Shakti Kumar Pandey from Lucknow
The UP Assembly elections have given some serious lessons to the politicos of all hues, especially the pseudo-secular ones, including the pseudo-intellectual leftists, Islamic
fundamentalists, frustrated socialists, and everyone that has been playing selfish politics in the name of Dalits, and castes and creeds and religion.“You can’t befool us for long”, voters seem to be clamouring from all corners, while belying the speculations of all Exit polls, and survey-mongers. People here had been fed up of the dirty politics of “Note for Vote and Vote for Note” on the one hand, and minority appeasement, on the other.
The age-old ideology of nationalism, ‘sarva-panth sambhav’, ‘sarve bhavantu sukhinah’, ‘sarva-bhut hite ratah’ and the modern version of all this ‘Sabka saath, Sabka vikas’ did the magic, in the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
By giving 324/403 seats to BJP, the electorates of UP have taught a lesson of the life to all those who tried to (mis)guide them for long. And they were all stunned as the results were pouring in and the seats were being won by the BJP one by one.
What people have voted for is the development of basic amenities, employment generation, poverty- alleviation, public welfare, law and order, nationalism and above all suppression of terrorism and they take it for granted that the BJP can deliver all this. And with these expectations they have ended the fourteen years’ ‘Vanvaas’ of BJP in UP. And the ‘Vanvaas’ ends not without killing the ‘Raavan’ and its ‘Sena’ but also by destroying its ‘Sone ki Lanka’, the huge black money accumulated over the years by the corrupt politicians of Congress, BSP and SP. Narendra Modi earned the confidence of the people, made the sincere promises and seems to be working day in and day out to make UP a model state.
The UP will not tolerate discrimination on the basis of caste and creed, something that was practised by the SP and BSP and the Congress this far. The new generation has already risen above all this and what they want politicians to focus on is education, health, infrastructure, employment, justice, law and order. Even the educated Muslims have joined the band-wagon, including the women. The appeasement of caste or discrimination on the basis of religion is simply unacceptable. Earlier the politics of the state had centered around this.
The Prime Minister’s accused the state government of being biased towards a particular community. Narendra Modi made it amply clear when he proclaimed that “Gaon mein agar kabristan banta hai, to gaon mein shamshaan bhi banana chahiye. Agar Ramzan mein bijli milti hai, to Diwali mein bhi milni chahiye. Agar Holi mein bijli milti hai, to Eid par bhi bijli milni chahiye. Bhedbhav nahin hona chahiye (If a village gets a graveyard, it should get a cremation ground too. If there is electricity during Ramzan, there should be electricity during Diwali too. If there is electricity during Holi, there should be electricity during Eid too. There should not be any discrimination).”
SP, Congress and BSP tried to polarise the Muslims, but there has been a counter-polarisation too. Even amongst the Muslims, the educated new generation and the women aspiring to liberate
themselves seem to have embraced development, and not pseudo-secularism. There was a constant effort by the
so-called secular parties, the SP and BSP, as well as the Urdu press and Islamic
clerics to convince the Muslim voters against the BJP, but there seems to be reverse polarisation happening in BJP’s favour. The BSP may have aided in the reverse consolidation of Muslim votes for the BJP as in October, much before the elections, the BSP’s political rallies used to begin with the recitation of the Quran and references to hadiths (sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad).
India is predominantly a ‘youth’ country, with 55 per cent of its 1.3 billion people below the age of 25, and about 70 per cent below 35 years. They belong to a new political population. The Indian Constitution inspires them – the ideas of liberty and equality, which nurture the minds of India”s youths, who are beginning to look beyond caste and
religion. The youth now aspire for jobs and developments. So, it is not incidental that voices against the arbitrariness of triple talaq and for the Uniform Civil Code are being raised by this new political population, including the Muslims.
During the seven-phase voting in UP, it was seen that the Muslim women found a connect with Modi’s statement on the issue of triple talaq, a social disease that haunts Muslim families across India. Even there are reasons to believe that some Muslim women were not allowed to vote in UP, because they were opposed to triple talaq. Many Muslim women voted for Modi, if not the BJP, for his gas cylinder scheme – in which LPG cylinders are distributed to poor families, irrespective of their caste and religion.
In some areas of UP, Muslim youths had been asking: Why not the BJP? Once upon a time, during the 1930s and 1940s, even the Congress was perceived as a Hindu party, they say, while the Muslim League was viewed as a Muslim party. The BJP, too, is going through a similar phase in which it is perceived as a Hindu party, while the Muslim League is now replaced by the SP and BSP. The BJP’s sweeping victory will force the dominant Muslim mind to rethink its preconceived ideas and notions. Now they realise that the practice of secularism essentially means only one thing: Muslim
communalism, as practised both by the Muslim as well as by the so-called secular Hindu parties. This form of counterfeit secularism has been dividing India’s society and its people into caste and religious categories.
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