The Bharatiya Janata Party has stooped low in building up an egregious personality cult around Atal Bihari Vajpayee and running a campaign of outright slander on the issue of Sonia Gandhi's "foreign origin" to exploit rank prejudice and win votes.
AS the election campaign starts rolling, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has adopted a three-pronged strategy to garner votes: first, thoroughly exploit Atal Bihari Vajpayee's misleadingly "soft" image by promoting a personality cult around him; second, generate hyperbolic "feel-good" propaganda and promote the myth that India is about to become a "developed nation" and a superpower; and, third, target Sonia Gandhi and her children for slanderous abuse. The contours of the strategy have become apparent through the BJP leaders' campaign speeches and media statements, and the party's publicity material, and above all, through that strange entity called "Vision Document 2004".
This 48-page booklet is, at one level, an album of Vajpayee's photographs covering both his political career and persona. It has no fewer than 54 of his pictures similar to the long series of photographs accompanying the hundreds of newspaper and television advertisements carried for three months in the "India Shining" campaign and promotional material showering praise upon Vajpayee, for which countless Ministries and public sector undertakings were forced to pay.
Between December 2003 and January alone, "India Shining" was advertised 9,472 times - only slightly less frequently than the "All Out" mosquito-repellent (10,392 times). There were 392 insertions in over 450 newspapers.
These advertisements had a definite pattern: Vajpayee's face was everywhere. Here, he was shown playing with children. There, he was with Adivasis, donning traditional headgear. Not to be missed was the much-replayed picture of Vajpayee handling a computer mouse to inaugurate a project (although he is computer-illiterate.) In the BJP's campaign, Vajpayee always stands taller than ordinary mortals. He is invariably shown as leading the nation by theatrically raising his right hand and exhorting the people to rise and shine.
Going by the publicity hype, Vajpayee is the inspiration not just behind the Golden Quadrilateral highway project, but behind such wondrously varied range of subjects as cellular telephones, helicopters, textbooks, science laboratories, tractors, call centres, battle tanks, missiles, electricity grids, women's cricket, happy pensioners, petroleum exploration, new railway lines ...
Classrooms in Indian schools may or may not have a blackboard, sometimes not even a ceiling, but they must display full-colour posters publicising the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA, education-for-all project) with larger-than-life pictures of Minister for Human Resource Development Murli Manohar Joshi and (guess who?) Vajpayee. The message is abundantly clear and constantly rubbed in. It is to Vajpayee that India's schoolchildren owe their education, never mind that the SSA is desperately short of funds and primary education still eludes a third of our children. The BJP glorifies Vajpayee as a superman, a kindly demigod, a miracle-maker. He is not just someone who heads a multi-party coalition government, but a "visionary", "statesman", in whose hands lies India's destiny.
"Vision Document 2004" takes this personality cult to new heights. Such sycophancy around an individual is only slightly less crude than the personality cult around Hitler - who too gave Germany the autobahn (high-speed motorway) - and Mussolini, or Stalin and Kim-Il Sung. The BJP's publicity material has the same fawning, adoring attitude to Vajpayee as Nazi sympathiser Leni Riefenstahl's films on Hitler.
Each two-page spread in the "Vision" booklet has a box luridly entitled "Vision Personified". Each box carries captions for "Shri Atalji's" photographs. Examples: "Special love for children", "Master of the art of persuasion", "Forging a platform of Opposition leaders against Congress authoritarianism", "Leading from the front", "Always at peace with himself". Vajpayee is depicted throughout as the Father of the (New) Nation - as if he were on a par with Jawaharlal Nehru or Mahatma Gandhi, a unique gift to the people of India for which they should be eternally grateful.
It would, however, be wrong to reduce the shabby "Vision" booklet to a Vajpayee album. Its essence lies in putting a semantic gloss on Hindutva's highly sectarian, parochial core-agendas, while discarding swadeshi and embracing pro-globalisation neo-liberal economics. Through the booklet, the BJP has also let it be known that it will make Sonia Gandhi's "foreign origins" a pivotal campaign issue: "The BJP firmly holds that the high offices of the Indian state - legislative, executive and judicial - should be occupied only by those who are India's natural citizens by their Indian origin."
This was duly reflected exactly two days later in Vajpayee's speech, calling for a "national debate" - albeit in a "calm and composed atmosphere" - on "whether a foreigner can occupy a high office ... " The last memorable occasion on which Vajpayee called for a "debate" was after Christians were mercilessly attacked in tribal Gujarat in late 1998. The subject was religious conversion. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) took the cue. Graham Staines and his sons were burned alive soon.
The "Vision" document in no way repudiates the "trident" of sectarian issues that are the BJP's trademark: Ram temple at Ayodhya, uniform civil code and Article 370. It merely uses different, less strident, language about them. Thus, it remains committed to building "a magnificent Ram Mandir at Ayodhya" - a non-negotiable goal. But it is willing to try negotiations or a judicial verdict as a route to that goal. Similarly, it promises "a ban on religious conversions through fraudulent and coercive means". But the arrogantly paternalistic assumption here is that most poor people convert because they are ignorant or are duped. The BJP also reaffirms "cultural nationalism" as "the basis of our national identity" and declares it synonymous with "Indianness, Bharatiyata and Hindutva".
The BJP remains committed to the enactment of a uniform civil code but it has slightly altered its rationale: it views it "primarily as an instrument to promote gender justice". But "social and political consensus has to be evolved before its enactment". Overall, there is absolutely no change in the BJP's stand on the minorities. It continues to be "wedded to our founding ideal of `Justice for All, Appeasement of None'".
