COMPETITIVE PATRIOTISM
OPPOSITION PARTIES AMPLIFY THE NATIONALIST RHETORIC AHEAD OF THE LOK SABHA BATTLE, SHOWERING SOPS ON THE ARMED FORCES. CAN THEY BEAT THE BJP AT ITS OWN GAME?
They too are cranking up the nationalist rhetoric, but is the Opposition up to beating the BJP at its own game?
On March 1, two days after India’s air strikes on a terrorist camp in Balakot in Pakistan, district magistrates across Madhya Pradesh received a letter from the state culture department asking them to organise functions to commemorate the sacrifice and valour of the soldiers who died in the Pulwama attack. To many of the officials, it was clear where this was coming from. Having been at the receiving end of sharp attacks by the BJP for questioning the cross-border surgical strike in 2016, the Congress had this time changed its strategy in a bid to deny the BJP any gains from nationalistic muscle-flexing in the runup to the Lok Sabha election.
On March 4, a programme called ‘Bhartiyam’ was organised across MP’s district headquarters. Held under the aegis of the culture department, it was old-style Congress nationalism on display, with freedom fighters being feted, patriotic songs being sung and war veterans being sent invites for the shows. Optics-wise, it was no match for the high-decibel campaign launched by the BJP post-Balakot nor was there much footfall, given the sarkari nature of the programme. But it was evident that the Congress was making a conscious effort to strike a nationalistic chord. Chief Minister Kamal Nath participated in one such function at the Shaurya Smarak (war memorial) in Bhopal. Also, on March 1, he had attended the Vande Mataram recital at the state secretariat—an event conceptualised by former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and is held on the first day of every month. Nath has added a march past to it. At the national level, Nath’s party boss Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders, such as Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati, lost no time in congratulating the armed forces.
A comment by Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh, however, gave the BJP an opportunity to strike back. In a tweet on March 5, Singh referred to the February 14 car bomb attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama as durghatna, leading to a debate on semantics between the two parties. The BJP assault was led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Addressing a public meeting in Dhar in MP the next day, Modi reminded how Singh had similarly questioned the 2008 police encounter against terrorists at
Batla House in Delhi and insinuated that Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare’s death in the 26/11 attacks may be linked to Hindu extremists.
Singh countered that BJP bigwigs, such as Union railways minister Piyush Goyal, too, had used the term durghatna to describe the Pulwama attack. He said the Modi government should answer for the intelligence failure in Pulwama and come clean on what happened in Balakot. Nath joined the fray with Singh, saying: “The BJP need not give us lessons in patriotism. They don’t have a single freedom-fighter to speak of while the Congress built a number of defence institutions,” he said. “Voters cannot be cheated into forgetting the real issues of unemployment and general distress.” Nath also demanded to know why the Modi government wasn’t releasing evidence of the Balakot strike when the international media was questioning India’s claims.
Analysts haven’t missed this overt nationalistic posturing by the Congress, but party spokesperson Shobha Oza maintains: “What we are doing in various states is routine. The Congress’s record on nationalism speaks for itself. The BJP need not give us sermons. It was the BJP that had to be reined in by the Election Commission from milking Balakot in elections.”
Developments in the Congressruled states, however, belie the party’s claim. On March 9, just a day before the model code of conduct for the Lok Sabha election came into effect, the Chhattisgarh government announced that widows of army and paramilitary personnel from the state killed in antiinsurgency action would get jobs and free education for their children up to college level. Personnel forced into retirement by disability suffered on duty would also get employment.
In Congress-ruled Rajasthan, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has toured the border areas and met Border Security Force (BSF) troopers to announce new welfare measures for
Gehlot claims the BJP mishandled the Balakot strike and angered the masses
them. Gehlot visited far-flung areas in Barmer, Jaisalmer, Bikaner and Sri Ganganagar districts, meeting BSF personnel and lauding their role at the borders. He announced that the compensation offered to families of soldiers killed in action would be doubled to Rs 50 lakh. Gehlot said the pension for soldiers and war widows from World War II would be more than doubled, from Rs 4,000 per month to Rs 10,000. Freedom-fighters will get a pension of Rs 25,000 per month, up by Rs 5,000. A sum of Rs 11 lakh would be allocated to each BSF sector from the chief minister’s relief fund. Distributing gifts to the jawans, Gehlot promised to get the GST on items sold in BSF canteens reduced.
