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HIMALAYAN MIRROR
The real development
ENGLISH DAILY PUBLISHED FROM GANGTOK
HIMALAYAN MIRROR
FEBRUARY 13 2015 VOL 9 NO. 152
Deliver Now: BJP
mustn’t re-embrace
populism or
polarisation tactics
after its Delhi debacle
The mother of all shellackings means it’s introspection time for BJP. It can hardly take the position
that Delhi polls weren’t a referendum on the Centre
after building its whole campaign narrative around
PM Modi. Voters have shown that acknowledging a
mistake, saying sorry, then correcting it is something
they respect. But just as damaging as refusing to take
notice of the Delhi verdict would be learning the
wrong lesson. This is not a referendum against the
development, reforms and growth agenda – that’s
what got BJP elected to the Centre in the first place.
What, then, were BJP’s mistakes?
One of them was confusing the global with the
local. The PM has an admirable passion for foreign
policy and has scored notable successes in it. This
will undoubtedly improve India’s long-term strategic
environment. But that’s no substitute for issues that
matter in a local election. Modi meeting Obama isn’t
germane to the average Delhiite battling a hostile
urban environment. And wearing an expensive suit
reported to be worth ten lakh rupees for the occasion,
with his name monogrammed all over it, has a touch
of hubris the average Indian voter doesn’t like.
Allied to this is another problem. The Modi government always seems to be in campaign mode, with
too much emphasis on political projection and hype.
But the more it does this, the more the gap with actual performance will grow. People may be tiring of the
grandiloquent gesture and perfectly organised political rally, they now want to see delivery on the
ground. Jan Dhan Yojana sounds splendid but has it
put money in your account? Has Swachh Bharat
Abhiyan cleaned up your neighbourhood yet?
The big takeaway from the capital’s verdict is that
the Centre must raise the bar on its performance.
Deliver those governance and economic reforms that
will improve India’s investment climate, encourage
entrepreneurs, provide new jobs, improve everyday
lives. And resist two knee-jerk temptations. First,
BJP mustn’t use polarisation tactics to walk away
from the Delhi debacle. One Union minister calls
non-Hindus haramzade, another pushes Bhagavad
Gita as national scripture, the fringe feels more and
more emboldened while Modi maintains a
Manmohan style silence – this pill isn’t going to
work any more. Second, don’t relapse into UPA style
populism. Nobody knows better than BJP that it isn’t
fruitful. An astute politician like Modi mustn’t misread the writing on the wall.
Meanwhile, a hug
First there was Arvind Kejriwal the challenger, setting fire to the government’s Lokpal Bill. Then there
was Kejriwal the aam aadmi, eating street food, doing
the dishes, sporting the now-iconic muffler. Then
there was Kejriwal the dharna star, being dragged
away by the police from former Delhi Chief Minister
Sheila Dikshit’s house and other tourist destinations.
Now, there is Kejriwal, the family man. One of the
first things the AAP chief did after his famous victory that stalls the Modi wave, wiping out the Congress
from Delhi and changing the face of Indian politics,
was hug his wife. After introducing Sunita Kejriwal
to thousands of exultant supporters, he went on
Twitter to thank her for “always being there”. Does
Delhi have its first first couple in the Kejriwals?
When US President Barack Obama won his second
term, the first image that went up was of him hugging
wife Michelle, with the caption “four more years”.
The closest an Indian politician has come to displaying affection, in recent memory, is to make his wife
chief minister when he had to go to prison —- we’re
looking at you, Lalu Prasad. While the stately
Gursharan Kaur came out for public occasions to
accompany husband Manmohan Singh, Narendra
Modi prefers to maintain a glacial distance from
rumours about his private life. There are sentimental
histories about Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, but she largely stayed out of public life until after his death.
The Indian politician, typically male, has always
preferred to be seen as the stoic, go-it-alone sort,
speaking of a life spent in heroic service to the country. With Kejriwal’s hug, politics is suddenly part of
the ordinary struggles of the ordinary politician who
cannot do without the support of the partner.
