the VHP’s steering committee. In 2008, a Rajasthan court sentenced him to a year’s imprisonment for a hate speech delivered at a religious congregation. Despite his pronounced anti-Muslim record, his son Somendra Sharma and daughter-in-law Archana are important members of the Rajasthan Congress. Dharmendra campaigns for them in elections, despite the fact that, in other forums, he traduces the Gandhis.

Mulayam Singh Yadav, 79 and Lalu Prasad, 71

Once the heartland’s Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Mulayam was UP chief minister and Lalu his Bihar counterpart when Advani’s rath trundled through the countryside. Mulayam desperately looked to arrest Advani on home ground, but the-then PM VP Singh, who had issues with Mulayam, ensured that Lalu stole the limelight for the act in Bihar. Mulayam and Lalu had created captive minority vote banks for their respective parties. They are in the twilight of their political careers.

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The article first appeared in MumbaiMirror

The tension regarding the Ayodhya verdict by the Supreme Court of India is gradually mounting within the Central government and the State government of Uttar Pradesh. In such an atmosphere journalist and SAWM member Radhika Rameseshan throws  light on a different incident which has become important in the recent context. To know more read the article.

As the temple-mosque “dispute” heads towards a pivotal moment, the Centre and Modi will be on test for holding back the Hindu firebrands

For once Yogi Adityanath, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister who survived the crises in his tenure with a smirk, is on the backfoot. His police’s vain claim to have solved the murder of the founder of the Hindu Samaj Party in Lucknow within 24 hours has been hotly challenged by the kin of the victim, Kamlesh Tiwari. Unmistakeably, under the diktat of the political masters – or may be directives are no more required after Lucknow’s establishment absorbed the BJP and Yogi’s working mores – the police’s plot connected the dots in the Tiwari’ three clerics from Surat and Bijnor and two laypersons, also from Surat. All of them were nabbed. The murder was done allegedly to pay back Tiwari for insulting Prophet Mohammad back in 2015. Why it took five years to get at a “mohalla” leader of no political heft through an elaborate web of conspiracy is puzzling.

Tiwari’s mother was not convinced. She blamed a local politician linked to the land mafioso for the killing and boldly spoke her piece to the camera. She said the criminals wanted their temple land. Surprisingly, the UP channels played the mother’s outburst in a loop while Tiwari’s son, Satyam, said he had doubts if the quintet in detention were the actual culprits.

Ideally, a dram of communal churn suits Adityanath and the BJP because their politics is firmly moored to underlining religious divisiveness. The Hindus need to be reminded that the “terror threat” (that’s what the chief minister called Tiwari’s murder) is pervasive through the agency of the “maulanas” and their followers, while Muslims require repeated warnings that their adventurism, targeting Hindus, will not be countenanced. But the Tiwari family’s version obviously convinced many more persons because clan feuds within the Hindu “parivar” are the staple of temple and faith politics. Petty fights over a piece of land or a niche on a “ghat” overlooking a river bank or temple offerings have claimed lives in UP’s pilgrim hubs. When the VHP created a golden goose out of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, innumerable sadhus and mahants wanted to make a quick killing that the RSS disallowed. Instead it let the “movement” linger on so that the BJP could feather its electoral nest.

Those who believe in the land grab angle of the Lucknow murder outnumber those who think there may be a terror plan. Yogi’s theory threatens to ricochet on him.

Like other political tactics, the “communal” card is not inexhaustible, even in the current ambience of a Hindutva overload. After all, the Ram temple yielded dividends to the BJP until the mid-’90s after which its thinkers and strategists dived deep into other wellsprings, far removed from Ayodhya, and hit pay dirt.

The Centre and the BJP must be looking expectantly and nervously at the Ayodhya verdict from the Supreme Court that will come in mid-November. Expectant, because the temple-mosque plank, that carries the weight of troubled history, is an extravagantly embroidered piece of fiction and flaunts political success, will likely divert attention from a rickety economy. Importantly, the perennially defensive Opposition will be lost for words. Nervous, because the hotheads in the Hindu clergy as well as the VHP will legitimately demand that they helm the process of temple construction.

Can Adityanath rein in such elements or more pertinently, is he inclined to? Adityanath’s spiritual forbear, Mahant Avaidyanath, was inseparable from the VHP although for form’s sake he maintained a separate identity as the custodian of the Gorakhnath monastery. He was as political as the next BJP leader and won elections from Gorakhpur before passing on the baton to Adityanath. Although the UP administration has girded Ayodhya with police, if the VHP and the sadhus were to break into celebrations or protests, depending on which way the verdict goes, there’s no way Adityanath will crack down on them.

