Another ‘Rath Yatra’!
Cannot you think beyond this old boring ploy Mr. Advani?
You are starting the new ‘Rathyatra’ for what Mr. Advani? It is against ‘corruption and mis-governance’ we are told. You are using inane, generic terms. You have to be more specific. You have to present a plan that differentiates you from the rest. Hazare and Kejariwal were specific. They were fighting for a Lokpal Bill, a definite promise that would help counter corruption. They had prepared a draft document, putting in some intellectual effort. What do you have Mr. Advani?
Nothing. You have been just reacting to what everyone else does. Even your Yatra is just a reaction, a political move, without a well-defined objective. Since the NDA has been out of power, you have just been reacting without doing any solid groundwork. The only work you have done is to write a thick tome of ‘self-serving’ memoirs.
You don’t even have the wisdom to see the fallacies of your approach. Do you recall, in the last elections you kept on harping on the ‘weakest PM’ theme. That was a reactive agenda. How could you presume that by default you would be perceived as a strong PM by people? You were not even a strong and dynamic Home Minister Mr. Advani. Have you forgotten how Jaylalita jailed your staunch Tamil Nadu ally, abusing a law like POTA created by you and you could do nothing but issue empty statements?
You are starting on a Rath of a phony crusade while the reins of the real anti-corruption Rath are firmly in the hands of Hazare and Kejariwal, now recognised as genuine crusaders against corruption. It is entirely due to your ineptness and insensitivity to this nation’s problems, and your penchant to play cosy and cushy Parliamentary politics. If they look and sound more credible than you, it’s because they were thinking ahead of you, while your young fattened party leaders and you, reeling under the shock of having lost a winnable election, were waiting patiently for the year 2014, to return to the Delhi throne by default.
You have suddenly smelled the possibility of a mid-term poll and are energised and ready to galvanise your party and start a campaign for the Delhi throne. It is so obvious. You are not even bothered about what is going to happen in the UP elections? Where is your strategy for UP?
The serious issue is that you don’t actually deserve the Delhi throne. One can see the men and women around you, all your first and second-line leaders who keep appearing in various TV debates. They don’t inspire confidence among people. They are all fixers, and armchair political gasbags, who cannot even have an informed and coherent debate on TV. They come across as a clueless lot, living off empty rhetoric. They neither have conviction nor the intellectual capacity and vision to evolve ideas, policies, and programmes to help our people. How can they have it when you lack it?
It is depressing to see your knee-jerk political reactions and strategising, sans a serious study of the issues involved, and a complete absence of a strong commitment to anything that really matters to the people and the nation. Had there been a commitment, you would have thought of newer ways to communicate with them.
Let me give you an example from your own past. You always strove for the political unity of the Hindu body politic. It did not happen. One day you decided to fight for Ramjanm Bhoomi. Hindus were united. You reaped your electoral harvest and forgot about it. That is when you became a party without convictions. What followed was still worse. You have become a party with no difference. You are part of the corrupt political class. It is not a perception created by the media but of your own doing. You don’t come across as a political activist who is genuinely concerned about the problems of this country.
Please note, this ‘genuine concern’ bit is crucial to the success of a socio-political movement. You must really feel the pain, anger, and frustration of your people and identify with them. It should reflect on your face and in your demeanour. You should also know how to deal with it. That will give you a strong conviction and a purpose. And then whatever you will speak and do will carry meaning and weight.
Contrary to what you may believe, or your family members and the hangers-on around you may make you believe, you have a serious ‘credibility and trust deficit’ with the people of India as well as the rashtrbhakt RSS cadre. Your party and you are totally out of touch with ground realities, having gotten used to the rarefied, insensitive, and corrupt environment of Delhi’s power circuit that thrives on political cronyism.
If you are going on a Yatra as a political strategy to prepare the ground to manoeuvre yourself into a position to ascend the Delhi throne, you are not thinking of the people and the nation. You are thinking of yourself, and your future. You are debasing yourself further in people’s eyes. They can see through your games. And they are so frustrated that they are ready to entrust their faith and hope in media-created messiahs, and megalomaniacal idiots like Hazare and Baba Ramdev.
It is not just the media, your own party-men don’t have faith in your shenanigans any more. The guys who crowd around you, the likes of Ravi Shankar Prasad, the fixers, and spokespersons like Rudy and Punj and the rest, all those rank incompetent TV debaters, even they don’t seem to believe in the genuineness of your suddenly discovered mission.
If you really have a mission, led by your deep convictions, and a sense of serving your people and this nation, you have to get rid of these hangers-on and political fixers first and you have to abandon your personal ambitions and all those political theories you keep propounding for hours in your public meetings, and your middle-class habit of name-dropping. You have to become selfless and humble again…ready to lay down your life for the nation and its people…patatvesh kayo namaste namaste…One hopes you have not forgotten that daily ‘shakha’ prayer.
And if these ideas don’t penetrate your jaded head, and you still persist with a ‘flogged-to-death’ programme like a Rath-Yatra, propelled by your personal ambition and false sense of self-importance, go ahead and see what happens. You will be the laughing stock of the nation. You are not aware Mr. Advani how disgusting and benumbing it is to hear your long-drawn theorising speeches that start with ‘I’ and end with ‘me and myself.’ You are not seen as a visionary. You actually are not. You are not even a credible nationalist ideologue any longer and whatever you say or may feel, you were not a great home minister either. You come across as a small man who is not even trying to grow big.
You don’t want to serve the nation; you want the nation, the party, and the Sangh Parivar to serve your petty ambitions. Had you really wanted to serve the nation, you would never have been short of ideas to guide and galvanise your party and cadre, making them respond to the needs of the country with concrete plans and programmes for action, agitation, and governance.
RKS