Gehlot insists he has always made it a point to visit the borders, particularly during times of tension or conflict with Pakistan, to assess the problems faced by civilians and the armed forces. While the Jaipur Municipal Corporation, where the BJP is in a majority, has named a road after Ashok Yadav, who was killed by Maoists, and a park after CRPF trooper Jitendra Singh Chaudhary, who died in firing by Pakistan years ago, Gehlot has ordered the renaming of 15 government schools after security personnel killed in action. There is also a proposal to introduce a chapter on air force pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman in the state’s school curriculum.
Accusing the BJP of opportunism, Gehlot said the party’s attempt to politicise the Balakot strike had backfired. “BJP leaders now feel the party has made a mess of the entire issue. This has further annoyed the masses already peeved with Modi’s lies,” he told india today. “Historically, the Congress has enjoyed patriotic credentials so it never feels the need to politicise such issues to get votes.”
Even though Prime Minister Modi has labelled opposition leaders like Mamata Banerjee “poster boys of Pakistan”, the West Bengal chief minister is unfazed. “We are in favour of the armed forces and jawans, in favour of peace in the nation. But we are against Modi babu. He is a shame for the country,” Mamata has said in repeated tweets post-Balakot. She announced a relief of Rs 5 lakh and government jobs for the families of Babu Santra and Sudip Biswas, the two CRPF men from the state killed in Pulwama. Her ministers also raised a donation, taking the total amount to Rs 10-12 lakh. Mamata’s nephew and MP Abhishek Banerjee donated three months’ salary to the Army Welfare Fund Battle Casualties.
With the BJP mounting a blitzkrieg in Bengal this Lok Sabha election, Mamata’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) says it plans to unleash a media campaign to challenge the Modi government’s narrative on Pulwama and Balakot. “Video footage and clippings will be released to prove why Mamata Banerjee was right in questioning the intelligence failure in Pulwama and how the BJP is
trying to exploit the killing of soldiers to divert attention from the grave issues plaguing the government,” says Diptangshu Chowdhury, TMC’s social media wing in-charge.
In Kerala, the Pinarayi Vijayan government downplayed the Balakot strike, but welcomed the safe return of Wing Commander Varthaman from Pakistan. CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan used the party’s mouthpiece, Deshabhimani, to pen articles accusing the prime minister of using war for political ends and the BJP of ‘pseudo-nationalism’.
In Telangana, far away from the border and with relatively little representation in the armed forces, the Balakot strike is not a major issue. Yet, seeking instant political capital, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) lost no time in matching the central government’s grant of Rs 25 lakh each to the families of the Pulwama attack victims from the state exchequer. Given that none of the deceased troopers is from the state, the largesse may have been intended to score points in KCR’s proposed federal front of regional parties. “KCR has made hypocrisy a virtue and strongly believes that he can buy anything by offering money,” alleges G. Narayan Reddy, treasurer of the state Congress. He says KCR had in 2017 announced in the legislative assembly that a day’s pay of all state government employees, along with Rs 25,000 from each minister and Rs 10,000 from each MLA, would be contributed annually to the Sainik Welfare Department for the benefit of ex-servicemen. But the 40,000 exservicemen from the state are yet to receive the funds that would have accumulated to Rs 52 crore, he claimed.
In the run-up to the assembly elections in the three Hindi heartland states last December, the Congress had chalked out an effective strategy to blunt the BJP’s offensive on issues such as cow protection and Hindutva. Whether the Congress and other opposition parties can successfully pit their version of nationalism against the BJP’s remains to be seen.