What of the Centre? Prime Minister Narendra Modi has had a problematic relationship with the VHP and never thought twice of containing its leaders in Gujarat when they were out to create problems, while allowing the VHP and Pravin Togadia a free run in 2002. Can Modi afford to be tough with the VHP and the clergy, however compelling the reasons might be? The reality is that today, after the VHP lost its spearheads such as Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore and Onkar Bhave, it’s a shadow of its former self. The president, VS Kokje, a retired judge, is rarely seen or heard while the working president, Alok Kumar, a lawyer, once told me he fashioned his politics after Vajpayee and believed that being a “moderate” was the key to success.

If the verdict favours the Hindu petitioners, the chances are without losing time, the Centre will step in and take custody of the Ramjanmabhoomi Nyas, a trust that was created by Adityanath’s guru to raise funds and mobilise support. The Nyas will initiate the procedure for building a temple, with or without the VHP. That’s the scenario that would suit the government supremely.

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The relationship between the ruling party & the opposition shapes the political scenario of a country. Especially when the ruling party recognizes the value of the opposition and the opposition develops a strategy with a vision for the long run. The recent meeting of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee with Prime Minister Narendra Modi & Home minister Amit Shah in New Delhi showed the respect and courtesy that should be there in the rivalry of Parliamentary politics. Journalist & SAWM India member Radhika Rameseshan writes about this revisiting the times of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and comparing it with present time.

One of the most thought-provoking images last week that captured the state of the relationship between the ruling BJP and the Opposition was of Mamata Banerjee’s call on PM Narendra Modi, and Home Minister Amit Shah. The Trinamool Congress (TC) president and West Bengal CM had confronted the NDA government, knowing or not knowing that she might have to pay a political price for her ceaseless opposition. Pay she did. The investigative agencies hounded her apparatchiks, zoomed in wherever there was a whiff of an economic offence involving her political aides and relatives, and above all, the BJP mounted a brilliant campaign against her in the Lok Sabha elections that levelled, if not, elevated the playing field for the party in West Bengal.

Mamata’s Delhi visit was built up by the TC days before she arrived, signifying that it carried far more importance for her than the BJP.  She raised the matter of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), intended to sift the “infiltrators” (ostensibly from Bangladesh) from bona fide nationals, possibly knowing that she ran into a cul-de-sac because the issue is at the heart of the BJP’s politics. There’s an Assembly election to be fought in 2021, projects to be completed and funds to be procured from the Centre.

Still, as optics went, Mamata’s sojourn messaged a political lesson for the Opposition: a Centre, ruled by a brute majority, helmed by an extremely powerful duo that is single-mindedly committed to fulfilling an agenda laid down by the paterfamilias, the RSS, forever consolidating the old and seeking out new electoral constituencies and fighting each poll as though it was the last one, had etched the battlelines on the political landscape too ineradicably to be blurred by fleeting overtures from an adversary.

Mamata must have recalled that when her TC was an NDA constituent in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s time, she had the then Prime Minister and his deputy LK Advani at her beck and call. At the sign that Mamata was about to throw a shindy, Vajpayee would mobilise his trouble-shooters, defence minister George Fernandes, and Sudheendra Kulkarni, then an official in the PMO, to rush to Kolkata and mollify the lady. She often ended up having her way.

It helped that Vajpayee’s NDA was critically dependent on mercurial allies while the coalition in its current avatar is not. “What if” scenarios are eternally tantalising to imagine. Perhaps, it is time to ask that if Vajpayee was similarly endowed with an unassailable parliamentary majority, how would he have conducted himself with the day’s Opposition? Run roughshod over it or be accommodative? Who is to know for certain? However, certain circumstances can be factored in construing a narrative.

Vajpayee was essentially a creature of the much-maligned Lutyens’ Delhi, unpretentious in appearance and cosmopolitan in sense and sensibility. He was a deep-rooted heartland politician who was more comfortable wearing a dhoti-kurta and using Hindi but was acutely aware that language was as polarising and emotive a subject as faith in India and was best not tampered with. He understood and appreciated the nuances of foreign and economic policies and, pertinently, recognised that the Opposition would have to be engaged as much in a spirit of consensus as dissension.

Vajpayee recognised the Opposition’s value in negotiating a political crisis. He remembered that Pakistan was “shocked” when a former Congress Prime Minister, PV Narasimha Rao, sent him to disseminate India’s viewpoint at a UN Convention in Geneva as an Opposition leader. He counselled Islamabad that an Opposition did not merely exist to needle and dislodge the government but to foster national causes. More famously, when Parliament was besieged by terrorists in December 2001, Sonia Gandhi, the then Congress president, was not in the Lok Sabha. On hearing of the attack, she promptly called Vajpayee to ask if he was safe. Vajpayee’s response was that when the Opposition leader was concerned about the PM’s well-being in a national calamity, democracy was safe.

