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Pace secularism, it is perhaps India's longest-running political farce that the Bharatiya Janata Party is a Hindu nationalist political party. Any mention of the party in the print media is usually prefaced with those two adjectives and the international press has also unquestioningly copied the locals in the custom. However, it is difficult to discern any Hindu agenda in the BJP's governance either between 1998 and 2004 or since 2014. Although the party has been using the label to its benefit for years, even fed it with wild rhetoric from time to time, the BJP has hardly taken up the Hindu cause as it is so often accused of doing.

It is disheartening to see that few can even identify Hindu issues, such has been the impact of the jejune blaring from the media houses on India's public sphere. Were an outsider to peek in for a second, he would assume that the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and the Uniform Civil Code are two important political issues for Hindus — and he would be wrong. The former is largely symbolic — and yes, symbols do have power — but it does not have a large enough impact on the Hindu community to accord it such primacy among issues. As for the latter, it hardly affects Hindus except in an intellectual way — legal systems of other religions, for all their flaws, do not impact Hindus; the inequality of various communities before a national judiciary is philosophically unpalatable but ultimately of little consequence to the narrower interests of the Hindu community.
Representational image.

Arguably the most important item on the Hindu agenda is the liberation of their temples from government control. The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, first passed in Madras in the 1920s, was ostensibly enacted to introduce better management and eliminate corruption in temple administration. The law applied, as its name suggests, only to Hindu organisations; it is farcical to assume that these challenges do not plague religious organisations of other faiths or, indeed, that the government of a weak democracy is capable of better management or is freer of corruption than a private entity.

Although hundreds of temples are administered by the government, it is the rich temples that are the prize. Offerings by devotees run into hundreds of crores annually and the wealth is siphoned off to government coffers. To add insult to injury, the committees in charge of temple operations are not necessarily drawn from the community the temple serves or even pious Hindus. For example, Abdul Rehman Antulay was appointed a trustee of the famous Siddhivinayak Temple in Bombay, and the Marxist takeover of Kerala's devaswoms is well-known. For all the talk of Hindutva by both, the media and the BJP, the party's agenda on making temples autonomous is unclear. If indeed there exists such an action plan, it is so vapid that it does not come to mind.

An equally critical arena of Hindu interests is education. Through the innocuously named Right to Education Act (RTE), the government has essentially commandeered private school capacity to further its populist agenda. Although the Act is portrayed as creating a quota for the economically underprivileged, that number is but a small portion of the total reservation which primarily benefits other categories. Minority institutions are exempt from this state hijacking of infrastructure.

It is far more difficult for Hindus to start their own schools, training colleges, and universities than it is for minorities. Even before the RTE was passed, minority institutions also controlled their student admissions and teacher hiring criteria; they were not subject to any quotas or other regulations non-minority institutions have to follow. This effectively changes the divide in Indian education from private/public to minority/non-minority. The BJP has disappointed many of its supporters by not repealing the RTE or even attempting to put all schools minority and non, on an equal footing.

The problem is not simply about quotas, though the social engineering of the Hindu community deserves attention too. It would be quite entertaining, for instance, to see the Indian government take similar interest in Muslim affairs and legislate quotas for Ahmadis, Shia, Zaydis, Sufis, and women in madrassas.

A greater problem lies in the syllabi prescribed by the various boards of education in the country. Although everyone can agree that there ought to be some balance and rigour in the curriculum, dozens of examples of sycophancy to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and an overly rosy interpretation of the Islamic conquest of and rule over India's overwhelmingly Hindu population fill the pages of history textbooks. In this context, it was ironic to see an MP of an allegedly Hindutva party declare in parliament just a few days ago that she was not guilty of saffronisation.

Finally, a third major plank of a core Hindu agenda would be the reversal of a relentless assault on Hindu customs, traditions, and rituals. The law against superstition and black magic, the ban on Jallikattu, the sudden chorus of environmental appeals timed to perfection around Deepavali and Ganesh Chaturthi, the demand to open up temple entry to all, the call to abolish made snana, are all facets of the same agenda to delegitimise Hinduism. The BJP's record on defending against these assaults ranges from non-existent to abysmal.

