Political Innings Over, Back to the Pavilion

What went wrong?

The New Year 2015 did get the BJP’s ever-soaring balloon a bit punctured to let out some air and save it from escaping into the heavens of glory. Kejriwal won Delhi assembly elections, after having presented his still more worn out jersey and muffler, and still more common suffering face to each and every slum in Delhi. The masses whose lives and generations have been spoilt by poverty, hunger and multitudes of deprivations, definitely play a spoil-sport, a short of revenge, when they get a chance of hitting back and they generally hit at the one apparently sided with the better classes.

The retired history professor, who had actively provided full-time support for the Modi wave had his little plate of woes. The BJP had won from the constituency and all through the campaigning the BJP candidate had looked at him with such friendly smile that the poor academician got into believing that he was possibly the best hand around the would-be Member of Parliament. Under such assurance the political bug bit his arse inevitably to give him a sadistic nightmare of getting a little political career for himself. To still take his recently-cropped up ambition, the elections for the state assembly were around the corner. The party you support having almost absolute majority at the centre, the local MP smiling at you like you are a bosom pal and obliged to you for your all-out support in the campaign, and elections around the corner for the state assembly! Having spent his life in books, convictions, far away from the grit and grind of the real anvil that hammers down political careers, he found his eligibility to get ticket to contest from his area as near infallible. But when the plotting, scheming and strategising game of grabbing the ticket started, he was like the tiniest little boy standing scared in the corner while the fatter, ugly urchins blabbered to eat the pie. The stampeded left him heaped on the ground with his burden of bookish knowledge and bruises on his clean self. His presence was not so much even felt by anybody. Coming back almost in tears from the state capital, he cursed the MP whom he had toiled for and missed his thousands of pension funds that he himself had invisibly poured into the flooded river of political financing to make the candidate’s campaigning more glamorous and temporarily fruitful to the poor in the constituency. The parliamentarian had not even looked at him in the state capital.

Pushed and shoved in the little political pie-gathering stampede, the old historian was nursing his reflections. He even felt happy about the tiny muffler man beating the burly fellow.

The professor was now having razor sharp analytics of the BJP’s defeat in Delhi. His reflections and pen competing in what he thought and what he wrote.

David Killing the Goliath!   

 

So the muffler man Kejriwal does what has never been done before! More than reflecting over his victory, we can reflect over BJP’s set of mistakes.

People do not appreciate the class when their fates are stinking in a mass!

It is good to have a smart, suave and presentable Prime Minister. But people will definitely follow a faded jersey clad muffler man if they find him pitted against somebody clad in royal clothes. So it was a 100,0000 INR suit against the 200 INR muffler. The masses in Delhi obviously chose the latter! India after all is a country of struggling, hungry, ill-clad masses. They sympathise with the underdog. Modi, the tea seller of the past, garnered sympathy in parliamentary elections. Now it is the time of the muffler man to be made a prince from his castrated status of a crazy idealist. It was not for nothing that Gandhiji abandoned clothes to mix with the poorest of the poor. Modi has to look less exclusive! Indian masses are decades away from their appreciation of style and statement like the Americans appreciate the US First Lady's style. 

The revolting professor, denied a political dream of his own, sprinkled the ink of irritated reflections flowing from his pen.

Never let loose a panic wave even among the lesser mortals even if they are lying dusting around your feet. They will stealthily crawl up in the dust to stick around your feet to dump their beaten selves, like a stone around your feet, stopping you from moving ahead.

Never ever publicly declare your intention to annihilate your enemy. However strong reason you have to destroy him! The slogan of ‘Congressmukt Bharat’ is catchy, but injurious. Do your deed, but why repeatedly tell your enemy that you are going to annihilate him?! Congress is cornered. They know the BJP wants to dismantle the party itself. So what is the option left for them? Their sense of victory right now can just be to help anybody in defeating the BJP. They did it smartly in Delhi by shifting its votes to AAP’s coffers. They even know that AAP’s clout will increase at the national level. They are but very much comfortable with the idea that AAP gets 50 or 60 seats in the next Parliamentary elections. Well and good. They are happy to lead corrupt coalition governments, unlike BJP that wants a one party show in India. So AAP emerging nationally is a step towards Congress getting one more partner in a future coalition government.   

When the BJP started its all-out campaign to wipe out the regional outfits, the professor had this apprehension that all and sundry political forces, which hitherto did not see eye to eye, will cling to each other in the short term to somehow survive the BJP onslaught. The academician now termed it as their political trump card. The ideals shift, more so off the common man.

The BJP getting a bitter political pill that will cure it of its paranoid political fever to colour India politically in just one colour!

This is what had happened in Delhi assembly elections. Congress, communists, Janta Dal, Bahujan Samaj Party, and many others, all allowed their vote bank to go under AAP's fold. Result! Defeat of the mighty! India is strangely unified in teasing diversities. Those who accommodate these divisions survive, and those who cross age-old barriers will come against unified opposition from various groups. Lesson is learnt: You cannot afford to neglect friendly regional forces. Having regional partners is a sign of your strength and legitimacy, not weakness. It is not for nothing that America that can singlehandedly wage war against the whole world, still keeps small contingents of troops from friendly small countries. It adds to the legitimacy of its actions.

The professor reproached the bigger world of the bigger stage-masters who managed things in such a way that the real, capable and honest people lose their rights to contest elects.

Do not outgrow your skin to appear mythological. People like small characters on the real stage of life. Bollywood has saturated their desire to have super-powered heroes.    

Another factor that has put the BJP in a shady zone is the few personas emerging all powerful and manipulative. It makes a party look aloof from common man, creates apprehensions, puts it in a too lofty position at which the common man looks with insecurity. Hope Modi, Shah, Rajnath and Gadkari pull strings in more subtle ways, instead of making it evident in high profile posturing in media. Let the BJP, the party, be at the forefront at least in media! We can have more pictures of development works accomplished by the BJP, and lesser full-framed robust pictures of arrogant Shah walking majestically after press conferences. He can continue with his string-pulling from behind the scenes, but it should not be evident in media. Amit Shah is also becoming too predictable in that he goes for religious polarisation. He has to pull his strings differently now, and without high profile posturing in media.

People want to stay secular in the country, at least those who are not politically ambitious.

Young educated part of the Indian population is outright against religious rhetoric and extremist talk and posturing. Have administrators in your cabinet. Saffron clad jingoistic sadhus and sadhvis can catapult venom from other platforms, but if they do it from the ministerial positions, then even much-appeased, ancient Hindu Gods would not save you from the modern day public’s new anger. The class that recruits khaki-clad, stick-wielding fake soldiers should be made to understand that they can serve mother India at the practical level and spare hypothetical verbal jingoism and sloganeering to the politicians. If the blood has not been allowed to be boiled down to a sufficient degree in their veins post-independence by the Nehruvian ice, they can get it further boiled up and as the true sacrificing Indians can send their own sons to army and dedicate their lives to remove darker shades from the people’s lives. There are billions of things to be done by the hands; we can lead our lives without their tongue-work. Already the dress is damn funny. It needs to be changed. Legs are too thin, the shorts too wide. And it will help the nature if sticks are spared.

The old professor was tired after the fusillade. He was even feeling scared. This time from the different side!