It feels like 1985

It feels like 1985

1984 was an important year in the history of Independent India.  It represented a seminal shift in India’s political direction.  The assassination of Indira Gandhi brought to fruition a lingering fear nurtured by a myriad set of socio-economic and political forces.

Though the preceding decade had witnessed India’s brush with a fascist, totalitarian order, it was 1984 that truly jolted the traditionally comatose Indian polity into political awareness. 

75, 77, 1980 - The act of dispatching Indira Gandhi’s Congress(I) to the most desolate corner of India’s political garbage heap had been quickly reversed in 1980.  Indira was now the indisputable Queen of India.  Her family was truly the first and at that point in time only political dynasty with any real political heft.

Indira was now India.  Her arrogance, her evil ways, her disdain for India and Indians were all swept aside.  Even in her bad years she could win a simple majority.  There was simply no opposition to stand up to her.  Crabs aka Indian opposition leaders had secured Indira’s political future.

But that arrogance bred a cavalier attitude which was to prove fatal.  Her evisceration of every institution, her humiliation of every political leader bred a new resentment.  Every rebellion was to be nipped in the bud, by all means fair or foul.  No matter how low the stakes, Indira had to win.  As her autocratic ways engendered political alienation, she adopted the tried and tested stratagem – Divide and Rule.

A stratagem replicated and perfected by every political dynasty like a Hollywood scripted contagion.

As the Khalistan conflagration spread across India and gathered steam, Indians began whispering the unthinkable – a second partition of India.  With every terror strike India seemed to edge closer to that feared precipice.  Indira Gandhi’s assassination was the final straw.  The Congress organized pogrom that followed her death, crystallized the sense of despondency that had been gathering steam over the preceding 10 years.

India was doomed.

It was within this dynamic that Rajiv Gandhi came in peddling political dreams of a systemic clean up. 

That he turned out to be counterfeit was India’s great misfortune. 

An unprecedented ‘presidential’ mandate was squandered.  As the ‘Politics of Patronage’ fought back and co-opted his administration, Rajiv fell back on his family’s old tricks.  Vote bank politics aka divide-and-rule.  Where Indira had reinstated the process of political pandering to jihadi elements Rajiv took it to a new level.  He felt no remorse as an impoverished, old divorcee was denied her legal rights.  As the country’s premier legal institution was subverted, an enraged Hindu majority coalesced against such political expediency.  Rajiv’s fall was as swift as his rise.  A disappointed nation watched in horror as their mandate was squandered.

While many political pundits may disagree, India has been searching for the real-deal from that moment on.  One of the rarely acknowledged success factors behind the RJBM was the impeccable record of the Sangh’s chief protagonists.  From LKA and Ashok Singhal to Uma Bharti and Kalyan Singh.  Their lives were a testimony to those who valued probity in public life.  You could disagree with their ideological positions, but none could question their personal integrity.

A vast majority of fence sitting Hindu middle class voters embraced the movement and the BJP thanks to these very leadership credentials.  India was craving an unblemished political entity and BJP was the right party at the right place at the right time.

The first taste of power however, demolished these hard earned spurs of unimpeachable personal integrity.  Perhaps no other leader epitomized BJP’s fall more than the great Pramod Mahajan.  Here was a young leader blessed with oodles of charisma, quick-wit and a near perfect combination of antecedents, grit and intelligence to shepherd the emerging new India.  But he dropped the ball.  As whispers of his (and that of other BJP leaders) dalliances gained legitimacy, BJP’s core voter base hung its head in shame and a creeping sense of despondency.

If BJP’s best and brightest could be seduced so easily what was happening to lesser mortals?

The 2004 verdict was a surprise to many.  Few of us saw it coming.  But if you had spoken to neo converts to the BJP you could have seen it coming from a mile away.  BJP had given India an improved version of CONgress.  A CONgress 2.0 – more performance, less corruption, truncated minority appeasement.  What India had been expecting was a BJP 1.0.

As UPA2 flounders along, India once again finds itself engulfed by a haunting fear.  If things are allowed to fester, this great nation of ours will cease to exist as we know it.  The vultures we call leaders will take their nefarious intentions to its logical conclusion - the decimation and balkanization of Mother India.

Much as a gut wrenching fear drove India of 1985 to hand a 2/3^rd majority to an untested Rajiv Gandhi with a single minded hope that they he would save India, the India of 2014 is ready to hand a comprehensive victory to a leader willing and able to lead her out of the morass of darkness and near certain disaster.  Fortunately India has just such a leader. 

In that sense 2014 feels like 1985 more than 1999. 

2014 will come as a surprise to many.  But a pleasant one.