New Delhi: All chances of an alliance between Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party fell apart this week with the nominations from Delhi being filed.
But the biggest political bomb was BJP announcing the candidature of Malegaon blast accused Pragya Thakur from Bhopal, where she will be pitted against Congress’ Digvijay Singh – the very man the right-wing accuses of having coined the term “Hindu terror”.
From revelations of a curse on martyred police officer Hemant Karkare, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s defence of his party’s choice of candidate, battle lines were drawn on social media and in the media at large.
Pragya Thakur and the ‘rattled liberals’
In a piece tagged as a ‘report’, an article republished in RSS mouthpiece Organiser takes great offence to the outpouring of disbelief at Pragya Thakur’s candidature. Thakur, it says, is a “victim of Congress’ malicious ploy to paint Hindus as terrorists in order to appease minorities”.
Republished from OpIndia, the article quotes Thakur on her alleged torture at the hands of the police. The writer tries to explain how Thakur was used by the Congress to “fan the theory of Hindu terror”, despite the fact that it was a BJP government that first arrest the terror accused as The Wire has reported.
The article moves on to the “meltdown of the liberal ecosystem” at the news of Thakur joining the BJP. It quotes tweets from actor Swara Bhaskar, Prashant Bhushan, ‘JNU’s freelance protestor’ Shehla Rashid, journalists Rana Ayyub, Swati Chaturvedi, Sagarika Ghose and many more that condemned the BJP’s move, and for calling the national party out on its hypocrisy.
One certainly wonders why the ones who call themselves “journalists” never questioned Congress of every piece of evidence that proves Congress created the Hindu terror bogey simply to demonise Hindus. They never even raised a finger when RVS Mani, former Under Secretary in the Minister of Home Affairs, revealed how Congress created the Hindu terror bogey maliciously. They even kept silent when he revealed that Kamal Nath told him while forcing him to concoct Hindu terror, that people are even willing to drink Rahul Gandhi’s urine, thus, he should have no problem in following orders and demonising Hindus.
After all of this, the ‘liberal’ ecosystem still chooses to shut its eyes to the truth and further the narrative that has laden with lies and malice. The neutrality that these elements have flaunted as a virtue has long been proven to be a hoax. Most of the people outraging today don’t care about facts. The partisan hacks care about nurturing the narrative that Congress tried so hard to create and perhaps, their pain today can only mean that the narrative is falling apart, word by word.
The ‘sad story of Sadhvi Pragya’
In an article for rightlog.in, Saurav Jha takes it upon himself to mount a defence of Pragya Thakur. The article’s title ‘Tortured, Abused, Cancered, Paralyzed: The Sad Story of Sadhvi Pragya’ even seems to imply that Thakur was not just tortured and bused, but also ‘cancered’ by those who arrested her.
Blaming the Congress for popularising terms such as “saffron terror” and “Hindutva terror”, Jha says:
Sadhvi Pragya was arrested for Malegaon blasts of 2008 because there was a good chance that the explosive were planted in a motorcycle that was once owned by Pragya, overlooking the fact that she had sold the bike two years back. Narco tests were done on her which bore no results.
She alleged torture and abuse in the hands of the officials during her arrest. Her left half having suffered paralysis and her onset of breast cancer speaks volumes of the sufferings she endured, apparently at the behest of a political party for political motive.
Jha proclaims that the “NIA has accepted the fact that there is not sufficient proof against her and dropped MCOCA” charges, which means that she “will be discharged”.
The NIA had given her a clean chit in 2015, but the court, however, had rejected the NIA’s views on Thakur and arraigned her as an accused under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Thakur faces trial under the UAPA for conspiring and abetting a terror act, and other charges, including murder and criminal conspiracy.
Jha asserts:
Now that she is being released for lack of evidence, will Digvijay clarify why his government could not convict her of charges in all these years if evidence was strong?
In reality, Thakur has not been released for ‘lack of evidence’ but is presently out on bail on health grounds, giving ground to critics to question how she can contest the polls while being out on bail.
Digvijay says he had predicted the acquittal long back, comfortably forgetting that he and the like of Mahesh Bhatt, had called 26/11 an inside job (accusing RSS) from the same platform of a book launch from a Muslim forum. Instead of politicization of her arrest, it would be prudent if we rely on facts and refrain from an unnecessary media trial.
Battle for the soul of India
Dhruv C. Katoch, a director of India Foundation, takes a stab at giving a full picture of the election. In his article on the India Foundation website, he describes why the 2019 election is a ‘battle for the soul of India’ – the ‘most defining election since the country achieved Independence’:
This is an election which will set the course for what India chooses to be. Will the ancient wounded civilisation, colonised and vandalised for over a millennia, seek to rediscover itself and embrace its heritage? After all, India is perhaps the only civilisation that has survived the ravages of time. Or will India continue to be in a state of denial about its true potential, and remain unmindful of its rich heritage, ethos and culture?
The process of rejuvenating the Indian mind began in 2014 and has gone a short distance, but the journey is long and would require to be sustained if we truly wish to unshackle our minds.
He dives into history to in an attempt to allude to the two narratives that plague India today. he begins with how Lt Col James Todd, an officer in the East India Company has stood up to Lord William Bentinck, the governor general of India, when he “wanted to wipe out all traces of Indian civilisation”. The British parliament, he narrates, eventually went the James Mills way, where he had “pitched for the whole of India to be taken over by the East India Company”. This eventually led to disaffection and the fight for independence.
The second story he offers is of “Arab hordes” such as Mohammed bin Qasim invading India and how they “plundered the Indian land mass, desecrated the temples, killed the priests and destroyed all institutions of learning”.
That the Indian civilisational structure survived is testimony to its strength and vibrancy. But a thousand plus years of subjugation has dented the psyche of a proud people, many of whom now suffer from the Stockholm syndrome and seek to justify the acts of the perpetrators of violence, as being the customs of those times. India has shed its chains which physically kept the country under subjugation, but the mental chains still hold us captive. These need to be broken as the spirit of India seeks rejuvenation.
It is this battle, he says, that now confronts India.
For the first time since Independence, there is a real choice available to the people, with two competing ideologies battling for the soul of India. The elections of 2014 were fought on the plank of rooting out corruption, which had taken a form so venomous and brazen that its perpetrators would openly boast of their misdeeds and flaunt their ill gotten gains. But 2019 is a different matter.
Bringing the Ayodhya issue into he argument, he writes:
Election 2019 is thus a challenge to the ideologues who deny the very existence of Lord Rama and question his birthplace. The Ram Temple issue at Ayodhya is not just about building a temple, which in any case can be built anywhere. It is about respecting a long held and sacred belief, which transcends religious barriers and which rightly, should not have been disputed in the very first place.
