We will soon usher in the tiranga season and with it the time to flaunt patriotism will also begin. In major cities, jobless migrant families will swarm traffic intersections selling distinctive plastic national emblems. Tricolours, marginally better in quality, will be displayed prominently on pavement stalls and flea markets. Upscale gift shops will package these glossily to justify their exorbitant rates. Car owners, an overwhelming number of those who pay little thought to anything but material progress, will haggle and buy miniatures of the national flag. They will display it on the dashboards of their cars and believe their two-bit shows loyalty to the nation.
On the face of it, such biannual affirmation of loyalty to the nation — on Republic Day and Independence Day — is ritualistic. But it will be more momentous this year for two reasons. First, India enters its 70th year as an independent nation, and second, it will be backed by a political campaign. For a week, from Independence Day, all BJP MPs will undertake a “Tiranga Yatras” in their constituencies on motorcycles. An idea of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it is likely to be a spectacular “event” like every show he mounts.
MPs will ride giant tricolours and wear helmets with smaller flags painted on them. The event will double up as ruse to publicise the government’s “successes” since it assumed office. The week-long affair will be marked as Vikas Parv (festival of development) and party leaders will organise almost 200 events. The aim is to ensure the BJP’s footprint in every parliamentary constituency with bifocal objective: evoke the spirit of nationalism and patriotism and publicise the government’s efforts to ameliorate citizens’ lives.
Mr Modi is not the first Prime Minister to utilise these watershed anniversaries for political gain. Besides, governments should mark such events even if its own perspective is different from those who waged the freedom struggle, as is the case now. But this must be done to consolidate national character and not to further the ruling party’s political goals. Indians saw the first big public celebration of a watershed anniversary in 1972 when Indira Gandhi was still Durga and needed no political props.
Still, the juxtaposition of Indian triumphalism post-1971 with despondency in Pakistan shored up Indira Gandhi’s image. But this was erased within a year because “Garibi Hatao” remained a utopian slogan. People never judge governments for promises made but for its performance.
Rajiv Gandhi, too, learnt his lesson the hard way. The 40th anniversary celebration of Independence coincided with the beginning of the demise of his premiership, the dirt of Bofors having besmirched Mr Clean. Inder Kumar Gujral quit as PM within months of India turning 50, and Manmohan Singh’s re-election in 2009 had little to do with the 60th anniversary celebrations. Mr Modi will better serve his cause by not investing too heavily in the 70th anniversary bash and instead focus on what would ensure another mandate in 2019 — focused people-centric development.
Yet it cannot be missed that this government is celebrating an occasion dismissed cynically by its political ancestors. Besides being critical of the national movement’s politics, they were even critical of the symbolism that the Congress used to motivate people. In 1931, when the first tricolour, the national flag’s forefather, was adopted by the Indian National Congress as the national flag, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was committed to a different flag.
Its first chief, K.B. Hedgewar declared the “bhagwa jhanda” (saffron flag) as the national flag. For decades, the RSS didn’t hoist the tricolour in its offices. Subsequently, securing independence from imperial rule was termed a non-event by the next sarsanghchalak, M.S. Golwalkar. Underscoring the delusional dimension of his persona, days before the Union Jack was lowered and the tricolour replaced it, he quipped: “Do you believe that the British will quit The nincompoops in whose hands they are giving the reins of government will not be able to hold on even for two months. They will go crawling on their knees to the British and ask them to kindly return.”
As political parties and organisations evolve with time and change their stance on crucial issues, the RSS and BJP can’t per se be faulted for altering their views on the flag and desiring to celebrate the anniversary of a transition point in our history. Constitutionally bound, the BJP is a child of Independent India and Mr Modi is the first Prime Minister born after Independence. Yet the BJP’s political paradigm remains rooted in the pre-Independence ideological framework formulated by its main ideologues or political philosophers, notably V.D. Savarkar, K.B. Hedgewar, M.S. Golwalkar and Deendayal Upadhyaya.
It’s yet to make a break from the past and that is the reason for doubting the outfit’s earnestness to celebrate national milestones. The primary idea of nation and nationhood of Mr Modi and members of his political clan is at variance with the basis on which the nation was carved out. Because of being in government, Mr Modi has constitutional limitations and needs to conform to international treaties and conventions. But this doesn’t prevent Sangh Parivar members, including BJP office-bearers, to pushing for the idea of Akhand Bharat.
Likewise, when the BJP under Atal Behari Vajpayee put three contentious issues — abrogating Article 370, ushering in a Uniform Civil Code and constructing the Ram temple — on the backburner, the defence was that this wasn’t feasible until the BJP had a two-thirds majority in Parliament. There is clearly a dichotomy between what is perforce practised by this government — and Mr Vajpayee’s previously — and its core belief. The conflict, whether on reservations, caste conflict, temple constructions, ghar wapsi or other insidious issues, between the government (read pragmatic) wing of the Sangh Parivar and the sangathan (read purists) is a reflection of this duality.
Mr Modi has told party leaders to celebrate Independence Day with gusto as it will be easy to gather people to join the ritual. But deep within, for him and some others, the day is a reminder to a tragedy of epic proportions. For the Sangh Parivar, Golwalkar’s words are still the gospel truth: if Indians, he contended, were truly nationalistic, India wouldn’t have been partitioned because they would have risen against “all such machinations of the British and the Muslim”. Why then, is Mr Modi directing party MPs to lead the celebrations to mark this “so-called independence”
The writer is the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, the Times and Sikhs: The Untold Agony of 1984
