Taking Sides

As the heat on culture slowly dies down, another began, albeit expected. It threw open a few floodgates of thought process.

Here I go.

After the last post, many asked me if I'm a BJP sympathiser. before answering that, I should say I liked that term. They perhaps thought "Are you BJP?" would have been quite aggressive. Other day, during a discussion about Sania Mirza, I made a statement that Sania is getting so much of media coverage because she is a Muslim. Some one from the group retorted angrily, so you're a BJP supporter. The last straw was Swati's remarks that said "you BJP brigade".

Gosh.

I actually wasn't being critical of Sania when I made that statement. Incidentally, that's not my statement either. Columnist Zia Ul Salam wrote an article about this point. And I agree. Before reading that, I felt the euphoria on Mirza to be unnecessary and couldn't figure why. Now I do.

To continue on the thought process, How does quoting from some columnist's views make me a BJP sympathiser? Is it because I agree? Thankfully, the columnist happens to be a Muslim lest he would have been branded as an RSS sympathiser.

We seem to be in a tearing hurry to brand people and attach tags to them. I think I raised this idea a few blogs before too. Now, however, it's becoming a lot clearer.

We are uncomfortable with people with neutral leanings. At worst, we do not believe that there are neutral people. I believe it too. With a shade difference. I believe that there can be ideology-agnostics. I would like to believe that I'm one.

Nevertheless, the practical life does not leave you to remain one. For instance, regardless of your neutrality, you have to vote for someone. Abstaining from the polling booth may make you look like an intellectual. But you aren't contributing to the democractic process you so passionately criticise.

I believe in voting and selecting my representative. In order to do that I have to take sides. While I do so, I'm very clear that I do not become a member of that party. I weigh them based on their ideologies and past record and how exactly that fits into my aspirations for this country.

Considering that, I think Congress has done a lot more damage to this country than BJP. From Emergency to puppet governers to Operation BlueStar to 1984 Sikh riots to Shah Banu to Kashmir to nationalisation drive, the list is endless. BJP has its list too. Starting from encouraging Bajrang Dal, giving sanctity to Islamic fundamentalists by launching VHP brigades, smashing up card shops on Valentine's day, moral policing India, they too have their share. A keen-eye would have noticed the absence of Babri in this list. That's a different topic however.

That said, I believe their insistence on common-civil code is necessary for India. Abolishing article 370 is long overdue. At the risk of sounding like a rustic, I'm happy for our nuclear capability and feel strongly that Kargil was prevented from escalation purely because of our nuclear stand-off. Though initiated by Manmohan, economy performed at its best during BJP's ruling and the BJP still remains far less hypocritic than the congress about reforms.

Our pundits expected 34% FDI for our economy to touch 7% growth. During the last year of the NDA rule, the actual FDI was 24% and still our growth touched 8.6%.

The media do not propagand these things because hailing any achievement of BJP is a scar on their secular fabric and they can be branded as being backward. For instance, post-Tsunami, Outlook eulogised the relief works of Jamat-e-Islami and Ramakrishna Mission . The absence of RSS's name, which did fabulous job in relief was conspicuous. The mark of a secular intellectual lies in his ability to bash BJP and Sangh Parivar.

I refuse to belong to that group.