Anita Katyal | Gadkari Repeats Atal Amity Mantra; Was Modi First To Call Trump?

Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s cordial meeting with Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and their easy banter drew extensive media coverage last week. This meeting is in keeping with Mr Gadkari’s repeated assertions that the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress may be political opponents but are not enemies and that he does not believe in carrying his political battles beyond the battlefield.

Mr Gadkari recently acknowledged that he had learnt this lesson from his mentor and late Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who did not allow his differences with political rivals to impact his personal relationship with them. Speaking at the launch of a memoir on Vajpayee, Atal Sansmaran, by his media adviser Ashok Tandon, Mr Gadkari recalled how he was once pulled up by the senior BJP leader when he adopted an aggressive stance in his capacity as Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra. The minister said Vajpayee often told him and others in the party that they campaign as BJP representatives but once elected, “you are everyone’s representative”. Speaking in the same vein, Mr Tandon remembered how Vajpayee attended NCP leader Sharad Pawar’s birthday celebrations in Mumbai though Pramod Mahajan discouraged him from going on the grounds that their parties are battling each other in Maharashtra. Clearly, Mr Gadkari is in a minority in his party as Vajpayee’s mantra has been discarded by the current BJP with personalised attacks against political rivals becoming a routine affair.

The Bharatiya Janata Party finally picked current president J.P. Nadda’s successor. Five-time MLA and Bihar minister Nitin Nabin was named as the BJP’s working president and will eventually take over as party chief. The announcement followed months of speculation because of the unusual delay in appointing the new BJP president, resulting in a series of extensions for Mr Nadda. The Delhi political grapevine put down this delay to the lack of consensus between the BJP and its mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Though Sangh bosses publicly maintained that it was for the BJP to appoint its president, it was also known that the RSS preferred that it was kept in the loop about the new president. It just so happens that Mr Nabin’s name was announced a day after Union home minister Amit Shah and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat were together in Andaman and Nicobar Islands for the unveiling of Veer Savarkar’s statue.

The Indian diaspora in America was cheering US President Donald Trump all the way as long as his government was detaining and deporting undocumented illegal, unskilled workers. But the same diaspora is now nervous after the US administration decided to crack down on the H1B visa programme which allows American companies to hire skilled foreign workers. Indian software engineers and doctors who are among the major beneficiaries of this programme had always believed they were insulated from scrutiny. Shocked over the latest developments, diaspora representatives are learnt to have sent feelers to the Indian government that it leverages Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s special equation with Trump to take up their case with Washington. The US-based Indians were also keen that the Modi government send a high-level representative from India to lobby for them. It is perhaps no coincidence that Vijay Chauthaiwale, BJP’s foreign affairs department in charge, was in the US last week where he interacted with the Indian diaspora in California’s Bay Area. Hopefully, he succeeded in allaying their fears about their work and stay in America.

When two leaders speak to each other on the phone, it is officially disclosed who initiated the conversation. However, this was not the case when Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke with US President Donald Trump over 10 days ago. The ministry of external affairs put out a brief release but did not say whether it was the PM or Trump who had called. The White House did not release a read-out of the conversation. The general buzz is that it was Mr Modi who established contact with Trump. Their discussion came amidst the ongoing Indo-US trade talks. The Indian diaspora hopes this conversation also took note of their concerns though there is no official word on it.

Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014, it has been leaning on the Mumbai film industry and publishing houses to make films and publish books which amplify the party’s agenda and portray their icons in a positive light. Consequently, there have been a plethora of films like Kashmir Files, Bengal Files, The Kerala Story, Uri: The Surgical Strike and now Dhurandhar which all demonise Muslims and promote Hindu nationalism. Similarly, publishers are being encouraged to come out with titles valorising BJP leaders like Veer Savarkar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi while books on Hindu civilization and the RSS have also flooded the market. At the same time, publishers are reluctant to publish books on the freedom struggle as these are considered “too Congress-oriented” while some authors were told to avoid any references to Mahatma Gandhi in their manuscripts. A leading publishing house has even set up a separate vertical, headed by a former ABVP member, for the publication of “nationalistic” titles.