At times, Vajpayee got so impatient with the BJP’s “contrarians” that he expediently deployed the Opposition to fend off their pressures. Recollect that in 2003, when the US wanted India to dispatch its troops to Iraq, Vajpayee’s top ministers, Jaswant Singh and Advani, readily agreed. Vajpayee disagreed with them. He invited the Left leaders, Harkishan Singh Surjeet and AB Bardhan, over for tea and tentatively broached the subject of sending the troops, to which Surjeet and Bardhan stated that India must not. Vajpayee’s reaction was he couldn’t live with domestic discord which the Left leaders read as a cue to step up their protests. The Left’s street demonstrations came in handy to Vajpayee to “convince” his colleagues that it was best for India to keep off Iraq. He got what he wanted from the Opposition.

But then, the Opposition itself was qualitatively different some 20 years ago. It was ruled by stalwarts who were wedded to political ideologies, distinguished the correct from the incorrect, and believed that India’s hard-fought independence and the foundation laid by a finely debated and thought-through Constitution must not be bartered away for expediency and short-sighted gains.

To begin at the beginning: is an impregnable parliamentary majority irreconcilable with evolving a political consensus in Parliament? We have history for a guide. In the Congress’ heydays under Indira Gandhi, the Opposition was mostly squashed, except when things reached a tipping point, as in 1977, when the non-Congress parties managed to cobble a front of sorts and dislodge the Congress government. It was not the Opposition’s victory as much as the people’s resolve to vanquish Indira Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi was elected with a majority of 410 that has still not been beaten. Yet, at the end of five years, a tenuous Opposition, made up of 106 members from 12 parties, shook Rajiv’s government from within and outside, by resigning en masse from Parliament when Rajiv refused to step down as PM to take responsibility for a bungled arms purchase from Bofors.

Where is the Opposition today? In the doldrums under a ruling party that seems so singularly adept in getting on top of and out of seemingly intractable problems that the Opposition’s platter remains empty.

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The BJP  is the most avid patron of the election marketplace, angling for the disgruntled and the discontent among rivals.

Last Saturday, the Congress, sapped internally with the serial defections to the BJP, was about to suffer another haemorrhagic stroke that was apparently arrested after the news went viral. Jitin Prasada, the scion of Jitendra Prasada – whose patrician good looks were as much of a talking point as his political ingenuity – was reportedly in serious negotiations with the BJP, with the proviso he would be its candidate from Uttar Pradesh’s Dhaurahra, the constituency that he lost to the BJP in 2014. It appeared that only a formal announcement was awaited because Jitin had run out of patience with the Congress. In the October of 2001, Prasada senior had challenged Sonia Gandhi in a rare election to the post of the Congress president that he lost because his associates of yore, notably PV Narasimha Rao, ditched him. Jitendra was political secretary to Rajiv Gandhi  and Rao.

Jitendra’s dare to Sonia did not impede his son’s rise in the Congress. He was counted among Rahul Gandhi’s aides and last appeared publicly in the Gandhi siblings’ road show at Lucknow. Jitin was nominated from Dhaurahra but his gripe was that two adjoining constituencies, Kheri and Sitapur, had gone to Muslims. Why did that matter? Jitin feared the presence of Zafar Ali Naqvi and Kaisar Jahan (both former MPs) would imperil his election by polarising the electorate on communal lines and benefit the BJP. Congress insiders also said he had promised the two seats to his nominees, convinced that his “proximity” to Rahul would swing a favourable response. If his father took Rao’s support for granted, Jitin thought Rahul was his endorser. Both erred.

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah might look disparagingly at the crème de la crème of Lutyens’ Delhi, but, like the others in the BJP, they have a weakness to cultivate the elite. Jitin is one. He’s a Brahmin of covetable pedigree: Purnima Devi, Rabindranath Tagore’s niece, Jwala Prasada, an ICS officer, and Pamela Prasada from the Kapurthala royalty are his ancestors. So he wasn’t just another acquisition. “Thoroughbreds” aren’t necessarily winners. This was proved in 2014 when Rekha Verma, who described herself as a “trader” in her CV, bested her rivals and pushed Jitin down to a fourth place. The BJP hasn’t yet re-nominated Rekha while declaring the nominees for the seats around Dhaurahra – a pointer to its interest in Jitin.

