From firebrand to water-brand
The BJP’s feisty sanyasin and Hindutva icon Uma Bharti recently announced her retirement from electoral politics and said that she would instead be concentrating on her pet project, cleaning the river Ganga. Recently speaking at the India News Manch in the capital, she quipped, “Earlier on, I was known as a firebrand. Now I am a water-brand.”
No ordinance Please
The Narendra Modi government, it seems, has decided against bringing in an ordinance to build the Ram temple at Ayodhya and instead wants to wait for the court’s approval, which it is fairly confident of getting. Suddenly the rhetoric in the TV studios has changed, with BJP leaders saying let’s wait for the court’s verdict and Congress leaders asking them about the delay in building the temple. Although RSS ideologue and newly appointed Rajya Sabha MP Rakesh Sinha is planning to move a Private Member’s Bill on this, the government is not planning to play that up, but will wait for the court’s decision. Has the BJP realised that it gets more political dividend in keeping the issue alive than building the temple?
The fight within
It’s interesting that soon after the Madhya Pradesh results poured in and Kamal Nath was ahead in the chief ministerial race, various TV channels in the national capital began to play up his alleged involvement in the 1984 riots despite Nath telling the media that “no case has been charged against me and no one has made any accusations in court”. Even the BJP didn’t raise this issue during the election campaign, but now in TV studios sundry BJP spokesmen were getting WhatsApp messages from Congress leaders from a rival faction in MP asking them to raise these issues—despite Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh also giving Nath a clean chit by pointing out that there was no case or charge against Nath in the courts.
Old school ties
With Nath’s elevation, as many as three Chief Ministers are from the Doon School—the others being Naveen Patnaik and Captain Amarinder Singh. There was a time when the Doon School was known as the grooming ground for Prime Ministers and Cabinet ministers, for during Rajiv Gandhi’s time, apart from the PM himself, various members of his core group were his Doon School pals, including Mani Shankar Aiyar and Suman Dubey. During the UPA government, apart from the heir apparent, Rahul Gandhi having done a brief stint at Doon, Union Ministers such as Kamal Nath, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasada and R.P.N. Singh were also from there, leading Kamal Nath to quip, the DNA of Doon is Congress. However, of late, the school seems to be acquiring a saffron hue, with the sons of BJP ministers, Dharmendra Pradhan and Kiren Rijiju, currently studying there.