The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Friday 21 September 2012

INDIAN POLITY AND THE VALUELESS POLITICOS - THE POLITICAL JAMBOREE CALLED INDIA (II)


Continued from:
INDIAN POLITY AND THE VALUELESS POLITICOS - THE POLITICAL JAMBOREE CALLED INDIA

By Opposition, I mean to say here the political parties who form the current opposing group of the government in the Parliament.

Given on the electoral wisdom or manipulation (if not interchangeably, both terms can be used alternatively to explain the confusion that prevails in the mind of the Indian voter in absence of good candidates to go for), these parties form the ruling or the opposition groups based on the number game. A party that is in Opposition today, might well be in the government tomorrow; could well have been in the government yesterday.  

Main Opposition party of the day, the BJP, is a sorry tale of internal bickering, lost opportunities and flawed fundamentals. The BJP and its senior brotherhood in the RSS have their origins and growth in following the Hindu nationalist ideology. There was nothing wrong in it provided it would have been allowed to remain an ideological following like many Muslim political outfits do (but with no base at all). So in order to gain the wider political canvas, the BJP went on to manipulate the ideology with militant elements of radical fundamentalism when it started fueling religious hatred that culminated with the Babri demolition episode. The instant reaction brought the BJP to power in Uttar Pradesh and paved its way for governing seat in Delhi.

But Uttar Pradesh was not enough and with emergence of casteist political groups like the SP and the BSP in the state and a deliberately delayed Ayodhya temple construction promise midst the piled-up court cases on the demolition issue, the voter started drifting away from the BJP. After Kalyan Singh’s government, BJP has always been languishing in Uttar Pradesh looking for the wider political background.

Though the BJP could form government at centre, and could from again, it had to bite the dust the way it had begun. It could form government only in coalition with many others. That made the BJP realize the need of a moderate approach politics and Atal Behari Vajpayee could lead a successful government at the centre.

But the BJP’s character had not changed. We saw it in Gujarat riots. First, Hindus were killed. The state had the responsibility to stop the reaction. Instead, it became complicit in the riots that followed killing around 1200.

Religion is the opium of the masses – the ‘so often’ quoted quote says – and that tells us its universal nature. Political leaders have manipulated it to the extreme and Indian politics is a burning example of it. But equally universal is its immediate aftermath – public gets fed-up of provocation if the same line is repeated again and again without any element of newness and militant spark and then even religion cannot hold the scattering base together.

Of and on, the BJP has been changing tracks to find a viable political alternative without making efforts to bring fundamental changes in its core ideology.

Babri gave the BJP the national political canvas. Godhra aftermath gave Narendra Modi an unbridled run in Gujarat since 2001 and he is expected to continue for another five years after the upcoming Gujarat assembly election.

But as Modi is harbouring prime-ministerial ambitions, he needs to come out of the mode of the politics that he does in Gujarat (and Gujarat’s demographics suits his hardline brand of politics blended well with real good development). He has been trying to reach out to the wider sections including the Muslims but there is little hope for him.

That leaves BJP in a quagmire of political fate – confusing the voter and the party worker of which line to toe.

And the BJP is not alone in practicing religious appeasement. Two other parties, the Congress party and the SP are always there to show their excessive zeal for Muslim appeasement.

But given India’s demographical statistics, no party or coalition can think of coming into power across the country by targeting one or few categories of vote banks. And that leads to the dirty game of opportunist and crude political agenda of every other party.

The other important Opposition group, the Janta Dal (United) that finds its political existence in Congress’ opposition (in words of Nitish Kumar), has been giving hints that it might tag along with the UPA if the centre adequately fulfills Bihar’s coffers. JDU shares power with BJP in Bihar but is going to fight against the BJP in Gujarat assembly polls.

The Left Front, decimated in its stronghold of West Bengal, was always a ruin of the Left ideology. They fought Congress in West Bengal but helped the Congress party form the government at the centre during UPA-1 days before pulling out the support on the India-US Nuke Deal issue.

Recently, they have been trying to plead with Mulayam Singh Yadav to join the Third Front going as far as saying Mulayam should lead it. Prakash Karat said yesterday, “Mulayam as the leader of the largest group should take the lead in this movement. Among our eight parties he should take the initiative, both inside and outside Parliament. He is the leader of the biggest party”. Only a day later, the seasoned U-turner, Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav announced that his support to the UPA government would continue though he would continue to oppose the diesel, LPG and retail FDI moves. Certainly, Mulayam has got a big, fat bargain in the trade-off that ensued earlier this week with Mamata's move to pull-out of the UPA-2. 

Did you say something of ideology?

To continue..

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/