Mirrors please, dear ostriches

_______

Okay. Let me do some tough talking here.

First, the fact check. The BJP, led by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, has decimated the opposition in the
general elections. Realistically, all across the country. Exceptions like Kerala and Tamil Nadu are
inconsequential to the huge and unprecedented victory. The Hindutva gang are the worthy and rightful
winners.

However, it seems that the victory has not gone down well with the privileged, English-speaking,
upwardly mobile, I-believe-I-am-liberated-and-secular, mostly upper caste Hindu clan of urban
wannabes. The BJP's success, according to them, is sad, disappointing, dangerous and dubious. Sad
because it belies their belief and trust in the 'secular' veneer of India. Disappointing because they
expected and hoped for a completely opposite result. Dangerous because they believe that the Hindutva
gang, emboldened by the resounding success, will unleash terror on an even bigger scale than they did
in the last five years among the minorities and the marginalised. Dubious because they feel that the
BJP's success is essentially a success story of EVM manipulation.

Frankly, I am surprised, embittered and aghast at this naivete and self destructive hypocritical
balderdash.

I will explain.

The interpretation of the word 'secular' in the Constitution is that the state will not interfere in the
religious practices of different organised religions. To that extent, India is a secular country because the
state, in my memory, has never poked its nose in religious matters. Not overtly at least. However, that
doesn't make a country's soul secular, the kind of secular that the cry babies wish India were. Let's face
it. Outside of the Constitution, India is not a secular country. It never was. We are Hindus and Muslims
and Christians and Jains and Sikhs and Dalits. All of us. Each one of us. Some of us wear these identities
on our sleeves, some do not. But deep down, we are discrete. Geographically and socially. The BJP's
success is not equivalent to the destruction of the secular social fabric of India, because there never was
any. You may not hate the Muslim tailor who lives in a ghetto in your Metropolis, but, come on, you
know close to nothing about him and his way of life. A Muslim in India does not need to be sent to
Pakistan. He lives in a world that is Pakistan for the average Hindu. A world that is unknown and
unfathomable. Secular India is an oxymoron. You can't lose anything you never possessed.
Now for the BJP's victory. You do not wish away a Government, however much it is anti-people or
whatever. It is a political battle that needs to be won politically. Who fights this battle? Sadly, not you
and I, but political parties. Who are the political parties that embellish the political firmament of India
and what, pray, are their politics? The answer is blowin' in the wind. Politics in India today is a vocation
of gang lords to conquer, nurture and protect geographical and demographic constituencies. Conquest
happens through promises and muscles. The nurturing and protection happen through doles. The voter
understands this. Worse, he looks forward to this. He will commit his allegiance to the party that bribes
him the most. As an individual and as a clan. Who has the money? The BJP. They spread it like manure
and the saplings grew to become committed voters. Elementary.

If it is an all out turf war, there will be violence. Bloodshed is an integral part of India's political being.
Ideologies do not protect constituencies. Guns do. One who wields the trigger will pull it. If the BJP
believes that intimidating the minorites is its best bait to lure the Hindu majority to vote for it, it will do
so. Hundred out of a hundred times. You have either more gunpowder at your disposal or an ideology so
strong that the BJP's guns do not work. You have neither. So, stay prepared for the carnage. Things
won't change because your professor of Political Science taught you Marx and you chanced upon
Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

Finally, the EVM mystery. Let us assume that Modi-Shah and the Election Commission connived to rig
every EVM in the country. If they did, they did so under your very nose. EVMs do not get manufactured,
programmed and distributed overnight. What breed of politics are you in, if, in the year 2019, you have
neither the wherewithal to anticipate and prevent the rigging technologically nor the political forces to
stop it physically on the ground? If they have won the EVM game, it is because you do not know the
rules of the game. And you were not paying attention. Whining and caviling makes you look seriously
politically malnourished.

So, folks, get a life and move on. You have lost the game. You know why? Not necessarily because you
are bad. But you were playing an altogether different game. If you hoped to wish away the BJP of 2019
by experimenting with pre-2000 methods of applied Democracy, you are either fools or naive or
uprooted from reality. Most probably, all of these.

Modi stays. Should you wish to see him go, get your politics right. Facebooking insinuations and
frustrations makes you look even bigger losers. Pay attention. Evolve. Ideate. Coalesce. Act on the
ground. The enemy is real and the enemy is big. It is possible that your collective nonsense is making it
an even bigger, perhaps, indestructible monster.

Partha Dasgupta

May 26, 2019

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