It should be noted that there are already pre-existing laws that adequately cover any real damage arising from black magic or whatever else outsiders find offensive. Between them and the voluntary nature of some of the rituals, there really is no need for interference by the state except to socially re-engineer Hindu society; it seems Hindus are the only community not guaranteed protection by the constitution from the arbitrary powers of the state.

Only a party that has a coherent position on these issues can be considered to be a Hindu party. The BJP, sadly, is not such a party, although many of its individual members may indeed be devout. For those who support it on cultural grounds, it is seen more as the least anti-Hindu political party than a Hindutva party; it is the tyranny of There-Is-No-Alternative. Interestingly, the demands on these three core Hindu issues is only for equality with other faiths; no special dispensation is sought from other communities nor any largesse from the state. Were any other party to champion these very reasonable causes, it might even put a dent in the BJP's electoral fortunes. Of course, such a move would also need to take into account media spin and the impact on other votebanks.


As for that other adjective - nationalist - that is hurled as an insult at the BJP, one would hope that all parties that seek to govern India are nationalist. Geopolitics is not a graduate history seminar where one has the intellectual luxury of sitting on the fence, above the fray; rather, it is about clearly picking your team and giving it your full-throated support. So about that Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party... Hindu, I doubt it; nationalist, I certainly hope so.

@Darmashkian
BJP's actions so far indicate that it hasn't taken up the Hindu cause as it is accused of doing - Firstpost
 
His opposing candidates are also malayalees ,So no chance of others getting benefit from this language polarization...State committee preferred him Kozhikode but he was not ready to make any adjustments
hehe...Current M.L.A "Abdul Razakh' is from Tulunadu Byari ,Muslim community,not Malayali Muslim and can speak Tulu and Kannada languages perfectly...

Vatttiyoorkkavu was a wrong choice for sure, Trivandrum central consists of Sreekariyam ?
Sreekaryam comes under Kazhakoottam,i think...
 
hehe...Current M.L.A "Abdul Razakh' is from Tulunadu Byari ,Muslim community,not Malayali Muslim and can speak Tulu and Kannada languages perfectly...


Sreekaryam comes under Kazhakoottam,i think...

in that case you forgot communal polorisation in that area ,Surendran is fluent in Kannada and Tulu so language may not be a problem for him
 
11137192_1164674170240043_6217052305830979391_n.jpg


923_1115207478500025_5756127736482230765_n.jpg
 
Assam: can BJP defy history? - Livemint

The dates for the assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam and Puducherry have already been declared. After losses in Delhi and Bihar, these assembly polls have particular relevance for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Its leadership will be keen to perform well to reclaim the political supremacy it established in the 16th general election. However, from among the states going to polls, the BJP only has a realistic chance in Assam.

Before the last general election, the BJP was, at best, a marginal political player in Assam. The 2006 assembly election was its best performance, with the party managing a 12% vote share. However, there was a dramatic turnaround in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when it got a 36% vote share—winning seven of the 14 seats and leading in 69 assembly segments. Can the party repeat this performance in the upcoming polls to the state assembly?

The social arithmetic

It is hard to comprehend politics in Assam without understanding its ethnic and religious make up. Sample this: more than one in three persons in Assam is a Muslim, accounting for 34% of the state’s population. In numbers, it is the second largest Muslim population in a state, after Jammu and Kashmir—a fact no political party can ignore.

The dominant Muslim voter base, prima facie, does give a headstart to the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF), a party largely representing the political aspirations of the Muslim population. The same applies to the Congress, which positions itself as a secular alternative. AUDF is an important player in Muslim-dominated areas, particularly in lower Assam, accounting for 54% of the Muslim population, where it polled more votes than the Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. However, these votes are unlikely to be divided, and the Muslim vote will consolidate behind the candidate who stands a better chance of beating their BJP rival.




