From Gallant Game Changers To Nervy Name Changers !
BY
R.K.MISRA
Narendra Modi brought BJP to power,single-handed in 2014 cresting a promise to change the
ethos of Indian politics and governance.He electrified hope.He energised India. With just months to go for his five
year term to end , the man and his
weather-beaten party machine stand reduced to niggling name changers.
By last
published count 19 of the 23 Congress led UPA government schemes sit soundly in
new BJP led NDA make-up. The hackneyed ‘old wine in new bottle’ sums up the
ruling BJP’s pan- India penchant, post 2014.
From
schemes to cities has been a short walk on
a circuitous trail. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Aditya Nath’s high
profile political polo of turning Faizabad into Ayodhya and Allahabad into
Prayagraj at the inter-section of an RSS orchestrated campaign for the Ram Mandir
in a bid to hustle the apex court, is now predictable poll politics. So is the
Narendra Modi led BJP government’s consent, so far, to the renaming of at least 25 towns and villages, across India
in the past one year.
It
is selective poll politics, point out opposition leaders. West Bengal chief
minister, Mamta Bannerji has already charged the Modi establishment with
partisan ‘name-games’ and deliberate
delay over her long pending demand for renaming her state as Bangla. Gujarat has now climbed the bandwagon
as well, dusting off it’s old demand for renaming Ahmedabad as Karnavati .
The
Gujarat Congress has voiced it’s opposition to the move. ”Ahmedabad is a
historic city. UNESCO has given it the prestigious, Heritage City tag. The name
Ahmedabadi does not denote a person staying in this city, it illustrates a way
of life”, said state Congress chief, Amit Chavda opposing the demand.
Former
union minister and Congress leader , Shashi Tharoor who was in Ahmedabad for a
function also expressed his concern over the name changings. ”it is being done
explicitly to places which are muslim in origin. What is the message sought to
be sent to a community of our own country, that you have less stake in this
society?. Do they even understand the implications of what they are doing”, he
agonized.
Congress
legislator Gyasuddin Sheikh who represents Dariapur constituency in Ahmedabad
has threatened to launch a stir if the BJP government goes ahead with the move.
”It is dirty politics and clearly a move to polarize voters ahead of the 2019
Lok Sabha elections”, points out Sheikh.
The
VHP facing an identity crisis in general perception in Gujarat after it’s high profile international president, Dr Pravin Togadia
was ousted, is quick to issue a warning to those opposing the renaming of the
city. ”We hear that some Babur devotees are putting roadblocks. Let them be
warned that the hindus will end their political careers if they persist”, says
Ashok Raval, the state VHP chief.
Togadia
who now heads a rival Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad(AHP) laments that the BJP
has forgotten it’s poll promise on both Ram Mandir and Karnavati. ”It rules
from the state to the centre, what prevents it”, he questions. And so it goes
on.
The
Ram mandir chess games notwithstanding, the Karnavati quest case study provides a detailed insight into
how the Sangh Parivar set-up selects, builds-up and then fine tunes
cleaving pen-poison issues to monopolise
political control. All the RSS arms work in tandem to contribute in wresting
political control for the BJP. Lets analyse.
Gujarat’s
queueing up apparently was on cue. On November 7, the deputy chief minister,
Nitin Patel used the Faizabad-Ayodhya news peg to bring the cold stored
Karnavati issue back to life .”People desire it but there are legal
limitations. If the law on renamings is changed, we are ready”,he said. Chimed
in chief minister Vijay Rupani two days
later”,we will take concrete steps towards it after exploring legal and other
possibilities”, hinting at another engagement that it may come about before the
2019 polls. Another two days and the VHP-Bajrang dal combine moved in to
welcome the move and warn those opposing it. Soon the Congress opposition
moved and so did all manner of men and
women from a cross-section of society. And the lob and volley game was soon in
full swing.
