Bharat Bhagya Vidhata Mark II

 

Bharat Bhagya Vidhata Mark II

 

Here comes the end of 2014, and it is a good time to give thanks. The Nehruvian ‘Idea of India’ we have had to endure for so long was based on a derivative and borrowed vision from the West and the USSR. It gave us an industrial backbone, a democratic tradition, some excellence in higher and technical education certainly.  But it also muddled our thinking, entrenched our red-tapism, and stopped us from living up to our potential with an economy freed from ‘big brother’ shackles. The  commitment to pluralism, freedom of worship, tolerance, and cultural diversity, is innate to  the Indian people, even when it was a criss-cross of many kingdoms and rulers.  Jawarharlal Nehru did not invent it!

The  Nehruvian  era was, in hindsight, largely a mirage of post-colonial impracticality, of a fake non-alignment, as we were actually in the Soviet Camp, and  a Third World misery-loves-company attempt at solidarity that never took off. And the big powers, including our patron, openly mocked our hapless, essentially naked- and-hungry punditry. But we ourselves couldn’t see it, owing to a sad deluded hubris.

All this, including an exaggerated, Gandhian, turn-the- other- cheek pacifism, is, at last, getting the push; and we are on  the move, going towards our true home, our real-selves. We are finally, not on a ‘Discovery of India’, like a Sahib familiarising himself with his bailiwick, but one of self-discovery.

We are led by a vigorous leader, grown from the grass-roots, determined to break from the past, and blaze a proud new trail. India is changing, breaking free, articulating a staunchly nationalist and patriotic new Raj Dharma. It is building on those foundations of the Freedom Struggle that have been wilfully ignored and obscured by the overstaying Nehru-Gandhi dispensation.

Bestowing a Bharat Ratna on Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and beginning the process to build a giant new statue of Sardar Patel are just two notable examples of this reorientation. No more, probably for good, are we going to be subject to a corrupt, anachronistic and rent- seeking Congress Party, careful to disguise itself; very much the Wolf in Red Riding Hood, but cowled in a Socialist Hoody.

The best national level thing that happened in  2014 was the coming of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister along with a thumping majority for the BJP. This was a validation of the popular will, 65% of it shaped by people between the ages of 15 and 35. It is a clear-eyed assertion, since reinforced in a number of State Assembly elections that have continued the Moditva trend.

If the BJP moves faster on the economy now, having got used to the levers of power over seven months, this country will certainly be a very different place by 2019. Dramatic things have happened already, electorally speaking, with the BJP forming a Government for the first time in Haryana, and Maharashtra, and Jharkhand. If it wrests a lead role in the governing of J&K, a festering and chronic problem will be finally on its way to a solution.   

The year coming up, 2015, is going to be the tipping point. It will be momentous for the Indian Right emerging slowly but surely towards centre-stage, and it will see unabashed economic development.  The Government has already decided to bypass the parliamentary logjam. Let us be clear, despite the shrill noise of the outmanoeuvred Opposition, that the BJP has no choice but to pass practically every law it formulates first via ordinance, followed by a joint session of parliament.   The Opposition, diminishing in strength with every new State Assembly election, conversely, has only its majority in the Rajya Sabha to rely upon.

But the snowball is beginning to roll. Even a decidedly high-brow economic conservative like the RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan is finally signalling better times.  

The media hyped non-controversy with regard to Conversions is an attempt to hark back to the Congress narrative demonising the Sangh Parivar as communal.  After all, everyone is free to convert anyone else, particularly since there is, practically speaking, no hope of ever proving abstractions like coercion or inducement in our notoriously arthritic legal system.

It is ironic that the Congress is examining if it is ‘Anti-Hindu’.  The thing is, it is not even pro-Muslim because it has done nothing exceptional for any of the minorities despite its decades in power. 

As part of a complete change, the Government should seriously think of officially changing India’s name to Bharat. India derives from the Indus which is gone for good to a benighted and nuclear armed Pakistan.  Naming this country Bharat on our passports will put paid to the associations from the British era, while also getting away from the boxed-in singularity of being called Hindustan, paradoxically, from the Mughal era.

Bharat will open a new chapter of renewed greatness with a connection to our ancient heritage instead.

(808 words)

December 27^th, 2014

Gautam Mukherjee