Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister P Chidambaram says that
"The BJP under Mr Narendra Modi is unlike any other party in India — past or present. Its goal is not to win elections as often as possible; its goal is to win elections and remain in power forever".
In that sense, he argues, the Lotus party is is like the Communist Party of China.
In his weekly column to 'Indian Express', under the title - "A decisive moment in history", the veteran leader says:
"The lesson of the 2024 LS elections is that despite many parties forming the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, they could not defeat the BJP. With give and take, the I.N.D.I.A. bloc has the potential to expand itself. If the parties do not learn the lessons, many small parties will fall by the wayside and may disappear".
Chidambaram, who was jailed for a while in 2019 by the Modi government, said--
"Mr Narendra Modi, prime minister and de facto leader of the BJP, is an ideologue who accepts the RSS’ view of India but, at the same time, is totally practical to realize that the RSS’ goal can be achieved not through electoral victory alone but through carefully crafted steps."
The Communist Party of China (CPC)’s road to power was through a brutal war against the Japanese invaders and, after Japan’s surrender in 1945, through a bitter civil war against the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1949.
The CPC has remained in power since.
He also writes:
"Mao Zedong proclaimed a one-party state in China...
India’s Constitution adopted in 1950 allows multiple political parties and mandates periodic elections and a peaceful transfer of power at the Union-level and the State-level. This is the crucial difference between China and India."
He maintains -
"At the inception, the Jan Sangh, and later the Bharatiya Jan Singh and, in its present form, the BJP, believed in the Constitution of India.
It was nurtured as a democratic party and positioned on the right of the political spectrum. It strove to distinguish itself from the Indian National Congress that occupied the space on the left-of-centre.
The BJP remained a democratic party through the years under the leadership of Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, Deendayal Upadhyaya, A.B. Vajpayee and Mr L. K. Advani.
However, the BJP’s political guru, the RSS, had — and has — a different view of the polity and political architecture of India: RSS believes that India must be a country with one-language, one-culture, one political party and, to the extent feasible, one religion."
On this backdrop, Chidambaram argues --- "Mr Narendra Modi, prime minister and de facto leader of the BJP, is an ideologue who accepts the RSS’ view of India but, at the same time, is totally practical to realize that the RSS’ goal can be achieved not through electoral victory alone but through carefully crafted steps".
"The Constitutional, legislative and administrative steps taken by the Modi government since 2014 must be viewed through this prism.
Mr Modi’s strident advocacy of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the Uniform Civil Code, the passage of the J & K Reorganization Act, the creative interpretation of Article 73, Article 162 and the provisions of Parts XI, XII and XIV of the Constitution, and the determined effort to implement One Nation One Election (ONOE) are all steps calculated to usher in the so-called Viksit Bharat, he notes.
on Modi's tenure, Chidambaram says:
"Mr Modi was ascendant from 2014 to 2024. He confidently expected the people of India to give his party 400+ seats in the Lok Sabha in the 2024 election, but he suffered a major setback — the people gave him only 240 seats, short of even a simple majority of 543 seats.
All his efforts since 2024 are intended to recover lost ground before 2029.
Suppose the BJP had succeeded in passing the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026. In the guise of reservation of seats for women, the Bill would have pushed through delimitation and gerrymandering."
The new laws and their implementation would have rendered the southern states irrelevant in the governance of the country, he says.
Chidambaram also maintains:
"The lesson of 2024 LS elections is that despite many parties forming the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, they could not defeat the BJP which emerged as the single largest party with 240 seats.
With give and take, the I.N.D.I.A. bloc has the potential to expand itself and pose a serious challenge to the BJP.
Eventually, two grand Alliances in a LS election will prevent the monopolization of power by the BJP at the Centre, create the space for an alternative political choice, and sustain the secular, democratic and Republican Constitution of India."
Tavleen Singh writes: Notes from a hellhole (also in 'Indian Express')
"India may not be a hellhole but for the longest time we have not paid attention to why so many of our countrymen flee to foreign shores.
Our problems have accumulated over many decades and cannot be blamed on a single political leader or party."
Under Trump, it has stopped being that ‘shining city on a hill’ but I know from Punjabi farmers who work on construction sites in New York that they make more money than they did from farming, she notes.
Tavleen goes further :
"When the leader of the free world calls your country a ‘hellhole’, it gets you thinking. I admit that I spent a longish while brooding over the insult before sitting down to write this piece.
There were so many Indians venting their rage on social media that I thought at first that it was Donald Trump himself who used the ‘hellhole’ word for our ancient land.
It came as a relief to see that the ugly diatribe against India and Indians had been authored by someone else.
"Having said this, it also needs saying that if Trump had not posted it on social media, nobody would have paid attention to the harangues of a racist, two-bit radio host.
Modi : Boat Ride in Kolkata
Why Trump posted it remains a mystery.
"What is clear is that his ill-starred war against Iran and his failure to find an exit strategy is taking its toll.
He has done as much damage to his own country as he is doing to the world but there are enough columnists, movie stars and world leaders saying this already."
"So, let’s get back to the ‘hellhole’ jibe," runs the column.
"It cheered me up a little that India and China were put in the same basket because having travelled to China more than once, I can report that it is no hellhole.
It cheered me up also that the author of the diatribe seemed motivated by real anger that the doors of Silicon Valley were closed to white people like him.
And open wide for people from India and China. So, the rantings of this white supremacist happened because he could not believe that brown and yellow people from ‘hellhole’ lands should be doing better in the United States than white people."
She goes on:
"Now let us discuss if there is any justification for India to be called a hellhole.
"We Indians do not like foreigners to say bad things about us but in our private moments we admit, albeit in whispers, that there must be something wrong if millions of our countrymen are ready to flee our shores to get to countries that offer better jobs and a better life.
"When Narendra Modi first became prime minister, he made a speech to a gathering of overseas Indians in Paris in which he said he wanted to build a country that nobody would wish to leave.
Has he succeeded in this? Clearly not. So why not?" -- wonders Tavleen Singh.
"Some things have improved. There are better highways, better airports, better rail services, better rural amenities by way of welfare schemes that supply subsidised gas, food, electricity and water. And certainly, rural sanitation has improved dramatically but it is not these things that our countrymen go in search of in foreign lands.
Some squander their savings on people smugglers to enter the United States as ‘ghuspetiyas’. Illegal immigrants.
"Among those who choose the ‘dunki’ route there are not just poor people but middle-class Indians willing to pay huge sums to get to the United States."
"It should worry us that it is from two of our more prosperous states — Punjab and Gujarat — that there are the most immigrants, both legal and illegal.
What is it that the United States offers them that India does not?"
Courtesy - Indian Express)
ends
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