There are numerous means of finding out whether the country or the State for that matter is progressing or regressing – of coming to an opinion about where the country/State is heading out of the confusion in which we find ourselves, but I know none better than to look at the results of an election…the results speak from the soul of every conscientious voter, everyone who had anything to say or do with the election even the most simple ordinary person we come across everyday who knows not about the grand lifestyle that the middle class in India have now settled into.
If such a person thought it advisable to vote for the party that has come to power in three North Indian states, how much more is the middle class set to vote for the same party, how much more are the women of the country set to vote for the same party. There was a time during the year when the prospects of the BJP was in a dreary cloud, especially after the heart breaking incidents in Manipur, but the overall theme that prompts voters to vote is a hard teacher – progress and development and a freedom from bureaucratic corruption – and so that was all the party had to speak about, it left the talking of other things to other parties. And if we can’t see this strategy, we’re blind in one eye and can’t see with the other.
In order to describe properly what an event the recently concluded elections was for many, requires that we dwell for a minute on the state of affairs that recurred more constantly in the period from 2008 to 2013, because that period touched us more dearly and more demandingly than any other before it or since. India wandered as it pleased in a world of easy come easy go and go was the more prominent of the two. Nothing came easily.
We desired that destiny would relieve us of the dreadful and wearisome duty of making a success of ourselves; that some politician would come along at the right moment to do it for us – some genuine person concerned with the needs of the individual who could be obeyed without too much questioning as we would be able to trust him more than we could trust ourselves. We questioned within ourselves, “What would be the approach on which that person would guide us?” We questioned would he really knew what it is that the people of India really need, and what would be his approach to development and progress and corruption, because these were the three burning issues at that point in time. We’re still stuck in this malaise in Meghalaya today.
In order to attend to the people’s needs the primary principle is that the leader should find out at once the strongest desire of the people, and then direct all his abilities, all his skill and will and resources available with him to bring forth the fruit of that single desire to maturity. The second principle is for the leader to raise to a higher power all the qualities that already exist in the people and cherish them and bring them into a harmonious relationship so that growth is multi-directional, geometrical instead of linear.
Since Independence there has always been that focus on harmony and unity of the humongous mix of races and religions that thrived in India and in going about it – and it may well be that that this goal was the best talking point in any election because it stirred the heart and aroused sentimental goals that were perpetually out of focus – but people listened anyway and the country progressed economically as a secondary product of governance, while all the time harmony continued to remain as elusive as ever, because those that knew, knew that harmony was a state only in our head and that too in a remote corner.
On the other hand we also knew that we could find a blending of progress and development and, as far as possible, a corruption free bureaucracy because these are materialistic, and that is what politics is supposed to be about in the first place, and that is where everything, knowledge, growth, progress, virtue, etc form the nucleus around which every other force like harmony, tolerance etc builds up through the irresistible domination of this vital nucleus. And though the nucleus and that which surrounds it are so contrastingly different, in truth they are not contrasting at all, we are merely saying that there must be a centre or a nucleus and a circumference as well. It takes both to build a whole but the important ideology is which is where.
All along India had for its nucleus social harmony, religious tolerance, godliness, etc. the true political leader of our dreams was nowhere to be seen. This situation continues to prevail in Meghalaya where festivals, functions and frauds form the nucleus and every good thing is lost in the circumference. India needed someone who knew what the true central focus should be like and also how to prevent it from being destructive of the other values. In Narendra Modi, India now has a leader whose thought is the welding of the whole and if the construction of the nucleus was somewhat easy the constructing of the circumference is a little more complex because of the different manifestations that need to be persuaded to accept the other manifestations till a purer and ever purer form is attained, a transparent whole scarcely visible to the casual observer. That is yet to come – it may take time but it will come.
If there is something great or if someone has done something great people must either be silent or speak with the greatness the person deserves i.e. cynically or innocently. For now people prefer to remain silent, they do not want to air the truth they harbour in their hearts. One should make no mistake about the reason for the victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recently concluded polls in three North Indian states. Even in Mizoram, one should make no mistake, a gain has come about for the BJP nullifying everything that the people and the party in Meghalaya have been hiding behind, namely that voters in Meghalaya – in a Christian State – are candidate centric…rubbish.
The failure of the leaders of the BJP in Meghalaya is the cause for the debacle of the party in Meghalaya – that is what we have learnt from the result in Mizoram. There is a distinct reevaluation of the values that existed and that were once exploited in the two Christian states. The fact that women voted in greater numbers for the party/for the man is a complete reversal of what everyone thought was coming. The political leader of anyone’s dream not only understands and identifies the central force, but would also know how to prevent its being destructive to the other powers; his task would be the welding of the whole State into a solar system like organ with life and movement and the ability to discover ever greater horizons that the country can reach out for.
As important as it is to know the motives that actually prompt the fiery criticism against the BJP by its adversaries so far, it may be even more essential to know the fictitious and fanciful motives to which men ascribe their conduct against the party. The inner misery and unhappiness of men come depending on their faith in this or that motive – not by virtue of the actual motives – the latter being of second order interest only. Surely their slander preached so stubbornly and with so much conviction is reprehensible; they keep changing like their character giving us the impression that everything they do is basically staged.
Such people will have to pay in the end with a loss of every honour they have gained. They are the ones who are most capable of destroying many who listen to what they have to say, especially the weaker among the listeners, the ones who are still trying to become something, still striving in this life, and therefore these politicians are very very harmful. They are harmful because there are those who are bent on listening to them and who are affected by the things they say just like a person who is affected by the things he drinks. These listeners to false propaganda lose their understanding and become so intoxicated that they are bound to stumble and fall as they go about the false paths on which their intoxication leads them.
That entire hullabaloo against the BJP has been debunked. What I have related above and what I can relate with in the coming months is that nothing different is about to happen because necessity itself is at work here. The outcome of the coming parliamentary elections speaks out in hundreds of signs announcing everywhere that the people are all cocked up to maintain a status quo.
