CHOOSE BETWEEN NEHRU AND MODI-RSS: BJP TO VOTERS

Saffron forces are clear that 2019 is a ‘difficult challenge’ that they cannot escape, in fact, should not escape. As Amit Shah keeps repeating: ‘We must take on UP’S caste based leaders.’

The Bharatiya Janata Party wants the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to shape up as a battle between Nehruvian ideology and the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and not as a sharp contest between Mandal and Kamandal—that is caste-based politics and Hindu identity-based politics. With this on mind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah are moving into the 2019 battlefield in a manner as if 2014 was only the semi-final and it’s only in 2019 that the final battle will be fought to win the war of ideologies. The attempt is to make the elections a straight presidential style fight between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi. The BJP doesn’t want demonetisation, GST or any other reforms to be debating points in this.

For both the RSS and the BJP, 2019 will be the culmination of the war that started with the inception of the RSS on 27 September 1925. Their aim is to unite Hindus and assert their Hindu identity in governing India. For this, while it is essential to fight and defeat the caste-based regional and ethnic forces, the aim will be to underplay the leadership roles of regional leaders such as Mamata Banerjee, Stalin, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav on the national horizon. This can be done if the Modi vs Rahul fight gains in momentum.

The recent announcement of 10% reservation for economically weaker sections among the upper castes is at the very core of this idea.

There is absolute clarity amongst all the saffron forces that 2019 is a “difficult challenge” that they cannot escape—in fact, should not escape. As Amit Shah keeps repeating: “Yeh UP ki ladai toh ladni hi hogi (We must take on Uttar Pradesh’s caste based leaders). Why not now when our leader is someone as strong as Narendra Modi?”

Regional, caste-based forces and aspirations of ethnic groups make Indian politics what it is. Indian democracy is all about their representaitonal participation. That’s why the extent of the victory in 2014 came as a surprise even to the BJP, especially when it saw that not a single Muslim MP was elected from a state like UP, where the community has always played a decisive role in many seats.

BJP has been hyperactive since 2014 to ensure that whatever be the results in 2019, 6A Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg will be the epicentre of nationalist politics in the coming decades. BJP’S imposing, sprawling headquarters is not just the symbol of saffron power, but its future too.

That’s why, on Saturday, 12 January, at Ramlila Maidan, Shah told 12,000 BJP leaders and cadre who had gathered there, to take selfies of themselves at the party headquarters in New Delhi and spread those photos all over India. In the last five years, the BJP and RSS have emphatically tried not just to influence politics but national discourse on everything. From JNU, media, cow slaughter to Sabarimala, on all issues BJP took clear and sometimes brazen stands. BJP has remained aggressive all through, except perhaps in the demonetisation debate and to an extent in the Rafale controversy.

From 1947 to 2000, Nehruvian intellectuals were claiming that RSS was not mainstream India and that BJP could never be the centre-point of Indian political thinking. Later, when the first BJP government came