Click here for enlarge



Besides the Hindu-Muslim divide, other ethnic groups will also play an important role in certain pockets. For example, the districts of Kokrajhar, Baksa, Chirang and Udalguri are home to Bodos. This area has seen rapid growth of the Muslim population. The proportion of Scheduled Tribes (mainly Bodos), constituting about a third of the population in these four districts, has shrunk. It is this demographic transition which triggered the recent violent skirmishes in the region. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is expected to benefit from an alliance with Bodoland People’s Front (BOPF) and anti-Muslim sentiments in this belt.

The Tea Tribes are another important socioeconomic group, accounting for more than 9% votes in the state. They are particularly significant in Sivasagar, Sonitpur, Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Golaghat, Jorhat and Kokrajhar districts. In the past, the Tea Tribe has backed the Congress but the party’s defeat in the Tea Tribe-dominated Dibrugarh and Jorhat Lok Sabha constituencies in 2014 suggest this vote has drifted away. Two BJP members of Parliament (MPs), Rameshwar Teli from Dibrugarh and Kamakhya Prasad from Jorhat, will be key vote catchers for the BJP in this belt.

Alliances

Historically, a party needs minimum 35% votes to get a simple majority in Assam. The BJP polled 36% votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, which may be difficult to match in an assembly poll.

This makes alliances critical. It is a fair assumption to make that the alliances with the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the BOPF, will help the NDA cross 35% vote share. In the best case scenario, the NDA vote share can even inch towards the 40% mark—sufficient for a simple majority. Alarmed by the BJP’s initiative to stitch together a strong alliance, the Congress has responded by roping in the splinter Bodo party, United People’s Party (UPP). However, unless the Congress strikes a deal with AUDF, the political alliances favour the BJP.

The leadership

It is quite obvious that this election is as much a clash of political personalities as it is about ideologies and alliances. Chief minister Tarun Gogoi is undoubtedly the tallest political leader of Assam. The big question is whether his personal image will be sufficient to offset 15 years of anti-incumbency.

Gogoi is pitched against the NDA’s Sarbananda Sonowal, who has grown in stature after becoming a Union minister. Besides, while the AGP as a party may have been marginalized, its chief Prafulla Mahanta still carries appeal among sections of voters. Thus, the alliance with the AGP will be a force multiplier in raising Sonowal’s stature. Induction of Himanta Biswa Sarma, who once controlled the grassroots machinery of the Congress and still considered very resourceful, will also strengthen Sonowal politically. Therefore, the trinity of Sonowal, Mahanta and Sarma, under leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, looks a formidable force to take on Gogoi’s strong persona.

Issues

Development and illegal migration are likely to dominate the narrative in this election.

About one-third (10 million) of the state’s population continue to live below the poverty line. Despite ruling the state for three consecutive terms, the Congress does not have much to showcase on the development front.

However, Gogoi has been smartly distributing freebies to specific voters groups, which does return electoral dividend. He has strategically been questioning Modi’s achievement—a move seen as an attempt to deflect attention from the anti-incumbency factor and make the Assam election a mandate on the central government’s performance. Thus, the BJP may counter the Congress’s efforts by strategically showcasing the Modi government’s achievements but with a greater focus on failures of the state government.

In his 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign, Modi had raised the issue of “illegal migration” very strongly, and, perceptibly, his promise to chase out illegal migrants paid rich dividend. It is still a very emotive issue for a majority of Hindus in Assam. A section of anti-BJP forces in Assam is running a campaign that the prime minister has done nothing on this front.

Despite such a campaign, the BJP is expected to gain on this issue because the Congress and the AUDF are largely considered two parties that are willing to appease illegal migrants. The updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) by the central government is expected to help the BJP politically, though a section of Assamese Hindus are not in favour of giving citizenship to the Bengali Hindu immigrants.

Challenges for the BJP

On paper, the transfer of votes among the NDA partners should not be difficult because their support base shares a strong anti-Congress sentiment. That said, the aspirations of some local leaders of the BJP and AGP are so high that several of them may rebel if denied tickets; the recent split in the AGP only reinforces these fears.

Thus, the NDA leadership will have to work hard at the local level to contain internal dissent. Over the years, the Congress has mastered the art of buying votes by distributing freebies among poor voters, and the BJP will find it difficult to match this. In addition, the 34%-strong Muslim vote is expected to get polarized against the NDA; thus even a little division in the non-Muslim vote will impact the NDA’s chances drastically. Showcasing the central government’s achievements will also be a tricky business because a little slip can take the focus away from the anti-incumbency against the state government.

