Looking for combatants
By
Faraz Ahmad
With just 19 months to go for the 2019 general elections, it is imperative that the coming elections were uppermost in the mind of Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he effected a minor reshuffle of his council of ministers Sunday.
But what was the criterion in his mind or the mind of his Alma Mater the force behind the throne that is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in making the choice of candidates to be inducted/elevated?
What for instance is the secret of Nirmala Sitharaman’s or for that matter Smriti Irani’s swift rise to phenomenal heights in the Modi dispensation—Combat, I dare say. As a BJP spokesperson in the crucial period when the party was in the Opposition, Nirmala as once upon a time M Venkaiah Naidu was, in front of the camera, combative when faced with a tricky or critical question concerning her party. Instead of a direct reply, she would throw back a question to your question, implicitly accusing the questioning journalist to be an agent of the rival political forces, say the Congress party. Significantly though both she and earlier Naidu were most amiable and amenable to answering all your questions sincerely in the off the record briefings. It was as though they were aware that the Big Brother was watching and they had to put up a show to impress someone up there. Sure enough Sitharaman has succeeded in this endeavor as did Naidu earlier.
Anyway returning to the subject of Modi’s choice making, he chose for instance one more Ananth Kumar from Karnataka, Ananth Kumar Hegde, a congenital, vituperative and demonstrative Muslim baiter. His much publicized public conduct of assaulting three doctors at the Bangaluru hospital because he felt his mother was not being given the VIP treatment befitting a ruling party MP’s mother, actually added to his esteem to join Modi’s team, never mind if he has no apparent qualifications to head the ministry of Skill development and entrepreneurship. His predecessor in this ministry Rajiv Pratap Rudy at least had been in the government earlier and if he supposedly failed to generate the much promised two crore jobs annually, one wonders what magic wand this street fighter has, to perform this miracle. Maybe he could hand over swords and guns to Bajrang Dal, ABVP and other affiliated Sangh outfits to attack Muslims for that is the only thing he has learnt over the years of his political apprenticeship. Sure he is a combat.
Then there is Hardip Puri, who missed the opportunity to be India’s Foreign Secretary, because his turn came during the UPA government and his proximity to the Sangh was well known. In fact he played a crucial role while posted in London those days along with our Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in pushing L K Advani’s ex daughter-in-law Gauri Advani to agree to an out of court settlement in separating from Jayant Advani . BJP insiders used to say with some degree of pride how thanks to Hardip’s aid they managed to secure some private correspondence of Gauri locked in a safe in her London home, putting her on the defensive. In effect Hardip engineered a burglary in Gauri’s house. Actually he deserved a more meaty ministry than his current portfolio of Housing and Urban Development.
Then there is that former Union Home Secretary Rajkumar Singh who won the Lok Sabha on BJP ticket from Maoist den Arrah in Bihar. He is a true bureaucrat, an established time server. His claim to fame is that as the District Magistrate of Samastipur in 1991 he promptly implemented the then Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad’s orders to arrest L K Advani and terminate his rath yatra, which he did. He is a true weathercock who in UPA good times as Union Home Secretary released the names of RSS men allegedly involved in Samjhauta Express blast but as the tide seemed to be turning against UPA blamed the then Home Minister P Chidambaram for changing the Ishrat Jehan affidavit and once out of government with retirement, accused another UPA Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde of interfering in postings and transfers of Police officers. Naturally then he drifted towards the BJPP well in time and got elected to the Lok Sabha in 2014 riding a Modi wave. With life long stint in the bureaucracy Singh is adept at manipulating data and figures much needed to exaggerate their achievements in the runup to the next general elections.
The Modi dispensation had totally marginalized Brahmins, in particular the north Indian meaning UP/Bihar Brahmins. The elevation of Yogi Adityanath a die-hard pahadi Thakur as the UP chief minister further disappointed the Brahmins of UP, whose votes maybe crucial in the coming elections. Rubbing further salt into their wounds two Brahmins in Modi’s cabinet Kalraj Mishra and Mahendra Nath Pandey have been dropped in this reshuffle. So we have Shiv Pratap Shukla from Gorakhpur, Ashwani Chaubey from Bihar and Ananth Hegde from Karnataka, three new Brahmin faces in the Union government. None, however with any significant clout or power in this government to carry any weight.
Modi’s kept media has gone to town of how the BJP is pandering to Shias, citing Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s elevation. True there is an attempt by the Sanghis to coopt sections of Shia clerics and this was evident on how the likes of Kalbe Jawwad sold themselves to this Government, but after serving the BJP faithfully all these years Naqvi has been given a cabinet berth no doubt but has remained confined to his Minority, meaning Muslim affairs only. We had a joke in Aligarh about the Unani medicine students from Aligarh’s Tibbiya College. Their degree was abbreviated as BUMMS, expanded to Bachelor of Unani Medicine and Modern Surgery, which we had distorted to “Muslim surgery, bracket mein Khatna (circumcision),” meaning the Hakims of Tibbiya College were not capable of anything more than performing Sunnat or circumcision on Muslim children. Similarly the Muslims in Modi’s eyes are capable of only looking after Minority Affairs. Actually the position was vacant ever since Najma Heptullah was sent off as a Governor to North East.
