The smarties of the Bharatiya Janata Party must be ruing the day when they came up with the shameful, offending and condemnable twin slogans - “Feel Good” and “India Shining”. Thoughtlessly coining slogans and phrases can be counter-productive. This is precisely what has happened to these two foolish electoral slogans of the BJP.
Well thought through slogans, phrases and signs catch the imagination and gradually sink into our consciousness. Let me offer a few samples. Abraham Lincoln’s “Government of the people, for the people... “ and Churchill’s V for victory sign are universally used. Tilak’s “Swaraj is my birth right” resonates even today. Gandhiji’s “loin cloth” conveyed a powerful message. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Rendezvous with destiny” is still quoted along with Nehru’s midnight “Tryst with Destiny.” Subhas Chandra Bose gave us “Jai Hind”, Indira Gandhi, “Garibi Hatao”. John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you... “ continues to transcend national and international boundaries. In each case, the message is clear. So much is conveyed in so few words. Not one of these invited criticism or ridicule. Why? Because each in its own way touched the heart, stirred the imagination. Above all, each rang true.
Why have “feel good” and “India shining” flopped? Why have they invited such derision and damning denunciation? Simply put, neither rings true. Neither reflects reality. People find each false and phoney.
I was in Rajasthan some days ago, addressing a largely attended public meeting, at Sikar, 125 km from Jaipur. A local poet made mincemeat of the “feel good” campaign. The 30,000-strong audience of farmers liked every bit of it, clapping, cheering and roaring with laughter. The poet, a “Charan” by caste, possessed a first rate political mind and left no subject untouched - prices, law and order, terrorism, Advani’s yatra, Atalji’s inconsistencies. He brought the house down. He stole the meeting from the politicians - Balram Jhakhar, Nawal Kishore Sharma and myself. We also joined the fun. By now the BJP must have realised that these slogans are millstones round its neck. They add insult to injury for those living below the poverty line.
ALSO READ: Threat to the TajLucknow is the Prime Minister’s Lok Sabha constituency. There the poverty and degradation is so monumental that women were willing to risk their lives to get a Rs.40 worth sari to cover their bodies with. The BJP politician whose birthday was the occasion for this vulgar largesse has now invented despicable untruths to hide his guilt. Shame on him. Atal Bihariji’s constituency was turned into a morgue. Prime Minister, do you feel good and is this your Shining India?
Is Iraq becoming another Vietnam for the Bush establishment? So it looks. Each time I see the Bush neo-conservatives on TV - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice - I cannot help feeling that I am in the presence of the past. Their evangelical mind-set is so dangerous. What the American troops did in Fallujah does that great country no credit. Damn it, we are in the 21st century, not in the early 19th. Not a word of condemnation from our U.S.-besotted government. But for the stand taken by the Congress party, the Vajpayee government would have decided to send Indian troops to Iraq. It would have been a major disaster. Even our troops would not have been welcomed either as friends or liberators.
U.S. Defence Secretary Rumsfeld had boasted that American troops in Iraq would be welcomed as liberators. We now know the kind of welcome these “liberators” are getting. America went to war ignoring the U.N. and world opinion. No weapons of mass destruction have been found. The world’s only superpower misleads the world and the American people. Standards of morality and uprightness are lowered.
The America of Bush suddenly becomes a menace. All is not lost. The 9/11 Commission is almost daily causing the White House much discomfiture. Suddenly the Republicans look vulnerable, tentative, cornered and unconvincing. November is still seven months away, but Bush & Co could be history if Iraq, under gross American mismanagement, continues to suffer and fall apart.
On September 9, 2000, America could do no wrong. Now it cannot do anything right, not in Iraq. The fight against terrorism was given lower priority than Iraq. America today is isolated. Even Spain has turned its back on Bush and Blair. Rightly so.
ALSO READ: A dearth of leadersI recently read Pawan Verma’s new book Being Indian. I much enjoyed his almost masterful delineation of the urban Indian’s character or the lack of it - vivid, sure-footed and at times tongue-in-cheek. Are we really - all of us - sanctimonious humbugs, moral somnambulists, hypocrites or all three? Verma seems to suggest we might be. Survival as a distinct culture and civilisation is no mean achievement. How has India survived? One, India’s forte is crisis management. Two, we are good at reconciling contradictions - antagonistic and non-antagonistic (This is Mao Zedong for you). Three, every statement about India is true. So is its opposite. Thus we can all be right or we can all be wrong about India, that is Bharat. I am surprised when even eminently sensible Indians hold forth on the 21st being India’s century. My futuristic vision is more realistic. I think in decades, not centuries. If we can sustain an 8 per cent economic growth for a decade we might beat poverty for good. Oh! Dear, I almost forgot Pawan Verma’s book. It is very good and avoids the literary excesses of the late Nirad C. Chaudhuri on a similar subject. Being Indian is more contemporary and less ill-tempered.
Brian Lara. Three cheers. At my age, I do not get overexcited. I am not blas. Only detached. I surprised myself watching Lara score 400 and getting all worked up when he was stuck at 390 for eternity. I almost leapt when he got to 400. He is now approaching the Bradman one-member league. However, Lara is unlikely to come anywhere near Don Bradman’s average - 99.94.
Can anyone equal Lara’s 400 in the near future. Virendra Sehwag could if he keeps a cool head.
COMMents
SHARE