Friday, June 19, 2009

Death of the saffron soul

It might not seem anything but fun for the Congress or for that matter the Left and the wide array of parties that have a visceral hatred towards the BJP. One defeat and the saffron edifice is collapsing in such a way that it would seem it was made by a consortium of engineers handpicked by the BMC or the MCD.
Leaders like Yahswant Sinha and Jaswant Singh, turncoats of the worst order, are now lecturing to what till some time ago prided itself as being the most disciplined and ideologically strong party. The likes of Venkiah Naidu- who’d lose his deposit even if he stood for municipal elections, are busy wiping their brow in despair that their beloved party is going down the drain.
However if the BJP should have prayed for anything at the moment, it should be the churning that its insides are getting now.
The country’s first party without history- the Congress still clings on to the tails of the history left behind by giants like Gandhiji, Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar and the Communists imported it all from wisemen sitting in Russia and China- needs this churning if it is to have a future.
It was weakened by leaders like Pramod Mahajan whose easy ways with money and power made the party as corrupt and lackluster as the Congress itself. The only difference was that the Congress had the Gandhi-Nehru family. And in a nation like ours, bereft of the last drop of self-pride and confidence after a thousand years of crippling Mughal and insulting British rule, we love thinking of ourselves as property to be passed on from one feudal lord to his progeny. If it is the Gandhis, so be it. Infact I’d wager a guess that in 2030 our Prime Minister could well be Priyanka Gandhi’s son. And a million idiots would accept it as if it is the fellow’s birthright to lord over us.
Coming back to the BJP, let there be an open rebellion, let the seat-warmers and the weak be torn into bits. Let the party’s name be dragged through mud. Let the Ivory Tower that the party perched itself in be pulled down brick by brick.
All of this so that a hero might rise. Let a hero rise from the saffron ashes who will lead us into a party whose ideology is the strength of Hinduism without the caste shackles, whose business would be that of the farmer and the working class, whose politics would be unabashedly muscular. A hero who will promise every community in the country the right to live happily as Indians, but will reserve the right to come after them like a bat out of miserable hell if they as much as place their religion before country.
It might not happen till 2014 but happen it will. Maybe the party by then might not be called the BJP. But as long as its heart is in the place the saffron patriarchs wanted it to be, lets take it.