Bread and Butter Have Expiry Dates, But Divide and Rule is Forever
It’s a battle between two paladins belonging to two political
potentates jousting bitterly to capture the throne room in 7 Race Course
Road. Azam Khan and Amit Shah have nothing in common by way of
ideology, culture or governance. Amit is known as the Hanuman of BJP’s
PM candidate Narendra Damodar Bhai Modi. Azam is famous for doing
malevolent communal combat on behalf of Netaji Mulayam Singh Yadav. Both
Modi and Mulayam have given complete freedom of expression to their
cohorts to the extent that both liegemen are able to alter national
political discourse and dictate the agenda for Elections 2014. If there
are individuals who can define and rewrite ideologies, there are others
who can erase them with equal aplomb.
Azam and Amit have come to
symbolise the politics of hate and revenge. While the latter is facing
legal scrutiny for his alleged role in the Gujarat riots, Azam is under
investigation for making communal remarks against the Indian Army.
Ironically, both have held preponderous positions in party and
government. It is not a coincidence that neither of the two is known for
providing good governance. Their expertise lies in the art of
intimidation using all available instruments of power and persuasion.
With Azam and Amit engaged in a combat of epithets, Uttar Pradesh is the
only state in which elegies for issues like development and good
governance are already being composed. Other parties are parroting the
divisive discourse discharged by the differing duo by offering a
slightly refined version of their minatory monologues, which are
dividing voters along communal lines. Two weeks ago, Akhilesh Yadav,
perhaps India’s youngest CM, was holding forth on technology, highways,
metro rail and hospitals as his agenda for governance. All the political
parties hawked women empowerment, health, education, law and order and
child welfare as the main attractions of their manifesto bazaar. But
A&A brought the focus back on themselves and delegated their leaders
into mere poster boys.
For the past two weeks, A&A have
successfully altered the contours of political debate. As Uttar Pradesh
with 80 seats would decide the nature of next government, the divisive
duo is leaving little to chance to polarise the electorate. As Amit’s
electoral road map upholds, it is evident that he was chosen not to just
set up and revive a highly divided and demoralised BJP in UP, but also
to convert the battle ground into They vs Us. From the choice of
candidates to the selection of talking points, Amit has successfully
ensured that the UP elections be fought using emotional issues riding
the hardcore Hindutva gestalt. According to party insiders, he played a
key role in persuading Modi to fight from Varanasi, the undeclared
capital of hardcore Hindutva. It would be for the first time that an
outsider—and that too a backward caste individual like Modi—would be
contesting from a Brahmin-dominated constituency. After touring the
state for over a month and confabulating with various middle-level BJP
satraps, Amit convinced his leadership, including Modi, that UP could be
won only if the party is able to revive the Hindutva forces, which gave
it 58 seats in 1999 and brought the BJP to power in the state in 1992.
Amit had done his homework well. Even in 1967, the Jan Sangh won over 90
seats in UP because of the police firing against Hindu saints who were
protesting against cow slaughter in Parliament in 1966. BJP has always
performed miserably in UP whenever it didn’t play up core issues like
Ram Mandir, Uniform Civil Code etc.
For Amit, Muzzafarnagar came
as a Ram-sent opportunity to reap a huge electoral harvest. A fiery
orator and a master strategist, last year’s riot was the glue he used to
unite Hindutva forces. Read the subtext of his speech carefully, which
was carried by both the electronic and print media. He told party
workers, “The election is about voting out the government that protects
and gives compensation to those who killed Jats,” and used the words
badla (revenge) and izzat (honour), perhaps deliberately. He followed it
up with yet another provocative remark—“By voting for Modi, you will be
doing two things. You will bring him to the Centre and you will uproot
Mullah Mulayam from Lucknow.”
If Amit was determined to unite his
hardcore base, how could Azam drag his feet? After all, he was given the
mandate to ensure that minorities came out in full force to vote for
his party. He even invoked minority supremacy in the Army’s role in the
Kargil war. Of course, it was for the first time that a minority leader
was asserting that Muslims were as powerfully nationalist as the saffron
brigade. Claimed Azam: “Those who fought in Kargil weren’t Hindu
soldiers. In fact, the ones who fought for our victory were Muslim
soldiers.”
Azam and Amit wouldn’t have taken to confrontationist
communal posturing unless their promoters gave them the nod to change
the direction of political engagement. During the past few weeks, there
has been a competitive bid by leaders of almost all the parties to
acquire Muslims leaders as magic mascots at any cost. If Modi and his
brigade were displaying retired Muslim civil servants and disgruntled
Muslim leaders from Bihar to dispel the widely believed perception about
Modi’s unacceptability among the minorities, Congress president Sonia
Gandhi invited Imam Bukhari to her home to seek his support for her
party. Interestingly, the Election Commission received more complaints
from various political parties on religion being used to influence
voters than it did in the last two elections. The maximum numbers were
from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It is clear that over 250 million voters
in 120 seats of both heartland states were being wooed not to make them
more prosperous but to preserve their religious identity as vote blocs.
For Indian politicians, issues like bread and butter have expiry dates.
But what lives forever is the policy of divide and rule. The next few
weeks will see more and more Azams and Amits who will excoriate and
dominate the political markets.
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