Nehru was a "modern" man - and he called his steel plants and big dams "the temples of modern India." Nehru appealed to India's elites of that age - and enjoyed widespread intellectual support.
Contrast that with the BJP. They want to build "the temples of ancient India"! Their appeal is to the lowest rungs of Hindoo society - the illiterate.
What I find most disconcerting about the rigged verdict on Ayodhya is that it has put the wind in the BJP's sails. Now that Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi is seen as an abject failure, I believe The System is conspiring to ensure that the BJP take over.
But we have seen the ugly side of the BJP many times already - the Bajrang Dal, the Sri Ram Sene and all the "saffron terror" outfits they command: their goon squads. Not only Muslims, the BJP has targeted Christians too - as in the case of Graham Staines, the missionary, who was burned alive with his two little sons. The BJP has desecrated many churches. We have seen Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. I shudder at the thought of the BJP taking over from Chacha.
The problem with Chacha and Sonia is that they are not Nehrus - they lack his calibre. Neither speak to the elite. They too address the rabble with their NREGA, cheap cereals programme and free miseducation - the "welfare" by which they want to buy the votes of the poor.
It is typical of Chacha and Sonia that the biometric ID card project was launched in a village no one had ever heard of before.
Yet, while the political parties are not addressing India's elites, it is a fact that India's elites are growing in numbers as well as showing great variety. In Nehru's time, a handful of administrators, businessmen and intellectuals comprised the elite. No longer. Now we have cricketers and other sportspersons, a wide variety of businessmen who are not cronies, fashionistas, musicians and even party animals. There is Bollywood and there is television. There are a host of intellectuals outside the (state-owned) universities - like Arundhati Roy. There are numerous NGOs. And these elites are not interested in Ram Lalla or ditch-digging. There is also a growing youth elite - who are interested in The Market Economy and real knowledge. No one is addressing them.
In the meanwhile, our traditional elites have failed. Chacha is a good example, as is his crony, montek, the central planner. The IAS and IPS have failed. Indian diplomacy has gone astray. The courts system is a shambles. There is widespread social unrest. Indeed, there are armed uprisings in many states.
The System has failed - and they are offering us all a temple of ancient India!
I think our elites need to huddle together and contemplate their own future, that of their children and grandchildren, and that of their cities and towns. If they do so, I am confident that real, meaningful change can happen. In the final analysis, the rabble never does much; and elites have been the cause of all revolutions. It was the Barons of England who forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. And so it goes.
Nehru was a complete failure. His economic policies kept us backward for long till Narasimha Rao came and opened up the economy. His foreign policy and defence policy failures resulted in the debacle of 1962. His other failure was the policy on Kashmir and we are still seeing the result of that.
ReplyDeleteIn Democracy the numbers matter and we don't have so many elites that any party for that matter can cater just to the elites and hope to win elections. They need to relate to the masses and that is what all the parties are doing. Congress through the NREGA, cheap cereals etc and the BJP through the Ramjanma Bhumi, and Casteist parties through their Casteist policies.
The so called NGO elites and the youth elites are not really elites, but just upper middle class, english speaking people, working to pay their credit card and home loan debts.
The real elites have found ways to work around the system and therefore prefer status-quo.