What is at stake in the 2009 polls is nothing less than the future of India. Over the coming months, B.S. Yeddyurappa has the opportunity to score a ?century? for his country by ensuring a clean and non-partisan administration. The spectre of separatism,which has been fanned under the UPA, needs to be made to disappear. To paraphrase Sri Narayana Guru, the motto has to be ?One Country, One People?.
After four years of Sonia sarkar, gone is the optimism within India about the future of this ancient country. The mood of promise and achievement has been replaced with apprehension and frustration, caused by a deliberate policy of (a) reducing already low consumption figures (b) destroying public sector enterprises by ruining them financially (c) choking services and industry by an oppressive and intrusive tax regime and (d) spending money with drunken abandon in order to increase the amount secured through bribes. Only at the peak of the permit-license raj in the 1970s have the honest had it so bad, or the crooked so good. Should Sonia Gandhi return to power after the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the country would be blighted as comprehensively as China was during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. As the largest component of the nationalist bloc within the country'spolity, it is the responsibility of the BJP to ensure that it succeeds this time in what it inexplicably failed to do during 1998-2004, ensure the withdrawal of Sonia Gandhi from access to the instruments of power.
Since she took over in 1997 as Congress president from Sitaram Kesri, after the effective expedient of locking him inside a toilet, she has emulated not Indira Gandhi but Mohammad Ali Jinnah. She has worked hard to distance Muslims and Christians from the majority Hindu population, instilling especially in the former, a sense of victimhood and a thirst for entitlement. These was exactly the mindset that was instilled into the community by Jinnah in the 1930s, admittedly after Mahatma Gandhi as usual backed Jawaharlal Nehru in the latter'srejection of any compromise that could result in a lowering of influence of the Mahatma'sfavourite. The backing given by the Father of the Nation to Jawaharlal Nehru, first against Jinnah and later against Subhas Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel, has cost the country horribly. It was Nehru who opened the way to power of the Muslim League by forcing Congress ministries to quit in 1939, and ensured the ascendancy of diehard racists such as Prime Minister Churchill over saner voices such as Stafford Cripps by?in effect?taking the side of the Axis in the 1939-45 war. This single pair of actions gave a momentum to the separatist vision of Jinnah that resulted in Partition
Who has been harmed the most by Partition? The Muslims of the subcontinent. For had India remained united, they would probably have formed the largest group within Parliament. Certainly, (united) India would have had a Muslim PM, perhaps several. Of course, this would have been anathema to Nehru, who as usual worked through the Mahatma to sabotage those within the Congress Party who favoured productive rather than suicidal policies. Because of Churchill and his agent Jinnah, the Muslims in Pakistan have little real voice in the country'ssystem of governance. That country was ruled by proxy for long by the US, although these days, control is passing on to China, the way it has already happened in Myanmar. In the recent polls, although Nawaz Sharif was far and away the most popular politician, the military ensured the victory of Asif Ali Zardari, a man fully in their control. Thanks to a policy over Kashmir that takes no account of the ground reality (of Indian strength), the military in Pakistan has prevented the cordial relations with India that are needed for that country to progress beyond the present stage, where only the elite get pampered while the rest suffer.
Sonia Gandhi has adopted a policy designed to separate the Muslims from their brothers and sisters in the Hindu community. Although it is only Hindu places of worship that are in the control of anti-Hindu administrations and not churches, gurudwaras or mosques, she has sought to disseminate a sense of insecurity within the Muslim community. Today, as compared to 2004, the distance between communities is greater than at any time since the 1940s, and is growing. Each incident of a landlord turning away a prospective tenant or failure to get a job after an interview is now seen as being caused by a ?communal? mindset, even in a country where Muslim businesspersons are far, far wealthier than their counterparts in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Even while seeking to emasculate into irrelevance the rights of the Hindu majority, Sonia Gandhi has consistently and falsely vented the shrill
cry that ?minorities are in danger?. She has pointed to a single incident in 2002 to emphasise this untruth, ignoring for example the horror of Delhi in 1984, or the numerous other examples of breakdown of civil authority that have taken place in India under Congress administrations since 1947. India is probably the only country in the world where minorities have rights denied to the majority.
At least two Sonia ministers are known to be encouraging a section of Muslims and Christians to agitate for inclusion as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Such an approach makes a mockery of the central tenet of both Christianity as well as Islam, which is the equality of all believers. Indeed, part of the attraction of these two faiths to millions of Indians was the premise of equality, as against the practice followed by some others of grading people by birth. Substantial damage will befall the core philosophy of Islam as well as Christianity by establishing a class within each faith that would enjoy a lower status. Such a ?separation plan? is not just theologically unsound, it also makes little historical sense. There is no denying that Scheduled Castes and Tribes were oppressed from birth for long periods of Indian history, denied access to education and advancement. However, with the coming to power of the Mughals, the Muslim community became more privileged than the Hindus, while during the period of rule of the British, it was the Christians. It is therefore illogical in the extreme to demand that the benefits given by the Indian Constitution to Scheduled Castes and Tribes be extended to a section of Christians and Muslims, and yet in Sonia'sIndia, this is likely to occur within a short period, in case her captive coalition is returned to office. Not only the genuine SCs and STs would suffer hugely from this, but the entire social fabric of India. Once the dam is breached, a medley of communities will demand SCs or STs status, as is already taking place now. The fire that raged in the dank, dark days before Partition will once again rekindle, sending India back decades.
The result of the Karnataka contest suggests, although Sonia and her crew put on a high-decibel campaign, the BJP emerged victorious, the voters of Karnataka ignored the lies and voted for the team led by captain B.S. Yeddyurappa. In another state where a similar campaign of Goebbelsian falsehood ended in defeat for Sonia, Gujarat, Chief Minister Narendra Modi has shown that the lessons of 2002 have been learnt, by preventing communal conflict in his state. Unlike in Congress-ruled states, no Muslim life has been lost since then, even following such targeted ISI strikes as Akshardham. Only if Muslims and Hindus stand as one, as Indians, will the country become what it has been in the past, a cultural and economic superpower. And the only way this can happen is to give a sense of security to all citizens, that they will all have the protection of law. Unlike Sonia states, where a section of the community is treated with contempt, even to the extent of attempting the demolition of structures of international historical significance, the new Chief Minister of Karnataka has to ensure that his government practices genuine secularism, by giving equal treatment to all faiths. A start can be made by freeing houses of worship from state control, and giving incentives to ?mixed? institutions that see each Indian as one, rather than follow the Jinnah-Sonia policy of separating one set of Indians from others.
