05-14-2007, 01:03 AM
Via email
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Dear all,
Rajdeep sardesai with his wife Sagarika Ghose waved his hands pasionately and with an intense look tried to convince his viewers that the 'Muslims'were a part of the matrix that voted in the BSP'.
That Mayawati unabashedly went about publicly wooing the Brahmins instead of the Muslims seemed to unnerve our 24 hr news channels and our secularists in the print media who were terrified of the new trend in electoral politics ushered in by Mayawati of dismissing the Muslims as a vote bank.
The media would like to perpetuate the myth that the Muslim vote is 'tactical and therefore capable of swinging an election and therefore wooing the Muslims, keeping them in good humor, offering them carrots, is a sin qua non of Indian politics. The english media which propagates the politics of minority-ism could not tolerate therefore the idea of caste over-riding the Muslims in importance. Therefore Rajdeep's angst. It was as heartrending as his sorrow when the President put paid to Lady Macbeth's ambition to rule the natives.
Now Mayawati did the following -
She demonstrated that she did not care to palliate the media, did not care for media opinion about her, her campaign or her objectives.
She demonstrated that she could do a u turn on convictions and dump 'manuvadi', 'communal', 'secular' from her lexicon, couldnt care less about what the media thought about her convictions or lack of it, demonstrated that all she wanted was to win the election and she went ahead and did it with a winning strategy and the devil take the hindmost about what anybody thought about her.
She may have had no lasting convictions, no ideology, no grand vision. But she had the courage to state her objectives - become the first dalit, first dalit woman prime minister of india, and if the road to delhi was thru lucknow, well she was going to travel it in her way, in her time and in her vehicle.
These are the most important lessons that the BJP has to learn. Who said you cannot do all this with a vision, with convictions and with firm adherence to ideology. The BJP could not demonstrate either conviction or courage.
It is no use saying she is merely reviving the Congress traditional votebank. She is not and ppl who dismiss Maya's caste calculations underestimate her intelligence.
There is no longer a pre-Mandal Brahmin vote. The post-Mandal, post BJP Brahmin in politics and Brahmin voter is a political-minded (not the traditional bureaucratic) Brahmin.
Mayawati wooed, not the Congress-voting Brahmin who is extinct today but the BJP voting Brahmin. This is the critical difference.
The Deccan Chronicle is seeing only half the truth. The truth it doesnt want to utter explicitly is that the RSS consolidated the Hindu community and the BJP reaped the benefits of the consolidation by promising to deliver on a Hindu agenda limited tho the agenda may have been. Even then the BJP neither envisioned nor promised Hindu state power.
The BJP reneged on its promise completely. It failed to deliver on any significant Hindu issue. It succeeded in many other ways but Hindus saw it as only reneging on the Hindu front.
The Hindu community as a whole, turned to alternatives. The post-Mandal Brahmins across the country, the Brahmins of anti-Brahmin/anti-Hindu dravidian Tamil Nadu grabbed the idea of a Hindu BJP, a Brahmin Jayalalithha with both hands. Both let the Brahmins and the Hindus down.Â
A dispirited Brahmin community, a dispirited Hindu community responded to mayawati's wooing altho they have not realised yet that just as she didnt promise the Muslims anything, she hasnt promised the Hindus, the Brahmins anything either.
A dispirited Hindu community is grateful that someone is acknowledging they exist and are grateful to be treated as a vote bank.
They do not realise that they have been reduced to accepting the crumbs of politics. mayawati has not promised anything so she has no compulsions or the moral necessity to deliver. This consolidation is ephimeral. it will come unstuck. And once again the Hindu vote will scatter in all directions. Hindus will vote without an agenda.
The BJP has a lot of thinking to do. But this will not happen as long as the same tired faces and voices articulate the BJP's raison d'etre<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Dear all,
Rajdeep sardesai with his wife Sagarika Ghose waved his hands pasionately and with an intense look tried to convince his viewers that the 'Muslims'were a part of the matrix that voted in the BSP'.
That Mayawati unabashedly went about publicly wooing the Brahmins instead of the Muslims seemed to unnerve our 24 hr news channels and our secularists in the print media who were terrified of the new trend in electoral politics ushered in by Mayawati of dismissing the Muslims as a vote bank.
The media would like to perpetuate the myth that the Muslim vote is 'tactical and therefore capable of swinging an election and therefore wooing the Muslims, keeping them in good humor, offering them carrots, is a sin qua non of Indian politics. The english media which propagates the politics of minority-ism could not tolerate therefore the idea of caste over-riding the Muslims in importance. Therefore Rajdeep's angst. It was as heartrending as his sorrow when the President put paid to Lady Macbeth's ambition to rule the natives.
Now Mayawati did the following -
She demonstrated that she did not care to palliate the media, did not care for media opinion about her, her campaign or her objectives.
She demonstrated that she could do a u turn on convictions and dump 'manuvadi', 'communal', 'secular' from her lexicon, couldnt care less about what the media thought about her convictions or lack of it, demonstrated that all she wanted was to win the election and she went ahead and did it with a winning strategy and the devil take the hindmost about what anybody thought about her.
She may have had no lasting convictions, no ideology, no grand vision. But she had the courage to state her objectives - become the first dalit, first dalit woman prime minister of india, and if the road to delhi was thru lucknow, well she was going to travel it in her way, in her time and in her vehicle.
These are the most important lessons that the BJP has to learn. Who said you cannot do all this with a vision, with convictions and with firm adherence to ideology. The BJP could not demonstrate either conviction or courage.
It is no use saying she is merely reviving the Congress traditional votebank. She is not and ppl who dismiss Maya's caste calculations underestimate her intelligence.
There is no longer a pre-Mandal Brahmin vote. The post-Mandal, post BJP Brahmin in politics and Brahmin voter is a political-minded (not the traditional bureaucratic) Brahmin.
Mayawati wooed, not the Congress-voting Brahmin who is extinct today but the BJP voting Brahmin. This is the critical difference.
The Deccan Chronicle is seeing only half the truth. The truth it doesnt want to utter explicitly is that the RSS consolidated the Hindu community and the BJP reaped the benefits of the consolidation by promising to deliver on a Hindu agenda limited tho the agenda may have been. Even then the BJP neither envisioned nor promised Hindu state power.
The BJP reneged on its promise completely. It failed to deliver on any significant Hindu issue. It succeeded in many other ways but Hindus saw it as only reneging on the Hindu front.
The Hindu community as a whole, turned to alternatives. The post-Mandal Brahmins across the country, the Brahmins of anti-Brahmin/anti-Hindu dravidian Tamil Nadu grabbed the idea of a Hindu BJP, a Brahmin Jayalalithha with both hands. Both let the Brahmins and the Hindus down.Â
A dispirited Brahmin community, a dispirited Hindu community responded to mayawati's wooing altho they have not realised yet that just as she didnt promise the Muslims anything, she hasnt promised the Hindus, the Brahmins anything either.
A dispirited Hindu community is grateful that someone is acknowledging they exist and are grateful to be treated as a vote bank.
They do not realise that they have been reduced to accepting the crumbs of politics. mayawati has not promised anything so she has no compulsions or the moral necessity to deliver. This consolidation is ephimeral. it will come unstuck. And once again the Hindu vote will scatter in all directions. Hindus will vote without an agenda.
The BJP has a lot of thinking to do. But this will not happen as long as the same tired faces and voices articulate the BJP's raison d'etre<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->