Whose Patel Is It Anyway?

Whose Patel Is It Anyway?

The perception juggernaut is moving inexorably in favour of Prime Ministerial Candidate Narendra Modi and the BJP.  And the nation’s economic markers are converging on the intensifying political campaigning. To paraphrase the supremely popular Jug Suraiya from a recent column in the Times of India; the choice is between NaMo style growth and aspiration, or RaGa style poverty politics, and the aspiration seems to be ringing many more bells.

The fact that Modi has risen high from very humble beginnings gives both authenticity and dignity to his efforts to reach out to India’s  common man. And his modernity, market-friendliness and comfort with technology does the same for aspirational India. And everyone is enthused by the possibility of NaMo unleashing the overall potential of this country.

Mainstream Media comment and coverage too is also tilting increasingly towards the fresh and robust NaMo narrative. On the part of the people, there is a certain impatience to get through these last stagnant days of UPA rule.

The incumbent prime minister is just marking days off his dwindling calendar in office, and there is no traction at all from any of the UPA’s efforts, including a projected and substantial reduction in the CAD.  Any good news from the UPA now is seen as having come too late to save it from itself. Almost every section of business and industry, the youth of the country, and the foreign investor, even foreign governments, albeit cautiously, are just waiting for a change.

The most vocal international supporters of an anticipated Narendra Modi led government seem to be the financial community. After all, they put their money where their mouth is. These FIIs have been pouring money into the stock markets, nearly $17 billiion this year to date. And it is only the FIIs literally who have taken the Sensex and Nifty to an all-time high.

   

Paradoxically, in the absence or near absence of growth in the real economy, the rupee is beginning to tumble again.

Following on from CLSA’s Chris Wood who plumped for a Narendra Modi led government, we have Goldman Sachs upgrading India as an investment destination and endorsing Modi, and now  US billionaire investor Jim Rogers who recently said “India needs new politicians”.

Congress meanwhile is having kittens on practically every issue as it is relentlessly pushed onto the back foot by public opinion. It is expected to be under even more pressure after the so-called ‘semi-final’.

 The four coming Assembly Elections are expected to have BJP win in Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh. They might just pull it off in Delhi as well. This because the  spoiler Aam Aadmi Party  has begun to falter  on its civil society platform and reveal itself as just another vote bank politics player. It will be interesting to see what happens in Haryana after these elections.

On legacy matters too, there is an exposure and unravelling of Congress doublespeak. Why should the Congress leadership react with such defensiveness if any of the Independence era stalwarts are celebrated by any other party?  Are the heroes of the national struggle the exclusive province of a tired, corrupt and discredited dispensation?

After all, Congress would have us believe, over the last 66 years, that the Nehru-Gandhi family practically ‘invented’ the idea of India. Both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi talk ad nauseam about the onerous responsibility they have shouldered as a family, portraying it, rather brazenly, as totally selfless.

Mahatma Gandhi, who mentored Nehru, and fashioned the winning strategy that gained us independence, actually gets less play. This being the ‘Father of the Nation’ and being featured on our currency notes notwithstanding!

It is ironic that this constant harping on the Nehru-Gandhi family  contribution to the nation echoes the British Raj  and Rudyard Kipling’s notions of the ‘White Man’s Burden’. If running India was  indeed a ‘burden’ for the British, it is also true that they compensated themselves very amply for their trouble.  

How much India itself gained then, or indeed now, is however, debatable, and at the crux of the problem.  In addition, much of current day vote-bank politics of the Congress also resembles the British policy of divide and rule.  And while the British ran the portfolios of revenue and law and order very well, we cannot say as much for the UPA. But the fact that Congress believes 70% of the people need to be given near free food after 66 years since independence speaks for itself.

The hullaballoo over Narendra Modi highlighting Sardar Patel as a ‘true secularist’ as opposed to the ’pseudo secularism’ of today’s Congress is thoroughly unwarranted. The attempt to reduce Sardar Patel to a mere Congress functionary and Home Minister under Nehru is insulting to the people of this country.

Sardar Patel, despite his active support to both the Mahatma and Nehru, always stood to the political right of Jawaharlal Nehru and is therefore correct and appropriate inspiration for the BJP.  It may be speculated afresh and not for the first time, that if Patel was allowed to handle Kashmir as he did the amalgamation of the other princely states, including Hyderabad and Junagadh, there may not have been any POK today. 

Certainly the United Nations would not have been brought into what is now clearly seen as a bilateral matter. However, this is now our bed and we must lie in it.

After Narendra Modi is elected Prime Minister in 2014, Kashmir and its painful exemptions under Article 370 may well be revisited, for the security and economic benefits of solving this festering problem, given a strong enough mandate for the NDA.

Not just Vallabhbhai Patel, but every other  leader, pre and post- Independence, has been relegated to the back shelves since Independence. And every act of near neglect has been employed to reduce them in stature gradually with a callous view to rub out their memory from the public consciousness altogether.

Dr. B.R.Ambedkar has got some limited play despite the Nehru-Gandhi led Congress. This because he is a ‘Dalit’ icon, even if the term was not used in his lifetime. But Dr. Ambedkar’s   caste brethren do run  in the corridors of power today, and so they, particularly Mayawati’s BSP, saw to it that the Gandhi-Nehru combine couldn’t relegate Ambedkar to the dustbin of history.

But hardly anyone else is mentioned.  So it is rather comical when the current day Congresswallahs get upset about NaMo’s project to build the world’s biggest statue of  Sardar Patel.  Who is stopping them from building collossusses of  Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi visible from all the satellites we have become so good at hurling up to the heavens after all?

(1,107 words)

November 7^th 2013

Gautam Mukherjee