Skip to main content

Janus-faced BJP


The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has two sharply contrasting faces.  One looks westward, to the capitalist economy and technological advance.  The other looks backward into history and clings to ossified fossils that will stand out like monstrous gargoyles on the edifice of any modern thinking.

Thus the party has a leader who hops on and off airplanes that take him places which have absolutely no affinity for his or his party’s ideologies and long term objectives.  Back home in the country, his colleagues go on harping on one and the same string of ancient – very ancient – history producing a tedious monotony ad nauseam.

The latest pronouncement is from the urban development minister, Mr Venkaiah Naidu, who wants to rename Delhi as Indraprastha or Hastinapur.  How far back does the BJP want to take India?  How forward, on the other hand?  Is the party suffering from a split personality disorder?  Some kind of political schizophrenia?

I wonder if Mr Naidu has some basic knowledge of human history.  Or is he mixing myth with history with some heinous ulterior motive?  “The question to ask here is whether Mahabharata is a myth or reality. If it is a reality then when did it exist. Some say it was lakhs of years ago. ... Evidence of the oldest settlement in Delhi dates to the 3rd century BC inside Purana Qila, which means just 2,300 years ago,” remarked Sohail Hashmi, historian and film-maker.

Every day one or another leader of the BJP comes out with some suggestion which can only take India backward by centuries and reinforce certain superstitions and ignorance.  Why is the party doing this?  Does it want India move ahead toward a greater civilisation founded on scientific temper or push us deeper into the world of myths, mantras and old wives’ tales?



Labels:

Comments

  1. K.A. AcharyaDecember 19, 2014 at 7:49 PM

    This is the tragedy of our country. We either look towards the west or way back into the past.
    I don't think capitaism of the west would suit India, nor would taking it back to history. It doesn't matter if the past was glorious or not, the thing is it's already gone. I had a happy childhood, but would it be smart if I try to re-create it at my age?
    I wish we would look at our country try understanding the people, and help them. Only then, there is hope!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 19, 2014 at 10:31 PM

      I have wondered time and again why bjp has to play this nationalist drama when it enjoys so much popularity and is sure to have power for a while now

      Delete
  2. Anita SabatDecember 19, 2014 at 11:31 PM

    We have made it to Mars.
    Really hope we conquer our mind too.
    No renaming please...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 20, 2014 at 7:47 AM

      Yes Anita, we should now look ahead into the out there rather than look backward.

      Delete
  3. UnknownNovember 22, 2016 at 11:07 AM

    well written article about Janus-faced BJP

    Thanks,

    Jackpot Calls Intraday Tips

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Joys of Onam and a reflection

Suppose that the whole universe were to be saved and made perfect and happy forever on just one condition: one single soul must suffer, alone, eternally. Would this be acceptable? Philosopher William James asked that in his 1891 book, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life . Please think about it once again and answer the question for yourself. You, as well as others, are going to live a life without a tinge of sorrow. Joyful existence. Life in Paradise. The only condition is that one person will take up all the sorrows of the universe on him-/herself and suffer – alone, eternally. What do you say? James’s answer is a firm no . “Not even a god would be justified in setting up such a scheme,” James asserted, knowing too well how the Bible justified a positive answer to his question. “It is expedient that one man should die for the people, so that the nation can be saved” [John 11:50]. Jesus was that one man in the Biblical vision of redemption. I was reading a Malayalam period...
19 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

Loving God and Hating People

Illustration by Gemini AI There are too many people, including in my extended family. who love God so much that other people have no place in their hearts. God fills their hearts. They go to church or other similar places every day and meet their God. I guess they do. But they return home from the place of worship only to pour out the venom in their hearts on those around them. When I’m vexed by such ‘religious’ people I consult Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov in which there are some characters who are acutely vexed by spiritual questions. Let me leave Ivan Karamazov to himself, as he has been discussed too much already. In Book II, Chapter 4 [ A lady of Little Faith ], a troubled woman comes to Father Zosima, the wise monk, and confesses her spiritual struggle. “I long to love God,” she says. She knows that she cannot love God without loving her fellow human beings, or at least doing some service to them. The truth is, she says, “I cannot bear people. The closer they ...
11 comments
Read more