Offstumped – Commentary on Indian Politics

Congress Spokesperson and Member of Parliament Manish Tewari made these remarks yesterday on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s government as reported by the Times of India:

AICC spokesman Manish Tewari said the claims of development were like saying even Nazis had constructed the famous autobahn motorway system. “But Nazis are known for Austwitz camp,” he said, adding the Gujarat regime would be defined by its inaction and culpability in the 2002 Godhra riots.

The Congress’ desperation over a high stakes election in Uttar Pradesh is understandable. The Congress’ frustration at being unsuccessful in triggering a consolidation of the Muslim vote despite several attempts at competitive Communalism is no surprise. The Congress has been visibly embarrassed in recent days by its own gaffes in advertisements and off the cuff remarks by its leaders.

But this deliberate attempt to draw parallels with Nazi Germany is both irresponsible and unacceptable. This malicious attack betrays both a lack of sense of history and a lack of sense of proportion. Coming from a party that presided over one of the worst acts of targeted killings in 1984 in the national capital, it sounds both hollow and hypocritical.

Nevertheless,  the reason why Manish Tewari’s comments must be censured and condemned is because of the damage they will inflict on the fabric of Trust that holds this society and State together.

The Courts of Law and a Democratic process of Elections both guaranteed by a Constitution is the foundation for Trust. By seeking to constantly second guess the Courts and discredit the outcome of elections, the Congress is desperately seeking to re-inject the same venom of Hate for which this country has already paid a steep price over the last six decades.

Praveen Swami had a very interesting factoid in his column in The Hindu today pointing out how the Nation has slowly started to move on:

Even though communalism remains a depressing part of India’s political landscape, its lethality is diminishing. From successive reports of the National Crime Records Bureau, it is clear that communal violence is in decline; in 2010, religious hatred ranked below lunacy and witchcraft as a cause of murders.

Unfortunately Praveen Swami goes on to draw bizarre conclusions from these facts to fit his now well known secular world view rooted in an allergy to any place or role for Faith in the public sphere.

The reality is India is moving on.

Economic Aspirations are pushing Historical Prejudices to the background in our fast changing political discourse.  It is this phenomenon that explains the relative calm of the past decade and the more recent desperate pursuit of competitive comunalism  by the Congress and not un-Hindu Terror as Praveen Swami wrongly hypothesizes in his column.

One sees shades of the Congress’ desperation in Delhi’s Left Liberal intellectual establishment as well. Mukul Kesavan’s bizarre fatwa on Kiran Bedi  in his Telegraph Column betrays the same desperation.

The Anna Hazare movement has shown that communal polemics have ceased to be the bulwark of civil society activism in Delhi.  Little wonder Mr. Kesavan’s seeks desperately to re-inject communal polemics into the civil society discourse by advocating a  flawed morality where “secular corruption” becomes less  immoral than “communal corruption”:

There’s little to choose between the Congress and the BJP in the matter of corruption, but the latter is avowedly the vanguard of Hindu nationalism, so even a tactical endorsement of the BJP runs the risk of defining the movement that offers the endorsement.

It is no accident that the desperation and the anxiety in Delhi has hit a new high in recent weeks.  The Uttar Pradesh election only partially explains this new high. A recent Opinion Poll conducted by the India Today has set the cat among the pigeons. One can already see hyperventilation in debates in New Delhi’s TV Studios.

The political machinations in Delhi and the hyperventilation in its TV studios notwithstanding the reality is the idea of Narendra Modi is inevitable (more on that inevitability in the week to come).

The country moved on and it is only diminishing returns from goebbelsian attempts at spin from this point on.

The sooner Delhi’s TV studios, the Congress’ spokespersons and the odd Left Liberal Columnist get used to it the better for their hypertension.

Filed under: उत्तर प्रदेश २०१२, Narendra Modi, Offstumped, UPA-II Critical Appraisal, Uttar Pradesh Polls 2012