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Learning From
the Enemy
Look at
the way the BJP is taking towards rejuvenation. Will the Badals
learn from their alliance partners?
Sach Kanwal
Singh
When the Akali
Dal was to meet for a brainstorming session at Shimla last year,
some panthic organizations actually took the Akali leadership's
claims seriously and thought that finally men like Sukhbir Singh
Badal have thought about estimating the intellectual capital of the
party and will find ways to replenish this wealth and think up new
strategies about how to reconnect to the great ideals with which the
Akali Dal was once born.
Well, Sukhbir
Badal was not expected to heed the advice given by anyone panthic,
and he did not. But will he spare time and look at what his alliance
partner BJP is up to these days? May be his proclivity to learn from
his communal, hatred-spewing party teaches him a few lessons about
how politics is guided by ideological concerns and intellectual
wealth replenishment.
At a time when
the Akali Dal is leaving aside its core agenda, here is what the BJP
is doing. You may not have heard the name of Vinay Prabhakar
Sahasrabuddhe but when the new BJP president Nitin Gadkari
introduced Sahasrabuddhe as a part of his future team, coming close
on the heels of his own statement at his inaugural press conference
in Delhi on December 24 that he had requested Sahasrabuddhe to
assist him on policy issues and related matters in the party, it is
time we pay attention to who this man is. While a formal
announcement shall have to wait till the BJP’s national council
meets in
Indore in
mid-February, Sahasrabuddhe is clearly geared to play an important
role in the BJP under Gadkari’s stewardship.
He may be a
relatively new face in Delhi, but Sahasrabuddhe is held in high
esteem, both by the BJP top brass as well as the RSS leadership.
Last year, for instance, senior BJP leader L K Advani asked him to
design a training module for the party cadres. A few months later,
the RSS leadership asked him to help organise the yearly “thinkers’
meet” which was then convened at Mumbai’s Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini
— where some 25 thinkers sympathetic to the Sangh Parivar engaged in
a “brainstorming meet” with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat also present.
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This
is the face of a political party seriously at work to improve its
standing, fortunes and pushing its agenda. Much of the ongoing work
in the saffron lobby has little to do with fighting elections; it is
about entrenching still deeper into Indian social paradigm.
Unfortunately, the Akali Dal is becoming more and more isolated from
the people and is leaving the space for the brahamanical parties.
Still more unfortunately, the various forces continuously
challenging this de-panthicisation of the Akali Dal also keep
slipping into the same problems of a party that looks towards
electoral politics as the main aim instead of working with the
people to push the panthic agenda. |
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Sahasrabuddhe,
likely to be designated the political adviser to the new BJP chief,
has been associated with the Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini since 1987.
Currently its Director General, Sahasrabuddhe has often been
involved in designing training modules for “school principals”,
“mayors”, “tribal youth” or even “personal assistants to legislators
(MPs/MLAs)”. Prior to his joining the Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini —
its website describes Prabodhini as “India’s only training and
research institute for voluntary social workers and elected
representatives” — Sahasrabuddhe was an active member of the Akhil
Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). His contemporaries in the ABVP
constitute the who’s who of today’s BJP and RSS. Consider this:
Dattatreya Hosabale is the joint general secretary in the RSS; V
Satish is the sah sangathan mantri (joint general secretary in
central BJP); several others, like Sushil Kumar Modi, hold important
positions in states. All of them are Sahasrabuddhe’s contemporaries
since his ABVP days. Gadkari, too, cut his political teeth in the
ABVP.
In his new role
now, Sahasrabuddhe is expected to help Gadkari design a revival
roadmap for the party.
The first
document, with the stamp of the Gadkari-Sahasrabuddhe duo’s vision,
exhorting party workers “to take to social service”, shall be
unveiled in the capital on February 11. Gadkari has already said
that he expects party workers to lead seva parakalps (service cells)
in every Assembly constituency of the country. The document, said to
be under preparation, will offer party workers more than 20 options
to choose from — including “promoting literacy drive”, “opening of
reading rooms in slums”, “water conservation”, “promoting healthcare
drive among the poor”, and even “promotion of cooperatives among
farmers”.
This is the face
of a political party seriously at work to improve its standing,
fortunes and pushing its agenda. Much of the ongoing work in the
saffron lobby has little to do with fighting elections; it is about
entrenching still deeper into Indian social paradigm.
Unfortunately,
the Akali Dal is becoming more and more isolated from the people and
is leaving the space for the brahamanical parties. Still more
unfortunately, the various forces continuously challenging this
de-panthicisation of the Akali Dal also keep slipping into the same
problems of a party that looks towards electoral politics as the
main aim instead of working with the people to push the panthic
agenda. The Sikh community would be better served if forces like the
Dal Khalsa, the various factions of Akali Dal, the shades fighting
against Dera Sirsa, all come together and learn how to work for the
community at the grassroot level.
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The
forces arraigned against the Sikhs are quickly learning the right
lessons while we are lagging behind. Congress’ Rahul Gandhi is
roping in social entrepreneurs for developmental initiatives. BJP's
Nitin Gadkari describes himself as a social entrepreneur. Rahul
Gandhi is talking of democratisation of the Indian Youth Congress
and the National Students Union of India, the party's student wing.
What has Sukhbir Singh Badal done? He has raised a completely
de-politicised army of young goons, Student Organization of India
(SOI), and has lumpenized the younger generation of Sikh panth that
had legitimate ambitions of joining politics but has been drafted to
serve the ends of one family and wait for the crumbs distribution
down the line. |
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One good cue
will be to learn from the enemy. Listen to Sahasrabuddhe himself
who, drawing parallels with the USA of the 80s, says that political
parties in
India
have become used to a culture of ‘machine politics’. He is right.
Running for elections must not be a panthic party's sole reason of
existence. What about politics of development via social
entrepreneurship?
The forces
arraigned against the Sikhs are quickly learning the right lessons
while we are lagging behind. Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi
is known to have roped in social entrepreneurs for developmental
initiatives in his constituency of Amethi. BJP's Gadkari describes
himself as a social entrepreneur. Congress general secretary has
chosen democratisation of the Indian Youth Congress and the National
Students Union of India, the party's student wing, as his central
project. What has Sukhbir Singh Badal done? He has raised a
completely de-politicised army of young goons called Student
Organization of India (SOI) and has lumpenized the younger
generation of Sikh panth that had legitimate ambitions of joining
politics but has been drafted to serve the ends of one family and
wait for the crumbs distribution down the line.
In this respect,
it will be interesting to refer to the Ph D thesis of Sahasrabuddhe
titled "Political Parties as Victims of Populism and Electoral
Compulsions: A Quest for Systemic Solutions (with special reference
to India)". Talking about how to work towards “democratisation of
the Indian political system”, Sahasrabuddhe suggested that
“mandatory holding of elections for party office-bearers under the
supervision of Election Commission at least once in every five
years”; “mandatory establishment of an internal training, research
and development department for every national party”, and “mandatory
training for all first-time elected people’s representatives and
party office bearers”, among other things, will go a long way in
strengthening the party system in the country.
Will Sukhbir
Singh Badal learn from the party that his father and he consider
"natural allies" of the Akali Dal? Sahasrabuddhe, since he is
committed to an ideology of the right, may not see the contradiction
between what he says and his own position as he too is gaining from
the growing RSS role in the BJP. But what will Messers Parkash Singh
and Sukhbir Singh Badal have to say on his comment that the BJP is
one of the five non-dynasty based-parties in India, the others being
the CPM, CPI, the AGP and JD (U). Well, that says a lot about the
Akali Dal and the Badals.
20
January 2010
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