Politicians are an extremely insecure bunch. Please do not be fooled by their rugged macho speeches, all fire and brimstone, and their muscular predilections. They live their entire lives worrying about what people think about them, an understandable quagmire in a democracy where it is the popular sentiment alone that can provide them a sustainable future. But for some of our leading national superstar leaders, it borders on a visceral paranoia. It is like those adolescent somethings frantically monitoring their ‘likes’ on Instagram after posting a selfie where they are pouting prettier than Priyanka Chopra. A politician’s narcissism can be deleterious. And the fears, deep.
Last week, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi dramatically tweeted that the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award was being renamed Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award, it was a manifestation of an orchestrated BJP programme to gradually obliterate the Gandhi family from national events of import and several infrastructure projects that adorn their celebrated surname.
More to follow
In the run-up to the 2024 general elections, expect more such headline-grabbing tableaus, as it suits the BJP narrative of targeting the Congress party as a private family fiefdom that had brazenly monopolised the branding of state institutions and public assets in their favour. There is, of course, partial merit in the argument but that is only part of the concocted propaganda. There is more to it than meets the eye.
It is true that the Congress went berserk in naming every conceivable concrete structure and soft power play (ranging from expressways, international airports, educational institutions, state-funded programmes etc.) after the Gandhi family, in the foolish belief that they were assured of permanent power. This particularly became stratospheric when the culture of sycophancy within the Congress landed on Mars without the need for a space capsule. It was a genuflection that the party of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru could have done without.
The fact that a disproportionate number of high-profile projects have been appropriated by the Congress leaders has riled the BJP, which has a pathological animus towards Nehru in particular, and his subsequent political lineage. However, the fact is that the Congress has governed India, directly/indirectly for 55 of the 74 years since Independence, and every ruling dispensation would logically have a bias towards its own leaders.
'New India'
Modern India at its core essence is a Congress-construct, forcing Modi to continuously pontificate on his grand vision of a ‘New India’ (basically, Hindutva Undiluted) which is nothing but hollow grandstanding, as nobody knows what that means other than RSS and BJP acolytes. But the BJP is making differentiation with the Congress’s version of Old India, a front-burner on its political pitch.
Modi thought that he was killing two birds with one stone in renaming the iconic awards after the legendary hockey great Dhyan Chand (he won three Olympic gold medals). Besides bankrupting the Gandhi name, it would sound churlish of the Congress to oppose it on the day when the Indian men’s hockey team won a bronze medal after a gap of 41 years in a spectacular comeback match against the formidable German team.
Did not bite the bait
Thankfully, the Congress did not succumb to Modi’s calculated gambit. It welcomed the renaming. But then it raised a pertinent question: Would Modi kindly get his name removed from the recently constructed Motera cricket stadium in the world (where Modi played footsie with former US President Donald Trump last year when the pandemic had already established a foothold on Indian soil)? Why did the BJP blatantly rename the Feroz Shah Kotla cricket stadium in Delhi after their controversial leader Arun Jaitley, who was mired in several corruption allegations if World Cup winning player Kirti Azad is to be believed? Would the BJP be magnanimous enough to disengage the names of its RSS veterans and other party stalwarts like Syama Prasad Mukherjee, Deen Dayal Upadhyay, Sushma Swaraj and Manohar Parrikar from several institutions that demand independence from political branding? If the BJP agreed to this rational and fair proposition, it would be both within their fundamental rights and moral custodianship to remove the names of Congress leaders since 1947. So far, the BJP’s silence on this transparent negotiation proposal has been deafening. No response whatsoever. If the attempt was to ridicule the Gandhis for being overzealous in their naming spree, perhaps this jaundiced act in haste has boomeranged on both Modi and the BJP.
Name games
It is a weird irony if not downright farcical that while the name of a brutally assassinated former PM who died a valiant martyr for his country is removed from a prestigious award, the ruling PM arranges a monolithic stadium in his name, reminiscent of the pre-World War fascist era of cult politics. Incidentally, the National Stadium in Delhi and several hockey stadiums carry the glorious legacy of the great Dhyan Chand. A better idea would have been to give Dhyan Chand the Bharat Ratna or name a new special award for Olympic medal-winners under his name. But then as Dr Shashi Tharoor correctly said. “Mr Modi’s government is not a game-changing but a name-changing one”.
Let the PM himself de-politicise the abuse of government platforms for public relations and vulgar publicity. What the Prime Minister must do is to immediately order that his photograph is promptly removed from Covid vaccination certificates. It is reprehensible and a repugnant shame that a country that has had over 400,000 deaths (reportedly could be ten times higher, at 4 million) on account of Covid (the Delhi HC had said that people responsible should be “booked for manslaughter”) is seeing a tasteless marketing spree amidst unspeakable horror and dismal tragedy. The government is boondoggling its own innocent citizens.
Will the BJP walk the talk, please?
The author is former spokesperson of the Congress party