The will to win, the
desire to succeed, the
urge to reach your
full potential... these
are the keys that will
unlock the door to
personal excellence.
- Confucius
EDITORIAL
GANGTOK, FRIDAY 13 FEBRUARY 2015
By Gurpreet
Mahajan
A
rvind Kejriwal’s
sincere apology
for past mistakes
and the AAP’s electoral
manifesto may have won
them some votes, but an
emphatic win in 67 of 70
seats was possible only
due to the disenchantment with the BJP. When
we look at the stunning
defeat suffered by the
BJP, this is the only possible conclusion. In the
general elections that
were held just a few
months ago, the Congress
lost a substantial portion
of its vote share and its
support base seemed to
have moved to the BJP.
In this assembly election,
the Congress vote share
dipped even further, but
its sympathisers did not
turn to the BJP. This time
round, they looked elsewhere and found in the
AAP a better alternative.
It is difficult to accept
this harsh reality. For this
reason, many are suggesting that the resounding
victory for the AAP is
simply
inexplicable.
There is no doubt that the
numbers stacked by the
AAP were unexpected; a
safe majority had been
predicted by pollsters, but
a clean sweep was far
beyond anyone’s expectation. But it would be a
mistake to assume that the
unexpected is also inexplicable. Just because we
cannot predict accurately
does not mean we cannot
make sense of why it happened. One must, therefore, analyse the verdict
and confront what it says.
From the time that
Delhi voted in the last
general election to this
assembly election, nothing much had changed. At
that time, and even now,
Kejriwal continued to be
labelled as a whimsical
down the line, they are
beginning to look again
for a better alternative and
Delhi voters have now put
their trust and hope in the
AAP. Modi had secured
number of seats with substantial margins without
winning the support of
different social groups
and sections. So, all of
them will expect the party
plank on which the BJP
contested and won the last
general election and it
was the rallying call in
this assembly election too.
All parties spoke of devel-
anarchist, a “bhagoda”,
someone who could lead a
protest but not govern. On
the other side, there stood,
then and even now, brand
Modi with the promise of
a strong, confident India,
with high growth and
world-class cities. So the
rhetoric in Delhi around
both these elections was
much the same; yet, this
time it was assessed differently.
Against the scam-ridden Congress, Narendra
Modi’s persona, his style
of campaigning, the
promise to deliver good
governance and development seemed to convince
many voters. Those who
were looking for a viable
alternative
to
the
Congress moved towards
the BJP. Just eight months
for the BJP an impressive
win by getting 31 per cent
of the vote share;
Kejriwal has upped the
ante by getting 54 per cent
of the vote in Delhi. No
doubt, the expectations
are high and the AAP has
a tough job ahead. It has
to fulfil the promises it
made, sooner rather than
later. It has laid out not
just policies but tangible
things that it would deliver; so people will keep
count and maintain a
checklist. The opposition
will also not let it off the
hook or allow the electorate to forget what was
promised. The AAP’s task
would be made even more
difficult by the fact that it
would have to walk a
tightrope. They could not
have won such a large
to attend to their specific
concerns. Striking the
right balance between
competing interests will
not be easy. Even the
AAP’s promise of greater
participation for the people through mohalla committees,
along
with
greater say and control
over the use of funds in
that area, is bound to
throw up conflicts and
power tussles that would
need a great degree of
dexterity to resolve. They
have an unenviable job
before them, but the challenge before the BJP at
this moment appears to be
even more daunting as it
is expected to take a hard
and critical look at itself,
its agenda and its functioning.
Development was the
opment, but the voters
have shown a preference
for the AAP’s understanding of development. They
may still want a high
growth rate, bullet trains
and safe nuclear energy,
but what they want even
more is that their immediate needs of water, affordable power, housing, better health facilities, cheaper vegetables, be attended
to first. Clearly, they seek
greater priority for and
action on — not simply
rhetoric or a blame-game
— women’s safety and
the accountability of public officials. Peaceful
coexistence,
religious
harmony and less moral
policing are also high on
their list of preferences.