Five years ago, when large swathes of India were swamped with the “Modi mania”, the BJP handed out tickets somewhat indiscriminately, convinced that Modi was enough to underwrite a win. Maheish Girri, who was elected from East Delhi, was recommended by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Art of Living founder, while Babul Supriyo, a playback singer, who won from West Bengal’s Asansol, made it by dint of a “chance” meeting with Ramdev. BJP lore says Ramdev asked Supriyo if he wanted to contest. Supriyo said yes and the story had a happy ending.

The BJP maintains an open-door policy and has an eclectic bunch of newcomers but would love to get in the gilt-edged to give a patina of savoir vivre that might force the Lutyens’ zone to give a once-over.

In the 1990s, roping in “outsiders” was not much about foraging for candidates as seeking legitimacy that was undermined by the divisive and combustible Ayodhya campaign. The Babri mosque’s demolition underlined the breach between a growing number of Hindutva adherents and a declining population of secular liberals that still exists in some measure. The BJP framed the polemics as a chasm between India and “Bharat” although LK Advani was among the first to feel distinctly uncomfortable with the divide. He reached out to the social and economic elite and was keen to repackage the BJP as another version of Australia’s Christian Democratic Party. The induction of individuals such as Yashwant Sinha (from the Janata Party) and PR Kumaramangalam (from the Congress) softened the brutish edges that “Hindutva” inflicted. Kumaramangalam was the son of S Mohan Kumaramangalam, who started out as a Communist and in the ’70s shaped Indira Gandhi’s socialist agenda.

In the Modi-Amit Shah regime, inductions are more about identifying candidates because they know the BJP has attained a level of success Advani would never have dreamt of and need not prove anything to anyone. The parameters have changed to the extent that instead of relying on a Ramdev for a testimonial, the duo gets down to brass tacks such as caste and the ability to work local networks advantageously. Other factors apart, Jitin’s utility lies in him being a Brahmin. The BJP has to seriously court Brahmins in Uttar Pradesh where Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister, leans excessively on the side of the Rajputs.

In 2014, the “Modi wave” could absorb local infirmities so seamlessly that in places, voters didn’t care less who their candidate was. A wave has a life span. Once it ebbs, it takes quite a bit for a wave to rise again. BJP insiders have placed a greater premium on candidates this time than in the last election. Why else would the party have dropped candidates wholesale in Chhattisgarh after it was routed in the December 2018 elections? Is there a sense that Modi alone cannot guarantee a win? Doubtless, the BJP has an upper hand over the Opposition that is beginning to look fractious. But the hunt for suitable suitors will go on.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s own. The opinions and facts expressed here do not reflect the views of Mirror and Mirror does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.

source: Mumbai Mirror

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah brought down the curtain on LK Advani’s 68-year-old career in the BJP and its progenitor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Advani, 91, will not contest the Lok Sabha election. He was not renominated from Gandhinagar, a seat he held since 1991 but for a brief interregnum. BJP president, Amit Shah, will replace Advani from Gujarat’s capital.

That Shah was Advani’s election agent in the past several elections makes the contest easier because of the deep networks he has built among the BJP workers, interest groups as well as the voters. This will be Shah’s first election to Parliament although he was elected to the Gujarat legislature several times.

Shah’s prospective entry in the Lok Sabha recommends him for a top position in the Modi government in case it returns in May, possibly as the Home minister, a portfolio he held in Gujarat under Modi. The Modi-Shah duo is known in the BJP to think several steps ahead of their colleagues.

Although Shah was brought into the Rajya Sabha to initiate him into Parliament, as it were, for the past few years, the BJP was abuzz with the speculation that he would replace Advani in Gandhinagar.

A section in the BJP wanted to sweeten Advani’s exit by offering the seat to his daughter, Pratibha, but given the Modi-Shah antipathy towards political dynasts, the suggestion was rejected out of hand.

It is almost certain that Advani — who was pensioned off to the highsounding ‘marg darshak mandal’ back in 2014 with a host of other seniors — will not be considered for any role in the BJP or government. The political end raises a host of questions over quotidian matters that typically worry leaders: whether he can return a bungalow in Lutyen’s Delhi, retain a staff, and most importantly, the NSG security ring around him.

What’s also inevitable is that Advani’s peers, Murli Manohar Joshi and Shanta Kumar, will be denied tickets. Veteran Kalraj Mishra  of Uttar Pradesh saw the writing on the wall. A week ago, he said he was opting out of electoral politics to “work” for the party. Yashwant Sinha, who was similarly binned in 2014, revolted, left the BJP and is likely to contest from a Delhi seat with the AAP and Congress’s support.

Shah’s prospective debut in the Lok Sabha signals the coming of a new generation of leaders which will replace a line-up that was nurtured and promoted by Advani.