To sum up, with a strong alliance, the NDA looks slightly ahead of its opponents, at this point of time, but the Congress cannot be underestimated because of historical reasons. Modi and BJP president Amit Shah will have to work hard to turn the arithmetic into chemistry and defy history to set up its first government in Assam.

Congress using JNU card in Assam.
CdkoZjsUAAAm2G9.jpg
 
Pace secularism, it is perhaps India's longest-running political farce that the Bharatiya Janata Party is a Hindu nationalist political party. Any mention of the party in the print media is usually prefaced with those two adjectives and the international press has also unquestioningly copied the locals in the custom. However, it is difficult to discern any Hindu agenda in the BJP's governance either between 1998 and 2004 or since 2014. Although the party has been using the label to its benefit for years, even fed it with wild rhetoric from time to time, the BJP has hardly taken up the Hindu cause as it is so often accused of doing.

It is disheartening to see that few can even identify Hindu issues, such has been the impact of the jejune blaring from the media houses on India's public sphere. Were an outsider to peek in for a second, he would assume that the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and the Uniform Civil Code are two important political issues for Hindus — and he would be wrong. The former is largely symbolic — and yes, symbols do have power — but it does not have a large enough impact on the Hindu community to accord it such primacy among issues. As for the latter, it hardly affects Hindus except in an intellectual way — legal systems of other religions, for all their flaws, do not impact Hindus; the inequality of various communities before a national judiciary is philosophically unpalatable but ultimately of little consequence to the narrower interests of the Hindu community.
Representational image.

Arguably the most important item on the Hindu agenda is the liberation of their temples from government control. The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, first passed in Madras in the 1920s, was ostensibly enacted to introduce better management and eliminate corruption in temple administration. The law applied, as its name suggests, only to Hindu organisations; it is farcical to assume that these challenges do not plague religious organisations of other faiths or, indeed, that the government of a weak democracy is capable of better management or is freer of corruption than a private entity.

Although hundreds of temples are administered by the government, it is the rich temples that are the prize. Offerings by devotees run into hundreds of crores annually and the wealth is siphoned off to government coffers. To add insult to injury, the committees in charge of temple operations are not necessarily drawn from the community the temple serves or even pious Hindus. For example, Abdul Rehman Antulay was appointed a trustee of the famous Siddhivinayak Temple in Bombay, and the Marxist takeover of Kerala's devaswoms is well-known. For all the talk of Hindutva by both, the media and the BJP, the party's agenda on making temples autonomous is unclear. If indeed there exists such an action plan, it is so vapid that it does not come to mind.

An equally critical arena of Hindu interests is education. Through the innocuously named Right to Education Act (RTE), the government has essentially commandeered private school capacity to further its populist agenda. Although the Act is portrayed as creating a quota for the economically underprivileged, that number is but a small portion of the total reservation which primarily benefits other categories. Minority institutions are exempt from this state hijacking of infrastructure.

It is far more difficult for Hindus to start their own schools, training colleges, and universities than it is for minorities. Even before the RTE was passed, minority institutions also controlled their student admissions and teacher hiring criteria; they were not subject to any quotas or other regulations non-minority institutions have to follow. This effectively changes the divide in Indian education from private/public to minority/non-minority. The BJP has disappointed many of its supporters by not repealing the RTE or even attempting to put all schools minority and non, on an equal footing.

The problem is not simply about quotas, though the social engineering of the Hindu community deserves attention too. It would be quite entertaining, for instance, to see the Indian government take similar interest in Muslim affairs and legislate quotas for Ahmadis, Shia, Zaydis, Sufis, and women in madrassas.

A greater problem lies in the syllabi prescribed by the various boards of education in the country. Although everyone can agree that there ought to be some balance and rigour in the curriculum, dozens of examples of sycophancy to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and an overly rosy interpretation of the Islamic conquest of and rule over India's overwhelmingly Hindu population fill the pages of history textbooks. In this context, it was ironic to see an MP of an allegedly Hindutva party declare in parliament just a few days ago that she was not guilty of saffronisation.

