New Delhi: In a week where multiple political strides were made, likely alliances fell apart and ministers turned into chowkidars on social media, the buzz of voices from both sides of the spectrum – right and left – has been getting louder as the race to the elections hits the final phase.
Making ‘chowkidar cool again’
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent #MainBhiChowkidar campaign on Twitter may have fizzled out after a few rounds of embarrassment, a comment piece on Swarajya, titled ‘Why One Should Never Mess With The ‘Chowkidar’,’ declared that “Modi has taken the sting out of the ‘chor’ barb, and made ‘chowkidar’ cool again”.
According to the writer, Suhas, who describes himself as a “reluctant techie” who is passionate about cricket and politics, Rahul Gandhi’s campaign against the prime minister with regard to the Rafale deal is a complete scam.
“Gandhi had been using this ‘chor’ barb for a few months now but the whole campaign came crashing when Modi turned the game on its head. First rule of political communication in the Modi era is that you don’t attack Modi personally. Gandhi did.”
Modi, despite being years older than Rahul Gandhi, understands the pulse of the youth far better… If Gandhi continues his tirades, it benefits Modi because he has changed the narrative on the word chowkidar. If Gandhi stops his tirades, then, well, yet again, Modi wins since that means years of political capital gone down the drain for Rahul Gandhi.”
Also read: Why Narendra Modi’s #MainBhiChowkidar Campaign Is Sheer Hypocrisy
“The ‘worms’ in Bharat”
A March 11 piece in Organiser, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s mouthpiece, tackles the aftermath of the Balakot airstrikes with the intent of communicating how the event exposed India’s “pseudo-intellectuals”, whom the writer calls “worms”.
“These worms thrive on fear psychosis they generate in the social media and thereby hamper all actions that need to be taken as preventive measures. Its intention here to take on these worried worms and look at the positive perspective of the fall out of the action Bharat has taken by destroying the terrorist establishments inside Pakistan.”
Pramod Pathak continues his tirade against the “worms” by criticising what he calls “ill-conceived statements” written in two articles published by the Indian Express. Where one commentator had spoken about how the Modi government “uses nationalism as a narcotic” in the national paper, he asks:
“When people in the country on the whole, except these worms, are agitated over the Uri, Pulwama killings, and long for avenging it, these worms call it a dose of narcotic. Was not the situation in1965 and 1971 similar when our forces had to cross the border? Were then the people of Bharat given the dose of narcotic of nationalism?”
Describing the Balakot airstrike as a “severe jolt to both Pakistani army and in particular ISI”, and how it “globally demolished illusion about the nuclear armed state”, he writes:
If Indiraji is credited with victory of 1971 war, it [the airstrike] is a major global contribution of Modiji after Yoga. We proudly share it with Modiji. Henceforth, any nuclear armed country need not be a scarecrow. World can come out of the nuclear armed delirium and start ignoring it.
Modi’s good luck charm: The Gandhis
In a recent article for the website of Republic TV which lays out how the Gandhi family will help secure a win for Narendra Modi in 2019, Chitra Subramaniam begins by talking about how every time the Congress “speaks about the future, it’s always about its past”.
This has become such a part of their psyche they barely see it. Yet another generation of bright young women and men have fallen by the wayside because their President Rahul Gandhi must not be overtaken even after he decimated the party in 2014.
Prime Ministerial hopeful Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi have already made one critical mistake – they have consolidated their enemies, a mistake even a rookie strategist does not make.
Subramaniam acknowledges two mistakes that the Modi government has made, the first being that not enough jobs have been created for the youth and the second a failure to communicate, which she says has forcibly left “that critical responsibility to usual suspects in Delhi whose lack of domain knowledge is embarrassing if not just dangerous, especially in matters of war and warfare”.
She proceeds to break down some dangerous trends the ‘punditry’ espouse, from Modi being a dictator to people questioning the Balakot airstrike.
The very people who say nothing gets done in India unless you shout and “sit on people’s head” turn around and call the PM a dictator. From building a flat to ensuring local civic authorities do their job, from garbage collection to standing in line, everyone shouts or gets someone to do the shouting for them. There are processes, but few obey. Breaking queues is a striking example. The PM is trying to build a nation of 1.3 billion people, not a residential colony. Of course, there will be mistakes, huge ones sometimes, but pulling a subcontinent out of the depths it finds itself in will take time, a lifetime if we’re lucky.
Narendra Modi cannot be given the entire credit for getting the country talking about development, but there’s no taking away from the fact that he’s given it political momentum, language and context.
Subramaniam admits people have been killed over beef, but she says it’s something “politicians from all sides have rushed to cash in”.
I know people in India. None of their personal lives have changed in any way because of the beef dialogues but they are among the loudest in flaming it. Why? Who benefits from the crime?
Lastly, with the Balakot airstrike, she says, came the “dirtiest cut”:
The dirtiest cut came when Indian armed forces were asked to prove they had successfully eliminated Pakistani terrorists responsible for Pulwama. This call for proof was led by Rahul Gandhi and his political friends. If they get a drubbing at the polls, so be it.
Christchurch, Islamophobia and Pulwama
In an article titled ‘If Christchurch is Islamophobia, what is Pulwama?’, rightlog.in writer Mayank Narayan delves into what he believes is a “skewed approach” of activists in calling the attack in New Zealand’s Christchurch ‘Islamophobic’, ’racist’ and ‘xenophobic’.
Such activists, he says, have lost their credibility.
“The Pulwama terror attack which saw condemnations from around the world, if measured under the same scale can it be termed Hinduphobic? The terrorist before the attack, in his recorded video, clearly said that his attack was against ‘cow piss drinkers’ while many take terrorism as menace against humanity and take a tough stand on it, indifferent activists are searching for every religious angle in the Christchurch attack.”
He goes on to cite how such terror attacks are misused to push selective narratives, hitting out at Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for being “one of the first ones to misuse a tragedy for his political benefit” by issuing a tweet where he had said:
I blame these increasing terror attacks on the current Islamophobia post-9/11 where Islam & 1.3 bn Muslims have collectively been blamed for any act of terror by a Muslim. This has been done deliberately to also demonize legitimate Muslim political struggles. https://t.co/5bBREoayLz
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) March 15, 2019
In the tweet, according to Narayan, Khan “brings in the religious angle to cater to his extremist Islamic vote bank in Pakistan”. Continuing his tirade against the “irresponsible attitude of media in spreading hypocritical news and generating skewed discourses”, he says:
While these so called ‘activists ‘ are quite vocal about attacks on certain communities, they eat a frog when another community is attacked… India should lead the efforts with its partners to eradicate terrorism from Kashmir and set an example for the world.
