BJP Future - 7

[ramana]

Op-ed in Pioneer, 20 Sept., 2010

Hate does not work

September 21, 2010 1:04:14 AM



The Pioneer Edit Desk



It’s time Congress realised this truth



The Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in the Gujarat Assembly byelection in Kathal constituency is a resounding slap in the face of the Congress that has stepped up its motivated campaign of slander and worse against Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the party after the CBI framed and arrested former Minister of State for Home Amit Shah in the alleged Sohrabuddin fake encounter case. The Congress may now seek to downplay the election outcome as being ‘unrepresentative’ of the political mood in the State as a whole and, therefore, inconsequential, but it cannot ignore the fact that it has lost this seat for the first time in 50 years, and that too with a spectacular margin of more than 21,000 votes. Nor can the party pretend to gloss over the fact that Kathal is in central Gujarat, a region which has generally voted for Congress in recent times, or that Muslims voted for the BJP in large numbers. The huge defeat can only be attributed to the alienation of large sections of the population, including Muslims, from the Congress. The results are a rejection of the hate politics the Congress has unleashed against Mr Modi, and the party’s constant attempt to keep communal fires burning even as the Chief Minister focuses on development and rapid progress. The BJP has been rightly raising the issue of Mr Amit Shah being hounded by the CBI, clearly on the instructions of the Congress-led Union Government — as much is evident from the agency’s prejudiced investigations and selective leaks to media. The election outcome shows that the people of Gujarat are not impressed by the Congress’s politics of vendetta and vindictive attitude towards Mr Modi; they are beginning to tire of it.



Since the setback for the Congress comes ahead of crucial civic elections in the State in October, the party should feel worried. The last big win the Congress has had in Gujarat was during the 2001 municipal elections; since then, it has been a downswing all along. Despite its vitriolic attacks on Mr Modi and efforts to discredit him, the Congress has miserably failed to mobilise opinion in its favour. Yet, despite the repeated electoral setbacks the Congress has suffered since 2002, it has been — and continues to remain — reluctant to abandon its ‘Hate Modi’ campaign, scripted by ‘secular’ jholawallahs who neither contest elections nor are accountable to the people. Their larger-than-life image propagated by a biased media and their proximity to certain leaders in the Congress allows them the opportunity to decide for the party what should it be its political line in Gujarat. That apart, there’s an important lesson for everybody to be learned from successive election results in Gujarat: The people of this State have moved on rather than be shackled by events of the past. Funnily though, others seem to be trapped in the past and are reluctant to let Gujarat surge ahead.