The BJP’s massive 2014 and 2019 victories were mirrors that reflected the change that had been happening across classes, castes and occupations in the country. The change is reflected in the eastern and even southern parts of India too. There are others echoing it too including a foreign gau rakshak.
The Lure of Ram
After sweeping the North, Northeast and the West, BJP president Amit Shah has been strategising to storm the Opposition bastions in southern and eastern India. Its performance in West Bengal during the last general elections and the subsequent deluge of TMC leaders to the saffron ranks have deepened Mamata Banerjee’s secular worry lines.
Bengal is regionalism for nationalism. Eighty-nine-year-old O Rajagopal’s victory in the 2016 assembly polls represents the change in Kerala politics, which is dominated by caste and ideology.
Says BJP worker Sajal Mandal on chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’: “I feel proud to be a Hindu and Lord Ram is the god of our community. He has given Hindus like me a religious identity. I feel we should unite since the slogan has brought us under one umbrella—the BJP. When BJP workers like me chant in chorus, we feel united like never before.’’
The 41-year-old resident of Barasat, North Kolkata, sees Narendra Modi as India’s first leader who takes tough but appropriate decisions.
“He taught Pakistan a lesson. His government passed the Bill banning triple talaq. I welcome the NRC and implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Bill,’’ says the garment trader. Regarding his win, Rajagopal says the large presence of Hindus in his constituency helped.
He had held hundreds of meetings in all households to win the hearts of women, even from traditionally CPI(M) or Congress families. He blames cultural leaders who have not bothered to study the principles of the BJP and the RSS. “They haven’t read about 'them and only mouth criticisms. Hence their claim that the BJP is anti-Muslim or anti-Christian is absurd,” he says.
Gau for it
Cow worship is not just for Indians. Friederike Irina Bruening, aka Sudevi Mataji, came to India in 1978 as a tourist and stayed on to become a gau rakshak who now shelters over 1,800 bovines in her gaushala in Mathura. Young Friederike fell in love with Indian philosophy and mysticism. She decided to make the land of Krishna her permanent abode.
The turning point came when she brought a sick calf home, treated it and reared it. What started with one calf grew into a gaushala sprawled over 3,300 sq yards, over the last 41 years. Sudevi, who sees cows as her children, asserts that she would oppose anyone who tries to kill and eat her children. However, she is strongly against violence and murder in the name of cow protection.
Now, the sexagenarian ashraidatri (one who gives shelter to ‘gaumata’) has employed around 90 workers and spends around Rs 3 crore a month to run her enterprise. Part of the funding is from the company her father founded in Germany. She was awarded the Padma Shri last year for her work in cow welfare.
Praise and Warning in Kashmir
Anoop Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit who fled ethnic terror in the Valley to Delhi in 1990, was determined not to take the displacement lying down. He is certain the abrogation of Article 370 and Article 35(A) couldn’t have come at a better time.
The IT entrepreneur and chairman of the Sampoorn Kashmiri Sangathan says, “We have for long demanded the annulment of both Articles, which were meant to be temporary. I largely blame the exodus of Pandits on them.
Now, there will be development and gender equality in the Valley.” He says the people of Jammu and Kashmir had been waiting for long for this change. Agrees Faridabad-based physician Ramesh Raina, “This (the abrogation of Article 370) is the most progressive decision that has been taken in Kashmir—even radical Kashmiris should not see it as a retrograde step and that something valuable has been taken away. Rather, they must see it as the first step for development to happen in the Valley by laying the foundation for a positive politics.”
He believes it should have happened decades ago. “Kashmir has been constantly kept away from the constitutional structure of India on the pretext that the state’s identity and status is special. Article 370 and Article 35(A) were being used as instruments preventing J&K's complete merger with India,” says Raina. He too had fled Kashmir in the dead of night in January 1990 accompanied by his pregnant wife.
“It was the scariest night of my life. It was something I had never dreamt of,” says he. He had naively believed that they would be back in a week’s time. The week turned to months which turned to years. He briefly visited his home state in 2016.
Kaul adds a word of caution: “A Land Bill with a rider to scrutinise the buyers of plots and their reason should be passed. The government must watch and tread carefully so that Kashmir does not become a 100 percent Islamic state.”