Prominent among them is Sushma Swaraj  who announced she will not fight from Vidisha for health reasons. Arun Jaitley is the only leader from this vintage who has the confidence of Modi and Shah. Indeed, he’s heading the campaign committee with Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal, the rising stars in the present regime.

Just as the Modi-Shah ‘jodi’ ensured that the government and the BJP were perfectly in line, in case Modi is back as the PM, it’s a given that Shah will be the second-in-command. The insinuation, voiced internally in the BJP at times, about Gujarat’s overwhelming dominance over the power structures seldom bothered Modi and Shah because of their common credo that in the mind, winning an election was all that mattered.

The BJP, tutored and shepherded by the RSS, ensures generational changes with a little more ease than the other parties although dissensions and discontent have spilled out publicly in the past as when Advani opposed Modi’s candidacy as the PM. By then the Sangh had made up its mind that Advani’s “shenanigans” would not be countenanced because having been given a chance as the BJP’s PM candidate once in 2009, he failed to deliver the seats.

Advani could not have faced a more inglorious finale than what came yesterday. Sources close to him maintained till the last that he was “physically and mentally fit” to keep going for another five years as an MP. He joined the RSS in 1941as a 14-year-old in Karachi and was taken in the Jana Sangh in 1951with Syama Prasad Mookerjee.

Whatever his twilight years might have been like, the country’s political annals will have a place for him as the leader who took the BJP to new heights albeit through controversial and divisive means. Advani was Modi’s patron and fought to keep him as the Gujarat chief minister after the 2002 violence when Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then the PM, wanted him out.

His exit proves that in politics nobody is anyone’s chela.

source: Mumbai Mirror

Mayawati, UP gathbandhan’s central pole, has been ambushed by the Congress and cornered by the Centre

Mayawati  seems like a rabbit caught in the headlights. The Congress, which ought to be fighting to re-establish its legitimacy and relevance in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha  election, is playing catch up with the BSP chief, who has slopped downward since 2012 but has not touched rock bottom. The BSP’s vote share in the 2014 Lok Sabha election was 27.42 per cent as against the Congress’ 18.25 per cent, although the latter won the bronze by managing to keep the Amethi and Rae Bareli seats while Mayawati got nothing. Last week, the Income Tax swooped on Net Ram at his palatial Lucknow house after it learnt that he had allegedly evaded paying tax worth Rs 90 crore. Net Ram was in Mayawati’s camarilla each time she was the chief minister and among the Dalit IAS officers she chose as an adviser. After he retired, he was doing political work for the BSP.

Hours after the IT sortie, Mayawati sealed the speculation over the Congress’ likelihood of becoming part of the UP gathbandhanthat she formed with the Samajwadi Party  and the Rashtriya Lok Dal. To buttress her assertion, she stated that she will not have an alliance with the Congress anywhere else although there was no guesswork to the effect at all. It was almost as though she had directed her partner, Akhilesh Yadav, to stop shuffling about with his ambiguous statements, of yes the Congress is part of our coalition, no it isn’t. Did Mayawati come out categorically to buy peace with the Centre after the Net Ram crackdown? That was the conjecture in the establishment.

From that moment, however, for the Congress and Priyanka Gandhi , it was payback time. Mayawati was on top of Priyanka’s radar and the BJP and Narendra Modi , down below. Priyanka rushed to Meerut to meet Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan, the Bhim Army chief, who was arrested and hospitalised after taking ill. Ravan, who hasn’t yet formed apolitical party, is a Dalit-Jatav from western UP like Mayawati and perceived by the Congress and BJP as her foil. The BJP, which instantly courts a promising entity, hasn’t looked at Ravan seriously so far but Kopulla Raju, a former bureaucrat who heads the Congress’ scheduled caste cell, spent time assessing the Bhim Army when Ravan was arrested under NSA in 2017 and talked him up to Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka.

Priyanka’s point was not so much to seek the Bhim Army out as an ally as put down Mayawati and her puncture her purportedly inflated self-image. Anyone half-way familiar with UP’s ground realities knows that the BSP and Mayawati were not birthed by a couple of events. The party was the fruit of decades of idealism and hard work put in by the indomitable Kanshi Ram. Unfortunately, his propensity to strike compromises with incompatible parties such as the BJP to seat his protégé Mayawati as the chief minister weakened the BSP’s bedrock. On the other hand, the Bhim Army sprouted, almost spontaneously, from the clashes between Dalits and the Rajputs in the Saharanpur region after Yogi Adityanath became the chief minister. There’s no knowing how well informed Priyanka is of the evolution of the Dalit political sensibility in north India years and years after playing second string to the high castes, as it happened in the Congress’ balmy years.