On Article 370 too, the party is unambiguous that "the unity of India is not only sacred ... but also a paramount commitment". It does not mention Article 370 at all, but says it recognises "that the Constitution provides for certain transient and temporary provisions for Jammu and Kashmir... [T]he immediate challenge ... is to involve all sections of society in eliminating terrorism, accelerating economic development and strengthening popular governance ... " This must be read against the backdrop of the peace process in progress with Pakistan, which the BJP is aware, is popular with much of the public.
THESE semantic changes and shifts of emphasis must be seen as ways of reasserting and reintegrating the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh's agenda into the party's programmatic perspective, and of consolidating the Hindutva vote-bank. But there is a real, significant, substantive shift in the party's economic policy orientation. The BJP now openly espouses globalisation within the corporate-capitalist framework. It wants to make India the world's "manufacturing hub". It redefines swadeshi from the original meaning of economic nationalism to the fuzzy "philosophy of India First", and "the path of self-reliance". More pertinently, it says: "A strong, efficient and high-growth Indian economy, in which Indian products, services and entrepreneurs dominate the domestic and global markets, is our concept of swadeshi. This can be achieved by making Indian products and services competitive on both cost and quality."
On globalisation, it blandly says: "A big shift is taking place in the global economy, and India should be prepared to take advantage of it... The BJP is committed to accelerating this process by further reforming our economy, modernising our infrastructure, enriching India's human resources ... This is the swadeshi approach to turning globalisation into an opportunity... " This only codifies actual practice: the BJP has energetically pursued corporate globalisation over the past six years.
The second prong of the BJP's strategy is to continue to make hyperbolic claims about India's economic performance. The latest additions to these are the (dubious) 10 per cent GDP (gross domestic product) growth for the third quarter of the current fiscal year as marking a new high-growth trajectory, and the wholly implausible assertion that India will become an "economic superpower" by 2020.
The new CSO (Central Statistical Organisation) "quick estimate" is explained primarily by the fact that agriculture, which took a severe jolt last year, has now increased its output by 17 per cent (naturally high because of the low base and a good monsoon). Yet, as past experience shows, CSO estimates are proving increasingly unreliable. The 2002-03 estimates were revised three times. Even if the 10 per cent claim turns out accurate, it hardly warrants euphoria. A single-quarter figure, like point-to-point comparison, means very little. It is doubtful that India is about to move into a high-growth orbit. Investment indicators do not suggest that. Even conservative economists, for example, from CRISIL (Credit Rating Information Services of India Limited), think that growth will fall to 2 to 3 per cent next year.
As for the "superpower" idea, it defies comprehension how a country that ranks 127th in the U.N. Human Development Index will move from the bottom fourth of the world to the top fourth in 16 years. These slogans represent no more than pious wishes and irrational faith in India's "manifest destiny". This is fully in keeping with the BJP's brand of aggressive "beat-`em-all" nationalism and its boastful ways.
In the 1960s, when India was in precarious "ship-to-mouth" dependence on the U.S. for food, the Jan Sangh would boast that the country's glorious, golden post would in itself guarantee an end to PL-480 imports. Today, the BJP - whose SSA cannot even conceivably function without large amounts of foreign aid, such as the whopping Rs.4,700 crores (over $1 billion) grant just received from the World Bank, the European Commission and the Department for International Development (U.K.) - makes equally bogus claims about India's destiny as a superpower.
This claim sounds especially weird for a country that cannot even feed all its people and 80 per cent of whose population has actually witnessed a decline in their consumption in the past five years. In 2002-03, per capita food availability fell to levels comparable to the Second World War years, which witnessed the Bengal Famine.
The BJP's third line of offence is important, if utterly repulsive. It has decided to launch a campaign of calumny, abuse and defamation against its opponents. Thus, it questions every Opposition party's claim to patriotism and pursuit of the public interest. It has targeted Sonia Gandhi in a particularly vile fashion.
The abysmal levels to which the BJP can plunge were revealed by none other than Narendra Modi in the distinguished and attentive presence of L.K. Advani during his yatra's Gujarat leg. On March 31 in Patan, Modi called Sonia Gandhi a "Jersey cow" and Rahul a "hybrid calf". He said he "conducted a random survey in Kheda". He asked 20 shopkeepers if they would employ Sonia Gandhi as a clerk. None said they would. Similarly, he asked people if they would like to give Rahul a chauffeur's job. Nobody said yes. "It's such unworthy leaders who now wish to be Prime Minister," Modi declaimed.
This caused a furore even within the BJP in Gujarat. So Advani now feigns he disapproved of Modi's "tasteless remarks". But he said nothing to restrain or reprimand Modi. The plain truth is, the slanderous campaign against Sonia Gandhi and her family is a deliberate, planned attempt to exploit xenophobic prejudices and reaffirm a dangerous notion of nationalism, to which ethnicity, not citizenship, is central. Sonia Gandhi chose to become an Indian citizen. She has as much right to hold public office as any other Indian. The BJP's denial of that right and its hysterical anti-"foreigner" campaign puts it in the same league as ethnic-chauvinist parties such as the Nazis in Hitler's Germany, the Likud in Sharon's Israel, the British National Party in the U.K. or Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in France. The BJP represents the same menace to freedom, democracy and values of equality and universal citizenship as these extreme right-wing forces do.
None of this speaks of a healthy, buoyant or self-assured party that is wedded to some elementary norms of democratic electioneering. Rather, it points to the desperation of warped mindsets. The BJP knows Advani's yatra has flopped. Even Vajpayee, its star-campaigner, is drawing meagre crowds - whether in Maharashtra, Punjab or Uttar Pradesh. (Only 20,000 turned up at the duo's well-planned and -publicised meeting at Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh) The party badly needs the RSS' support in door-to-door canvassing and voter mobilisation. It will stoop extremely low to get votes. That can only hurt our democracy, although it might not even help the BJP return to power.
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