Another freedom struggle

Barely two months are left before India goes to the polls in what is doubtless the greatest democratic spectacle on the planet. And this may be the most critical election yet given what is at stake. The very future of the republic is on the line. Every state institution, from the Supreme Court to the Reserve Bank, and from the CBI to the Election Commission, is in meltdown.

Rule of law has collapsed. Fear stalks the land and bloodthirsty mobs are prowling everywhere. Not a week or a day passes without some innocent paying with his life for being born with the wrong name. And it’s not just Muslims – everyone can feel the all-enveloping miasma of fear and uncertainty about the future. Things fall apart, in the words of Yeats, and the centre cannot hold.

Things are not all that hunky dory even within the ruling BJP, if you ask party veterans like patriarch Advani, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, and former ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie.

The economy, one area that was supposed to have been the strong suit and USP of the man from ‘vibrant Gujarat’, is struggling as it continues to reel from the catastrophic effects of the 2016 demonetisation and the botched up GST. As I write this, the unemployment rate in the country has been reported to be at its highest in the past 45 years.

So despite all the clever headline management and relentless marketing of Brand Modi, exploiting the immense resources of corporate cronies at the disposal of this regime, it is clear that tide has started turning against the BJP. Even the poor suckers who voted for the BJP and the diehard bhakts who have long backed and invested in the legend and promise of their hero after the Gujarat 2002 spectacle seem to have realised that he has made an awful mess of his formidable mandate and virtually everything else.

As Pritish Nandy writes in the ‘Times of India’, despite the high-pitched selling of the Modi mystique, the euphoria is gone. People have realised that the past five years made no difference to their lives – certainly not in any good way.

“Narendra Modi is, well, Narendra Modi. He is not Vajpayee. He is not even Advani. He has his own way of looking at things and dealing with them. The doctrine of the state no longer depends on consensus. It is conflict, unending (and often brutal) conflict. With people, institutions, liberal thought. Worse, with the values we have cherished for years,” writes Nandy.

The RSS, the chief deity of the BJP whose blessings are essential for Modi, or for that matter any BJP leader, to rule India, couldn’t be indifferent to the changing mood of the nation. In fact, with its ear to the ground and access to powerful people in high places, it is the first to notice any grumbling, shifting ground.

If many RSS watchers see a clever strategy by the Sangh in the jibes of Nitin Gadkari, former BJP president and senior minister in the Modi cabinet, against his own government they may not be far off the mark. Gadkari whose residence in Nagpur is within a stone’s throw of the RSS headquarters is considered very close to the Sangh and its powerful boss Mohan Bhagwat.

So if Gadkari is taking repeated pot shots at Modi and his doppelganger Amit Shah and presenting himself as a future prime ministerial candidate, especially if the BJP returns with fewer seats as poll surveys suggest, he couldn’t be doing it without the nod from Nagpur. This may be the Sangh’s way of ensuring change and continuity. It is not an impossible scenario either considering Gadkari shares close rapport with many opposition leaders.

However, Modi and Gadkari are but two sides of the same coin. What India needs is a real change, and a return to what the country and its founding fathers once represented. Inclusion, tolerance, peaceful coexistence and progress of all communities – a genuine ‘sab ka saath’, if you will. Not endless chanting of clever slogans while doing exactly the opposite. Without peace, justice and a fair deal for all, there is no progress. India needs to go back to the values and ideas that once inspired it and made its democracy a shining model for the rest of the world.

Speaking at the recent ‘United India’ rally of 21 opposition parties in Kolkata, M K Stalin, the leader of Tamil Nadu’s DMK, described what the country faces today as a “second freedom struggle.” He was hardly exaggerating.

Indeed, this is a fight to free India once again, from the clutches of fascism, intolerance and hate. The forces of darkness are only getting bolder. Who would have imagined that on the 71st anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, those who killed the father of the nation would be so emboldened as to celebrate it by staging his killing once again?

Yet despite the deepening darkness, we cannot afford to give up hope. True, it is getting hopelessly dark out there. But there is also a promise of dawn on the horizon. The forces of light are fighting back. The manner in which secular parties and regional players are resisting and joining hands to fight back against saffron tyranny, it gives you hope about the future.

However, the most courageous and immensely inspiring fight being put up on this front is by a hopelessly shy and diffident young man (perhaps not so young now!) who has been forced into this position reluctantly. Endlessly ridiculed and abused by the BJP and its troll army and obsequious media as ‘Pappu’ (idiot), the transformation of Rahul Gandhi has been phenomenal. And he owes his metamorphosis to none but the BJP and the prime minister himself, who has turned the very name ‘Gandhi’ into a word of abuse. He hasn’t even spared Rahul’s ailing mother and long deceased father, grandmother and great-grandfather in their vicious attacks.

As he confessed to ‘Gulf News’ during his recent immensely successful Dubai visit, the Gandhi scion learnt from Modi and the BJP to make himself a better human being and a more effective and communicative leader.

However, what sets Rahul Gandhi apart from his rivals is his message of hope and positivity. Against the BJP’s cynical politics of exclusion, hate and bigotry, he talks of an India that belongs to all. He talks of compassion and concern for the poor, the dispossessed, women and persecuted minorities. He has been speaking up for dying farmers, protesting students and the unemployed youth. He has carefully positioned the Congress as a party that genuinely represents and cares for all communities and sections of society, rejuvenating and electrifying a demoralised party.

The grand old party appears ready and determined to lead the fight to take back India once again. And the message seems to have reached home, if the recent Congress victory in the three Hindi heartland states is anything to go by. To quote Nandy again, it is time to stop the lynch mobs and build back the India we once had where all of us – rich and poor – could live together, pray together, eat together and proudly hold our heads high under the same flag.

It is time to step back from the brink and return India to sanity.

The writer is an independent writer and former editor.

Email: Aijaz.syed@hotmail.com

Twitter: @AijazZaka