Mayawati’s response to Priyanka was just as swift and naive. She courted Andhra Pradesh’s fledgling politician Pawan Kalyan of the Jana Sena Party, who the Congress pursued and gave up. She declared that she would fight jointly with him in Andhra and Telangana and announced he would be the CM if the alliance won. Pawan in turn anointed her as the PM-in-waiting.

Akhilesh Yadav, the UP gathbhandhan’s other pole, is as beleaguered as Mayawati, with a father (Mulayam Singh Yadav) who will not reconcile to being history after willingly passing on the baton to his son back in 2012. Among other factors, the Yadav family feud had left the Samajwadi workers confused and dispirited when Akhilesh lost the elections in 2017. Mulayam’s off-the-cuff remarks—his endorsement of Modi when Lok Sabha concluded was something Akhilesh cannot live down-—was a constant worry. As was uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav’s single-point agenda to damage the Samajwadi. After the estrangement with Akhilesh, Shivpal floated his own party, the Progressive Samajwadi Party Lohia, which Mulayam promptly “blessed”.

Yet, the Samajwadi Party president is doing whatever he can to steady the gathbandhanboat. Perhaps realising that it won’t help to make an arch foe of the Congress and score an own goal, he modulated his articulation after Mayawati’s dares to the Congress and said in arecent interview that the gathbandhan had not “left” two seats (Amethi and Rae Bareli) for the Congress. “We are taking them together on two seats. The language is important to me,” he emphasised.

The gathbandhan is still seen as one of the BJP’s big challengers in the elections. Arithmetic is on its side. If the creases are straightened out, it could be even-steven on the battle-ground.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s own. The opinions and facts expressed here do not reflect the views of Mirror and Mirror does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.

source: Mumbai Mirror

Modi and Shah have injected professionalism in the BJP that’s out of step with the ‘chalta hai’ ways of the past

India’s West has left an ineffaceable stamp on the BJP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah , the party president, do not belong to the north although Modi adopted Uttar Pradesh as a second home. The bureaucrats Modi relies on are from Gujarat. If the RSS is looking to groom a younger person as a potentate, some years from now, the odds are it would be Devendra Fadnavis , the Maharashtra chief minister.

Modi’s antipathy towards Delhi is not confined to that elitist zone that contains neo-Classical architecture with accents borrowed from India’s Mughal and Buddhist past. That’s Lutyens Delhi, named after its eponymous creator. To Modi and Shah, Lutyens Delhi is loathsome, signifying everything that’s “venal” and “uppish” about politics, although both are ensconced on its terrain and seemingly love the accoutrements. Modi and Shah have also shown impatience with the dawdling style of functioning, characteristic of the feudal North, where power politics hinges on personal camaraderie and decision making is opaque and protracted.

Nitin Gadkari  brought a dose of the West’s professionalism when he became the BJP president in December 2009. He junked the 9 am (people strolled in after 11am) to 5 pm timeline the party followed and began working after sundown until the crack of dawn. Gadkari’s “system”, as the BJP’s Northerners called it, was as incomprehensible to them as was his penchant to use Mumbai patois with the cuss words and cut to the chase without the pehle aap  preface. He remade the BJP’s old headquarters. The spick gave the Lutyens structure a corporate look. Because he was all about “development”, articulated in the fashion of Mumbai’s business folks, and seldom alluded to ideology and morality even in an ersatz context, Gadkari wasn’t accepted by the cadre at large. For instance, the net literates he used for the 2012 Uttar Pradesh election picked the candidates entirely through a software programme that factored in caste compositions and past poll data without considering ground realities. Sacrilege for UPites used to long-listing and short-listing nominees after protracted meetings, intrigues and brawls.

Modi formed the perfect fit between professionalising politics and adhering to the RSS-BJP’s ideology. To the thousands who sought politics as a career, he held out hope. To the Sangh’s faithful, who couldn’t divest their ambitions of weltanschauung or a fraction of it, he validated the belief that there was nothing amiss in seeing politics as a vocation.

Rajnath Singh headed the BJP when Modi became the PM. Rajnath wasn’t the partner Modi would have wanted. Soaked in UP politics, he was used to dithering on decisions unless the outcome meant getting even with an adversary. When Atal Bihari Vajpayee wanted Kalyan Singh out of the BJP, Rajnath was the UP party president. He lost no time in serving his long-time rival as how-cause notice. Yet in 2013, at the famous BJP national executive meet in Panaji, when it was more or less clear that Modi would head the campaign committee before the 2014 election in a gradational process to eventually anoint him as the PM candidate, Rajnath waffled. He faced stiff opposition from veteran LK Advani and was afraid to bite the bullet. Somebody there counselled Rajnath to be “brave”, conduct himself like a “Rajput” and announce Modi’s name. He did.

