:: Antara Dev Sen

What are we voting for in 2009? The lesser evil?

Antara Dev Sen

April.16 : As you read this, the first phase of polling in India’s 15th general elections would have begun. The world’s largest democracy would be on show, 714 million Indians would have the chance to elect their representatives and decide on the government they want. Yet we still don’t know what India could be voting for. Or against. This election is all about clawing desperation, frantic compromise, local ambitions, uncouth muscle-flexing and post-poll bargaining. Welcome to the wonky polls, the inky-pinky-ponky polls.

It’s scary that in a recession year, while reeling from a string of terrorist attacks, we still don’t have even one proper election plank that all of India can relate to. Till now, no national issue has captured the imagination of the electorate, and occasional murmurs about development, the economy and terrorism have been drowned by the full-throated hate speeches, personal attacks and counter-attacks, foul language and general bad behaviour of the candidates who wish to rule India.

In a sense, it is a watershed election, certainly the first in the information age where we are choosing the fate of the nation based on no relevant information. Or is it? We do get some information on the political parties and their candidates from their own words — and get a fair idea of their ideologies and vision of India.

Take the Congress, the grand old dame of Indian politics, now called a worthless old coot by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). After 25 years of shameless flaunting of Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar — widely believed to have instigated killer mobs that lynched Sikhs during the 1984 massacre in Delhi — it has finally been brought to heel by one flying shoe. A good old Reebok — liberalisation embodied — hurled at former finance minister and now home minister P. Chidambaram by a Sikh journalist frustrated by the minister’s smug refusal to talk about the Congress’ fielding such terribly tainted candidates. "Life is short. Play hard". Clearly the Reebok philosophy works better than the "Satyameva jayate" of sleepy courts and corrupt investigators. The candidates were swiftly dropped.

Meanwhile, the BJP has been offering us an embarrassment of glitches. There was young Varun Gandhi promising to cut off hands and heads and other body parts of Muslims in a show of Hindutva charisma in his constituency in Uttar Pradesh. Till Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief minister Mayawati — the good old "haathiwali" who never picks regular when supersize would do — flashed her Brahmastra and clapped him in jail under the National Security Act.

Down in Orissa, another BJP candidate, Ashok Sahu, wanted for his own hate speech against Christians in Kandhamal (where last year’s slaughter of Christians took place) was on the run for days before being caught and put behind bars. Also fighting from behind bars is BJP candidate Manoj Pradhan, one of the prime accused in the the Kandhamal killings.

Then there is sprightly old Narendra Modi, unforgettable after the Gujarat 2002 massacre of Muslims, and his earthy theatrics. He hasn’t entirely given up on attacking Sonia Gandhi, of course. This week he harped on her being disloyal to the country and siding with external terrorists even after decades of eating this land’s salt. A most disturbing accusation that has no place in the election campaign of a mature democracy. Anyway, he has broadened his base, and has attacked the Congress as a whole, also taking jabs at Priyanka Gandhi. The Congress was like an old woman who is of no use to the youth and is a burden on society, he said. "The sooner she departs the better!" So that’s what the BJP’s cultural nationalism is all about. Focus on the youth, go with the expedient, throw out the elderly. Sure, that is a part of our culture, we disrespect the old and infirm, we shoo away our mothers and mothers-in-law and elderly relatives, we deliberately "lose" them in big melas, we banish them to Benares. In villages, we get them killed as witches and inherit their land. This is also our culture. That the BJP chose to embrace these values for their Hindutva-laced cultural nationalism should not surprise us. The noble ideas of worshipping the elderly — the wise, the experienced — doesn’t work for a street-fighting, jaw-breaking, slug-a-mug party used to lewd gestures and crude lingo like today’s BJP.

And when Ms Priyanka Gandhi objected, Mr Modi switched to a cheesy, okay, not a budhiya, then, but a gudiya! Not an old woman, but a doll. Targeted more at Ms Priyanka Gandhi than the Congress, it reminds one of Ram Manohar Lohia calling Priyanka’s grandmother a goongi gudiya, or a dumb doll, almost half-a-century ago. (That was before the doll, Indira Gandhi, turned into the "only man in her Cabinet" — another super-sexist remark, but this time to express admiration.) Such outdated disdain for women obviously still works with some retrograde parties.

Not one to be slack, the BJP has also been busy attacking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. L.K. Advani called him India’s weakest Prime Minister ever. The PM responded by mocking the "Lauh Purush" — Iron Man Advani — who was "quick to melt" when faced with the Kandahar hijacking. Besides, he scoffed, unlike Mr Advani, he wouldn’t be "weeping in a corner" when a centuries-old mosque was torn down, or if one of his chief ministers condoned a pogrom against minorities. "Mr Advani has the unique ability to combine strength in speech with weakness in action", said the PM. And coming from the most silent PM ever, it was quite a stunner. Earlier, he had claimed that Mr Advani’s only contribution to India was the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Mr Advani retreated sulking, declaring that he was hurt.

In other parts of the campaign trail, Lalu Prasad Yadav evinced interest in crushing Varun Gandhi with a road-roller, while wife and former Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi spiritedly badmouthed Bihar’s present chief minister, Nitish Kumar. Mayawati ridiculed Rahul Gandhi’s spending a night with a poor family as an inadequate measure to fight poverty. And the Communists ridiculed practically everything at hand and focused on reversing the nuclear deal and distancing India from the United States.

In short, through the maze of insults and personal attacks, we do recognise the many ideas of India that our political parties have. And they don’t match the vision for India that most of us would like to have. Yet, starting today, we will go and select a new government. And hopefully we will not wander far from our own, precious idea of India.

Antara Dev Sen is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted at

sen@littlemag.com