A well-thought-out strategy of the Narendra Modi government in an election year which his adversaries wouldn’t have imagined… A bountiful shower of the highest civilian awards in the country, five Bharat Ratnas in less than 22 days to ideologues, former PMs, pioneers of the agri sector which includes names like Karpoori Thakur to LK Advani followed by MS Swaminathan, Chaudhary Charan Singh and PV Narasimha Rao. By choosing the social justice constituency (Thakur) and Hindutva (Advani), the BJP balanced Hindutva with social justice politics. It has now tried to balance the agrarian community by conferring the award to Charan Singh and Swaminathan. The BJP has balanced North, South, Hindutva and social justice politics in one stroke. Many would say that BJP has resorted to this politics of honour to look inclusive, to project itself as a party which is ready to walk across the aisle.
Rao was a towering Congress leader who ushered in economic liberalisation of India in 1991; the drastic fall in his ties with the Gandhi family has often been a topic taken up by the BJP and other parties to slam the country’s oldest party. Similarly, Charan Singh was the first non-Congress chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and, more importantly, a giant leader from the influential Jat community. Singh had to resign from the prime minister’s chair after just 23 days in power in August 1979, as the Congress withdrew support to his government. Swaminathan, the father of India’s Green revolution, hailed from Tamil Nadu, a state where the BJP is increasingly trying to make inroads. This Bharat Ratna masterplan of BJP not only puts Congress in the dock in a typical coup like situation but rubs them the wrong way for appropriating the legacy of stalwarts which have been the aches and pains of the party.
It is evident that BJP is eyeing the political benefits of winning over new allies like Nitish Kumar (Karpoori Thakur) and RLD president Jayant Chaudhary (Chaudhary Charan Singh) by hanging Bharat Ratnas like carrots to allure the different political parties, but what this also does is to annihilate the Opposition, moving almost surreptitiously towards single-party rule and also simultaneously blotting out any form of protest. A popular joke in political corridors is that next in line for Bharat Ratna would be Balasaheb Thackeray or Karunanidhi so that Shiv Sena and DMK lie by the wayside. Politicisation of Bharat Ratnas is not a new phenomenon, but the trivialisation of the award is disturbing, too, as it sets aside all rules, conventions and norms. No government is allowed to give more than three Bharat Ratnas in one year but the Modi government has gone too far with its generosity. It is a convention that office of the prime minister sends the names of the awardees to the President of India who in turn announces the names, but now the announcement comes from the PM — on Twitter. Clearly the office of the President of India in a way is left redundant. The next question in any sane and logical mind is that if the Modi government is so confident of winning 370 seats as PM Modi himself has claimed on the floor of Parliament, then why resort to tricks like these? Many feel that leashing the Opposition with the ED and CBI might not have worked, hence these generous doles might at least help him to shore up the required numbers in his third term if the arithmetic does not add up comfortably. Modi expects that the new allies might help his boat sail through. So is this not a sign of desperation which BJP is calling a masterstroke? One must not forget that the CPM wanted a Bharat Ratna for Jyoti Basu; similarly BSP for Kanshi Ram and BJD for Biju Patnaik. All might throw their hats in the ring but is this loud clamour not turning into bait for the political parties to get trapped by the BJP? Have Bharat Ratnas not turned into a new toolkit for the BJP? Well, it’s obvious — but that's what power-crazy, totalitarian and despotic regimes do, finding newer ways of amassing and concentrating more power.
Neelu Vyas is a senior television anchor and consulting editor with Satya Hindi. Twitter: @neeluopines