Conveniently
lost in this deliberately drummed up cacophony were pressing issues that showed
the Rupani government in less than favourable light. The deepening agrarian
crisis has led to 13 farmer suicide in less than three months due to crop
failure , including a failed attempt at the chief minister’s own public meeting
and three successful ones in the last one week, ending Nov 14. All this in the
chief minister’s own region of Saurashtra which is reeling under acute scarcity
conditions. The Cotton Association of India(CAI) projects a 16 per cent output
dip to 88 lakh bales in 2018-19 as against 105 lakh bales the previous year and
to add insult to injury, farmers in scarcity-hit Surendranagar district have
been notified to repay bank loans within a fortnight or face legal action. The
government of India’s own pocket book of agricultural statistics 2017 puts the
average monthly income of a Gujarat
farmer family at Rs 3,573 and states that 43 per cent of it’s 39.31 lakh
agricultural households are in debt. And the state government’s lone claim to
fame is an official panel to probe crop insurance complaints. The National
Centre for disease Control(NCDC) rates Gujarat as the third highest in swine
flue cases in the country with 63
recorded deaths till November 5 this year. The number of diabetics are up 89
per cent from 4.8 per hundred adults in 1990 to 6.8 in 2016. The rise in
obesity over the same period is 132 per cent. More data would be further
unnerving. Gujarat’s public debt was
less than Rs 10,000 crores when the BJP first came to power in 1995 and
tripled during chief minister Narendra Modi’s reign to now rest at Rs 2,17,338
crores(2017-18).
“Thus
it is that the dismal state of Gujarat affairs needs distractions like the
Sardar statue and now the Karnavati controversy”, points out former chief
minister Suresh Mehta adding “it is in the familiar mould of ‘if
you do not have bread, eat cake, keep looking skywards and squabbling amongst
yourselves”. Mehta should know for he was the second BJP chief minister of
Gujarat and subsequently quit the party, over differences with Modi.
The
fact is that the Karnavati controversy is about three decades old. Part of an
expansion blueprint , it found implementation when the BJP came to power in the
Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and in May 1990 passed a resolution to this
effect. Later in September 1995, the first BJP government in the state led by
Keshubhai Patel passed a similar resolution in the state Assembly.
According
to the nomination document sent by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation to
UNESCO in furtherance of it’s bid for heritage city status states that ”this
land(Ahmedabad) was also in proximity to smaller ,older existing settlements(…) as Karnavati”. As per the
document Karnavati was not on the site of the walled city established by Ahmed
Shah but on it’s outskirts in the south-west direction.
In
the 11th century the area around
present day Ahmedabad was named
Ashavali after a tribal ruler so
why not name the city so, asks an analyst, going on to answer, that it would
not suit the narrative that the Sangh Parivar would want to build- that of a
Rajput warrior who patronized Jainism.
The
re-naming of Ahmedabad was part of a larger Hindutva project for Gujarat entrusted to the VHP to begin with.
In Ahmedabad posters had sprung up in
the eighties stating “hindu rashtra ke shehar karnavati mein apka swagat hai”
similar signboards came up at the entrance of
villages in Gujarat stating likewise for the village to buttress the
hindu rashtra identity.Town and village folk were encouraged to walk to famous
hindu shrines in key religious dates and ‘pag-‘pada sanghs’ were set up in
residential housing societies of towns as well as in villages to band them into
groups to undertake the walk. En-route villages
would set up welcome and rest places where free food, snacks and tea
were served as a larger philanthrophic mission. The religious zeal was
subsequently monetized electorally in favour of the BJP leading to the first
BJP government in Gujarat in 1995 and except for a short power spell by BJP
rebel Shankersinh Vaghela, continues unhindered to this day-a period just two
years short of a quarter century.
The
fact is that after the BJP came to power , both in Gujarat and later in Delhi
under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and now Narendra Modi, it’s one time prime mover
,L.K.Advani who was the union home minister for long and in four years of his
term Modi, never bothered to raise the issue. It had ,for all practical purposes,
outlived it’s usefulness when power targets stood achieved.
However,
with the BJP on a shaky wicket viz-a- viz 2019 when an embattled Modi goes back for a mandate, ‘opiate’ issues like the Ram mandir and the
Karnavati controversy are being stirred up again with clear , obvious electoral
intentions.
Notwithstanding
the technical position in re-naming. the fact is that the move has come in for
heavy trolling both in the social media and amongst enlightened citizenry who
have made no secret of their opposition
to it. Even the state bureaucracy which had worked hard to get Ahmedabad, the
UNESCO heritage city tag is unhappy with such a political move as it may come
with costs.
There
is clear and inherent danger of
loss, if the political leadership
persists, the powers that be have been forewarned, say insiders.
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