The appointment of a new state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president is not going to end the entrenched differences within the saffron organisation, if reaction to the passing of the crown from Ernest Mawrie to Rikman Momin is anything to go by.
Party spokesman Gregory F Shullai is one of those critical of the appointment of Momin and has told Highland Post that the BJP has become lazy and has ignored those who have truly worked hard for it and who could increase its presence in Meghalaya.
Looking to carry out a self-examination on behalf of the BJP, Shullai, who has written extensively on the subject of the party and its place in Meghalaya, said that the BJP’s approach to this year’s Assembly election were “at best indecent”.
“Not only did the party lose its perspective of the values that the people have accepted as their culture and on which they were charting a course that the state should adopt for the future, the party went further than that – it didn’t even indicate anything convincing of its respect and closeness to the values of the people of the state, especially since the traditions and the practices here are so contrasting to that of the Indian mainland,” he said.
Despite trotting out the Prime Minister, Union Home Minister and others during the campaign, and rolling out plenty of advertisements, rallies and the like, the BJP remained stuck with the same two MLAs that it had since 2018.
“In general the party has become lazy and that happens when one has been in the driving seat for a long period of time without a test,” Shullai said. “The driver becomes impoverished of ideas and instincts, knowing not whether to be honest or dishonest and thereby developing an appetite to deal with the opposites instead of taking sides.”
The party has appointed leaders without taking into consideration the ways of the community to which the person belongs and the BJP has ended up “stumbling instead of marching ahead in lock step.”
The old guard has become disgruntled at this and the attitude the BJP has developed to other issues and are wondering “whether the party has lost its focus”.
Some of the sheen has come off the BJP that it had when it came to power at the Centre in 2014, Shullai added. “The great wheel of progress that the party came with in 2014 has now lost some spokes, if not all. The party has robbed itself of the great cultural change it was bringing home to India and the harvest is now barely a shadow of what it used to be.”
The BJP suffers in Meghalaya, at least in part, due to its staunchly Hindutva foundations in a Christian-majority state. Despite trying to woo Christian voters and burnish its pro-development credentials, the BJP has still been unable to overcome resistance and other parties routinely target it for being a saffron outfit.
However, Shullai opined that the BJP was partly to blame as it “overlooked” the effort of those members who had tried so hard to show the people that it is not an anti-Christian organisation. Without the anti-Christian tag, several BJP candidates at this year’s election would have won, Shullai added. “They sacrificed much and faced the flak directed at the party and actually drew many people to accept the party in spite of the severe bombardment the party was facing. [But] the party did nothing”.
All this has to be considered as the BJP enters yet another cycle of elections, with the Lok Sabha and district council polls in Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills all set to take place next year. The party needs to be in good hands for these, Shullai cautioned. “When the lowest ranks in a system fail, however slightly, to carry out their function with confidence, the whole degenerates – just as when the noble and wise do not lead.”
