“Unka Sankalp, Vipareet Bharat” “Sab ka naash, Sab ka Vinaash”

March 22, 2024
By Aravind Bhatikar

IF Adolf Hitler and Goebbels, his propaganda minister, were alive today, they would have rushed to our “Vishwaguru” Narendra Modi for advice on how to design and operationalise their lives. Tejashwi Yadav, the unstoppable son of Lalu Yadav, while delivering his address to the mammoth crowd at the mega-rally in Mumbai a few days back, reminded the huge crowd that Narendra Modi was a manufacturer of lies and was also the wholesaler and distributor of those lies.
Mani Shankar Aiyar, a former Indian Foreign Service Officer and a senior leader of the Congress party, had called Modi “neech” (wretched, low quality). Modi immediately counterattacked by lying that Aiyar had called him a low caste person and had insulted lower castes. Mani Shankar Aiyar was sent into political exile by the Congress due to party’s unfounded fears about the consequences of Modi’s lies.
It is not only the lies but the deliberate twisting of words that has been the hallmark of the Modi-Shah’s propaganda machine.
When an independent journalist asked a few questions about the Pulwama terrorist attack and the Balakot airstrike, the journalists were dubbed anti-national. When Rahul Gandhi in an election meeting in Kolar district of Karnataka referred to Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi and Narendra Modi and asked a question as to how all these thieves are Modis, the BJP unleashed a massive attack on him alledging that he had dubbed all Modis thieves. The BJP’s attempts to send Rahul Gandhi to jail by manipulating the judicial system is too well-known and does not need repeatation.
When Lalu Prasad sarcastically pointed out that Modi had no parivaar and hence has no rights to talk of parivaarvaad, Modi immediately launched a massive media campaign saying the whole country was Modi’s parivaar. Modi’s desperate attempts to make political capital of every Opposition speech by twisting the meaning of their words now seems to be falling on deaf ears. The latest example is Modi’s converting the word “shakti” into another electioneering weapon, which, like other misadventures, is bound to misfire.
The Lok Sabha Election has been announced. Modi is going around the country repeating the slogan “Ab ki baar, char sou paar.” Modi’s desperate attempts to brainwash the nation into believing that he would get a third term as prime minister by winning more than 400 seats in Parliament are ridiculous and far removed from the ground reality.
Independent analysts predict that the BJP may not win more than 200 seats in the Lok Sabha. Some even suggest that this time the Modi-Shah duo may not succeed in getting even 150 seats.
In 2014, it was the CAG report that fetched victory for the BJP. The fact that there has not been a single conviction of any UPA politician for corruption, alleged in the CAG report, has been forgotten by the Indian electorate. In 2019, Modi and Shah succeeded in converting the Pulwama and Balakot misadventures into a mega election victory. Modi won 303 Lok Sabha seats.
For the 2024 elections, Modi has sought to project himself as a saviour of Hindus. The inauguration of an incomplete Ram Mandir by defying the advice of the four Shankaracharyas were desperate attempts by Modi to convert religious sentiments of Hindus everywhere into votes for the BJP. The strategy seems to have failed since buses for Gorakhpur, Ayodhya, etc, from other parts of the country are reportedly being cancelled due to lack of passengers.
That the BJP is desperate is evident from the fact that it had to fall at the feet of Jayant Choudhary for one or two Lok Sabha seats, get the much maligned and hated Nitish Kumar back into the NDA fold (courtesy the Enforcement Directorate), get Ashok Chauhan and Raj Thackeray, both political lightweights in Maharashtra, into the BJP fold. Even these frantic maneuvers seem to have been counterproductive because of farmers’ agitation in north, anti-Nitish Kumar sentiments in Bihar and grassroot popularity of Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra.
It is now or never. The INDI Alliance opposition has to get its act together to defeat the BJP which is increasingly facing resistance all over the country.