Sunday, May 24, 2009

Elections 2009

Majority of people in India are intelligent and can ‘read between the lines’. To be educated and intelligent one need not be literate. Ofcourse literacy is a source of education, if the education is only through the print. Today audiovisual media is a great source of education.

Majority of Hindus are secular. And that is how India has remained secular.

Urban literate (I am deliberately not using the word educated) middle class is not really secular. You can visit ‘Rediff’ discussion boards if you do not believe me.

BJP managed to exploit religious gullibility of the masses once. There after they have failed.
BJP’s agenda for 2009 elections was, uniform civil code (I want uniform civil code, but not imposition of some code in the name of uniformity), construction of Ram mandir, Rama rajya, abrogation of article that provides special status to Kashmir and doing away with ‘pseudo secularism’. BJP also made it clear that these promises could not be implemented in a coalition government.

Why did they get into coalition? They should have fought the election on their own if they really wanted to implement all that they stood for. One possibility is they do not really believe in what they say. May be they thought all Hindus were like those urban literate middle class. Thanks to audiovisual media Indians can ‘read between the lines’.

There has been a social change. Members of the caste, who are at the bottom rung of Hindu social ladder within the fourfold Hindu society, have acquired wealth and power.
They resist being labelled number four. They have made their presecne noticeable in every political party. This has resulted in top three rungs showing uneasiness. While other parties have accepted social change, BJP remains upper caste at the top. BJP could unite all the castes just once. It remains to be seen whether they can do it again. The bottom rung is a very complex caste. There are innumerable groups within this caste, which makes it difficult to bring them together. Each group is a vote bank. Strangely the expression ‘vote bank’ is used only where Muslims are concerned.