Modi sensed Rajnath’s pehle aap  predicament wouldn’t be in synch with his notion of the BJP as a get-up-and-go enterprise. In 2015, shortly after Rajnath was appointed the home minister, he made way for Shah to head the BJP. Modi beamed when his protégé-turnedfirmest ally took the baton at a spectacular function. The hallmark of the Modi-Shah regime is the ability to celebrate victories at every level—from panchayat to assembly elections—and downplay defeats, even those as conclusive as the ones in Delhi and Bihar. Indeed, Modi and Shah were focussed on destabilising the Delhi and Bihar governments from day one. Arvind Kejriwal, the Delhi CM, confronted the duo, paid a heavy price at times but managed to pursue and execute his core political agendas despite the deterrents. Nitish Kumar , the Bihar CM, older and perhaps more pragmatic than Kejriwal, didn’t have an appetite to fight Modi and Shah. He dumped his electoral allies and teamed up with the BJP that largely let him run the government the way he chose to.

Notice how Modi and Shah wasted no time moping over the loss of three states last December. Their political reflexes kicked in fast and furious. There was no chintan baithak called to introspect and weep. Instead, the BJP and the government announced a 10 per cent quota in education and jobs for economically weaker sections (read upper castes) and from then on, policies directed at targeted beneficiaries rolled in serially.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s own. The opinions and facts expressed here do not reflect the views of Mirror and Mirror does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.

source: Mumbai Mirror

Ambush, retaliation, buoyancy to a reluctant pause—the latest India-Pak bump could polarise the country’s polity to the BJP’s advantage

One has no way of knowing how the Varthamans of Chennai  looked at the spectacles of flag waving that were on display after their son, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman , returned on being freed from Pakistan’s captivity. The family is extraordinarily understated. From day one, when the news of the wing commander’s landing after ejecting from his fighter jet in Pakistan broke, his parents took immense care to keep themselves away from the media that had amassed outside their residence. But for a belated recognition and salutation of Air Marshal (retired) Simhakutty and his wife, Dr Shobha, on board a Chennai-Delhi flight, they avoided the spotlight.

On March 1, when Abhinandan landed at the Palam airport and his parents waited to receive him, television media had congregated to capture the reunion. Antsy anchors harangued the reporters on call for visuals but drew ablank because the shaded windows of the air force cars that ferried the family whizzed past with nary a glimpse of the wing commander and his folks.

Abhinandan’s mother was a doctor with Medicine Sans Frontiers and served as an anaesthesiologist in conflict-ridden countries the world over. His sister, Adithi, is a post-doctoral researcher in cancer at Paris’s Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers. A social media habitué ostensibly traced Adithi on the net and penned a poem for Abhinandan called “My Brother with a Bloodied Nose” that was attributed to her until the writer revealed himself as Varun Ram Iyer. The poem was a pardonable sideshow. Of graver concern is Abhinandan’s politicisation by the BJP.

He doubtless deserved the nation’s collective applause for the trauma he was subjected to in Pakistan and his remarkable forbearance, but what is to be made of the attempts to quarry the courage of an IAF pilot for votes? Barely had Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan  announced that Abhinandan would be returned as a “gesture of peace” than Narendra Modi declared at ascience and technology ministry function that, “Just now one pilot project has been completed. Now we have to make it real, earlier it was just practice.” If Khan’s phrase sounded hollow because there’s no let-up in cross-border skirmishes and killings,Modi’s pun was traduced as tasteless and the sentence that followed as menacing. What did the words “real” and “practice” signify?

The day Abhinandan was back, Modi conjugated his heroism with the nation’s horsepower as though India had just won a war. What was the strength sourced to? “Abhinandan used to mean congratulations in English. And now the meaning of Abhinandan will change. This is the strength of this country,” the PM said at a housing ministry function. BJP president Amit Shah equated Abhinandan’s “bravery and valour” with Modi’s diplomatic skills. “Pakistan bowed down before the diplomatic pressure put by the leadership of PM Narendra Modi and ordered his release within 24 hours,” Shah said.

The problem is if the current circle of events is showcased as a “triumph” of Indian diplomacy, “successful kutniti” (diplomacy) by itself is hard to sell in the welter of emotions triggered by Pulwana and Balakot. Here, the Modi cannot be accused of propaganda excesses because Pakistan had painted itself into a corner, first when ally China was equivocal and then refused to condemn India’s retribution and later when the Saudi Crown Prince discreetly intervened to effect a truce. Pakistan’s foreign minister churlishly boycotted Sushma Swaraj’s speech at the OIC to which India was invited for the first time. Eventually the OIC balanced its stance, lauded Imran Khan’s “gesture of goodwill to de-escalate tension” and condemned the “atrocities” and “human right violations” in Kashmir. These are talking points in chat shows but how will they click in an “adda” over “chaat” and “chai”?