To the Delhi electorate,
the AAP seems to be
more attentive to these
aspects of development
while the BJP appears to
be on a different page
altogether.
No doubt, the BJP will
go into a huddle pretty
soon and introspect. But
one thing we have
learned by looking at the
Congress experience is
that a politics based on
the personality cult, topdown leadership, with a
small and select coterie of
the chosen few, does not
lend itself easily to course
correction. It would be
relatively easier for them
to comfort themselves
and say that this is the
result of just one state
election. After all, Delhi
does not represent India
and what surfaces here
need not be duplicated
elsewhere.
All this is certainly
true. But the Delhi election is an apt reminder
that in a democracy people’s support is always
conditional and subject to
continuous assessment.
Change is not only possible but never far behind.
In Delhi, the idea of a
clean,
corruption-free
government, close to the
people, focusing on their
immediate and most
urgent needs, offering
safety and security to all,
won the day. The AAP
became an embodiment
of that idea and received
overwhelming support.
So long as this need
remains
unaddressed,
similar political experiments will continue to
surface and people will
continue to script similar
success stories that may
baffle the more established political parties.
(Courtesy : Indian
Express)
The tyranny of hurt sentiment
By Dilip Simeon
S
hirin Dalvi, the editor of the Mumbai
edition of Urdu
newspaper Avadhnama,
has become the latest victim of the running saga
over cartoons. Since midJanuary, when she unwittingly published a Charlie
Hebdo cover, she has
been slapped with criminal charges, her newspaper shut down, its
employees rendered jobless, and she herself
forced
underground.
Vicious threats are sent to
her via social media. All
this is happening despite
her printed apology. The
police have opposed
anticipatory bail on the
ground that it would
cause a law and order
problem (aren’t they paid
to deal with such matters?).
The man who filed the
complaint heads an Urdu
journalists’ body. He is
cited as saying, “I filed a
case against her and I am
happy that she was arrested. If she was in an
Islamic state, she would
have been beheaded as
per law.”
That the freedom of
speech could be so flagrantly attacked in the
name of religion is by
now a common experience.
Self-appointed
guardians of faith have
attacked our minds with
relentless aggression for
years. But that someone
could wish a horrible
death to another human
being is itself highly
offensive to many of us
— and this person thinks
it earns him merit in the
eyes of Allah. I have no
access to the mind of the
Almighty, but I can venture to suggest that Allah
is more considerate than
some
of
his
followers.Hurt sentiment
has become the cutting
edge of tyranny. It is the
perpetually
available
political tool for preparing “spontaneous” mob
violence, violating the
law, mobilising illiberal
movements and intimidating everyone — especially within the preferred
community — who disagrees with communal
politics. It becomes worse
when responsible individuals glamorise this fake
and vicious form of piety.
Sentiment appeared in the
law in the aftermath of the
Rangila Rasul case of
1929, when the publisher
Rajpal was murdered in
Lahore by a 19-year-old
youth named Ilm-ud-din.
The boy pleaded guilty,
against his lawyer M.A.
Jinnah’s advice — this is
reported as the only case
Jinnah ever lost. The
philosopher Allama Iqbal
led the funeral ceremony,
at which he reportedly
declared: “This uneducated young man has surpassed us, the educated
ones.” One of preIndependence India’s outstanding thinkers had no
qualms in glorifying murder in the name of hurt
sentiment. Ilm-ud-Din is
now revered as a ghazi in
Pakistan. This is akin to
the reverence accorded to
V.D. Savarkar, a prime
accused in the M.K.
Gandhi murder case, not
to mention the glorification of men like Jarnail
Singh Bhindranwale and
Nathuram Godse.
Section 295-A, which
penalises offensive utterances, was framed in the
aftermath of the Rangila
Rasul case. Jinnah helped
frame the act and stressed
that it should apply only
to cases of deliberate and
malicious intent. The misuse of this law in India is
well-documented.