Finally, a third major plank of a core Hindu agenda would be the reversal of a relentless assault on Hindu customs, traditions, and rituals. The law against superstition and black magic, the ban on Jallikattu, the sudden chorus of environmental appeals timed to perfection around Deepavali and Ganesh Chaturthi, the demand to open up temple entry to all, the call to abolish made snana, are all facets of the same agenda to delegitimise Hinduism. The BJP's record on defending against these assaults ranges from non-existent to abysmal.

It should be noted that there are already pre-existing laws that adequately cover any real damage arising from black magic or whatever else outsiders find offensive. Between them and the voluntary nature of some of the rituals, there really is no need for interference by the state except to socially re-engineer Hindu society; it seems Hindus are the only community not guaranteed protection by the constitution from the arbitrary powers of the state.

Only a party that has a coherent position on these issues can be considered to be a Hindu party. The BJP, sadly, is not such a party, although many of its individual members may indeed be devout. For those who support it on cultural grounds, it is seen more as the least anti-Hindu political party than a Hindutva party; it is the tyranny of There-Is-No-Alternative. Interestingly, the demands on these three core Hindu issues is only for equality with other faiths; no special dispensation is sought from other communities nor any largesse from the state. Were any other party to champion these very reasonable causes, it might even put a dent in the BJP's electoral fortunes. Of course, such a move would also need to take into account media spin and the impact on other votebanks.


As for that other adjective - nationalist - that is hurled as an insult at the BJP, one would hope that all parties that seek to govern India are nationalist. Geopolitics is not a graduate history seminar where one has the intellectual luxury of sitting on the fence, above the fray; rather, it is about clearly picking your team and giving it your full-throated support. So about that Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party... Hindu, I doubt it; nationalist, I certainly hope so.

@Darmashkian
BJP's actions so far indicate that it hasn't taken up the Hindu cause as it is accused of doing - Firstpost

& some people still ask what more do Hindus want ?
 
Although news is from NDTV but if true I am happy that MPs especially from UP are being pulled up for not performing up to the mark.

PM Modi Speaks For '2 Minutes As Varanasi MP' In Blunt Speech At BJP Meet
For just two minutes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said to party leaders at a meeting on Monday, he would speak as the BJP lawmaker from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. Then, he bluntly asked his fellow MPs some questions, sources said.

How many of the party's 71 Lok Sabha MPs from UP, of whom he is one, had a list of villages in their constituencies where electricity has reached under his government's Deendayal Jyotigram scheme, PM Modi asked.

Not one person raised a hand.


PM Modi then asked how many had bothered to download on the phones they were carrying, a mobile app launched by the Prime Minister's Office last year, which provides comprehensive information on the government's achievements and initiatives, apart from day to day updates from the PM.
modi-in-bjp-meet-in-varanasi-pti_650x400_51458042923.jpg


Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in UP for the launch of a 10-day farmer outreach to be launched by the BJP. (PTI Photo)


Once again, no hands.

The Prime Minister was speaking at a meeting of BJP lawmakers called to discuss preps for elections in UP next year. Among worries discussed was that the Centre's policies are not reaching the common man. There was not much time left for the elections and the focus must shift right away to UP, said both Home Minister Rajnath Singh and party chief Amit Shah, who has said that a robust social media strategy will be the cornerstone of the BJP's Uttar Pradesh campaign.

UP is a must-win election for the BJP, which suffered two big defeats last year in Delhi and Bihar and is not seen among the front runners in at least four of the five states where elections will be held this year. The party hopes to translate its sweep of the state in the national elections of 2014, into a win next year.

The BJP has also effected a strategy shift after the defeat in Bihar, where it reckons that its rivals successfully projected the Modi government as one for corporates and the rich. It presented a Union Budget last month designed to signal that the welfare of farmers, rural poor and the underprivileged is its number one priority.

The PM will be in UP for the launch of a 10-day farmer outreach to be launched by the BJP to highlight the measures announced in the Budget for the welfare of farmers.
 

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