By fusing diplomacy with Modi’s personality. He took the lead at this in a Patna public meeting on Sunday. The PM said thanks to his interventions during the Saudi crown prince’s visit to Delhi, the Haj quota from India was raised to 2 lakh and the Saudi government decided to free 850 Indians who languished in jails allegedly for minor offences. The BJP will not squander away an occasion to reinforce its case. On Friday, at the launch of a book on the RSS, central minister Smriti Irani  said, “Sangh today can be proud of the fact that a son of India is returning to the country in 48 hours because of the ‘parakram’ (pluck) of a ‘swayamsevak’.” Modi started his political life as an RSS volunteer.

Legitimately or otherwise, questions, especially by the western media, have been raised on a host of issues, ranging from the intelligence failure in Pulwama to the number of casualties claimed by the Balakot bombing and Washington’s purported role in securing Abhinandan’s release to work towards a detente. If Islamabad will be on test to keep its word on disassembling the terrorist apparatuses, the BJP will be watched for the rhetoric unleashed from the stump and the combustible quotient.

Modi and Shah have an election staring at them. Modi is reported to have told his party colleagues that while the government’s record, its social schemes and caste jugglery formed the support frames of the BJP’s campaign, it will ultimately run on “emotions”. The questions being asked of Pulwana and thereafter buttress the “victimhood” storyline, of an elitist media getting at a tea-seller from the country’s backwater. Modi loves nothing more than a battle framed as “us” versus “them” and he has one ready on his hands.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s own. The opinions and facts expressed here do not reflect the views of Mirror and Mirror does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.

source: Mumbai Mirror

War-mongering and misinformation galore as govt’s communication strategy in this crisis is radio silence.

The last time India and Pakistan played war games  during Kargil when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister, Narendra Modi was the BJP’s spokesperson. He would hold two briefings a day to appraise the media and through them, an anxious nation.

He himself would be apprised of the day’s developments either by Prime Minister Vajpayee himself or the Defence Minister George Fernandes because expectedly, in an emergent situation when events panned out by the day, statements had to be carefully crafted and nuanced, without second-guesses.

In these last two days as India and Pakistan face-off once again, the government has shown no communication strategy. On Day two as an Air Force chopper crashed in Kashmir and an Indian Air Force pilot  was taken prisoner by the Pakistanis, we had a junior MEA spokesperson give out a brief, unsatisfactory statement leaving room for all kinds of speculation. By late afternoon, Pakistani PM Imran Khan was on TV seizing the narrative as he confirmed the IAF officer’s custody and asked for de-escalation.

While Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj is in China, her MoS VK Singh who could brief the media was not to be heard from, while other stakeholder like the defence minister and the home minister too maintained a studious silence.

The vacuum of information led to TV channels calling for ‘badla’, setting up war rooms in their studios and an anchor dressing up in war fatigues and flashing a toy gun.

Atypically, even the battery of loquacious BJP spokespersons, otherwise up and out during an important occurrence, went missing. Only late Wednesday evening, Union minister Prakash Javadekar showed up at the party headquarters to tell the media that the Opposition should not accuse the BJP and government of “politicising” the “sacrifice” by the CRPF soldiers at Pulwama and asked the Congress and its allies to reconsider the phraseology of a statement they issued after a meeting. It was a defensive response.

So what happened to the government’s high echelon? Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Nirmala Sitharam , Ravi Shankar Prasad and Nitin Gadkari were conspicuously missing from the main frame.

Home minister Rajnath Singh addressed the BJP workers in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur. BJP president Amit Shah was in Ghazipur in eastern UP to launch the ‘Kamal Jyoti Sankalp’ campaign for the Lok Sabha elections. Addressing a chaupal (street corner) meeting, Shah asked people who would ensure India’s security, the “gatbandhan” of SP and BSP or Modi?

The BJP’s twitter handle announced that on Thursday, Modi will address the “world’s biggest video conference” of BJP workers, volunteers and supporters. The handle urged tweeples to ask questions and proffer suggestions on a separate handle, “Mera Booth Sabse Mazbooth” (my booth strongest). Lest the offer sounds like an invite to seek clarifications on the goings-on in Kashmir, banish the temptation. It will mostly be about getting into the minutiae of election management. But who knows? It could be Modi’s long awaited address to the nation after Balakot.

source: Mumbai Mirror