Pakistan augmented it
with the death penalty for
blasphemy.
Pakistani
Punjab’s
governor
Salman Taseer was murdered by his bodyguard
for merely suggesting that
the law be re-examined,
in the context of the Aasia
Bibi case. His killer has
now acquired heroic status, and his appeal is led
by a former chief justice
of Punjab. Instead of
advocating the non-violent resolution of conflicts, members of the
to beheadings and sharia
law, the complainant is
creating an ambience of
murderous hate around
this hapless woman. Can
he not see that his behaviour mimics the hateful
propaganda
directed
towards
religious
regime of the dictator
Gaafar Nimiery. We
would also profit from a
study of the lives of
famous Muslims from
the national movement,
such as Khan Abdul
Ghaffar
Khan
and
Maulana Azad; not to
elite have added fuel to
the flames. A society
whose
philosophers,
lawyers and judges think
it fit to celebrate revenge
killing is doomed to an
infinite spiral of extremism.
The topic of blasphemy
has always been suffused with blood-thirst.
Let us be clear that Dalvi
is not merely being
harassed by a complainant, who is aided
and abetted by a meanspirited police and government. Formal harassment is only part of the
story. More significant is
the violence that underpins all the arguments,
phone calls, arrests,
social-media posts, etc.
Dalvi is exposed to violence, with the active
connivance of the state,
which is supposed to
protect her. By referring
minorities and other vulnerable groups in India?
In this case too, a minority is being oppressed.
Shirin is a minority of
one. Those who oppress
minorities themselves
have no business complaining
about
the
oppression of minorities.
Islamic theology does
not always lead in a
tyrannical direction. The
ideas of the Egyptian
professor of religion
Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd
and the Sudanese thinker
Mahmoud Mohammed
Taha are worthy of
respect. These learned
scholars were persecuted
for advocating liberal
readings of the Quran
and hadith. Abu Zayd
was forced to divorce his
wife and flee Egypt in
the mid-1990s. Taha was
executed in 1985 by a
sharia court under the
mention lesser known
ones like Bibi Amtus
Salam, whom Gandhi
used to call his daughter.
A war of conscience is
underway for the soul of
Islam. The Dalvi case is
merely the latest example. In July 2013, a lecture by the American
Islamic scholar Amina
Wadud was cancelled by
the Centre for Islamic
Studies in Chennai,
because
of
threats
received via a text message. The leader of a
communal outfit had
called the police and
threatened an agitation.
Instead of providing protection to the event, the
police intimidated the
organisers, who gave in.
Why does the freedom
of
conscience
and
speech apply only to
providing state protection to petty tyrants and
blackmailers, and not to
those who wish to criticise religion or to study
alternative religious currents? What message do
governments send to
society by encouraging
goondas and oppressing
people of mild temper?
What will happen to the
rule of law if this continues?
Would the complainant
in the Dalvi case kindly
reflect on whether his
religion contains some
resources for restraint
and compassion? Or is
it, in his view, a compendium of justifications
for working up murderous rage in the faithful?
If the latter is the case,
he is no different from
those who hounded M.F.
Husain out of India and
who now wish to deify
Godse. Whether he
knows it or not, he is acting in their interest. His
actions will not benefit
Islam, rather, fanatics of
other brands will be doubly energised. However,
if he can find something
gentle in his faith, let
him use it as inspiration
to withdraw the case.
Those of us who are
more offended by gratuitous violence than by
cartoons must defend
Dalvi. We must demand
that the government provide her with protection,
investigate those threatening her (didn’t the
police arrest a young
woman for Facebook
posts at the time of Bal
Thackeray’s funeral?),
and instruct the state
prosecutors to drop the
case. We have had it up
to our throats with fabricated outrage. We, too,
are angry at the police
and government repeatedly surrendering their
responsibility to protect
peaceable citizens from
hooligans wearing religious masks. Down with
the tyranny of sentiment.
(Courtesy : Indian
Express)