We often hear from liberals that BJP and its “bhakts” focus too much on Mughal era history. After a bit of thought, I must say I agree with them. It is not my intention to whitewash or deny the atrocities of the Islamist era but simply to turn our attention to more recent history.
Because the crimes and misdemeanors of this era are not necessarily physically violent, but their impact has been equally devastating. But the biggest factor is that this era is not dead and buried. It threatens to come back to inflict even more devastation, unlike the Mughal era that is not going to be back at least in all probability.
Being a secular era, the devastation has been on all Indians, not just Hindus. Other than a few well-connected sycophants and ‘Labharthis’ of course. We will come to that later.
First a bit of background.
We are entering the election season soon, assuming of course that India ever leaves it. BJP is entering the arena with several handicaps. Soros has set aside a billion dollars, no less, for regime change. He can buy and has bought the services of a lot of coolies as the English once found out to their profit. The entire leftist cabal knows this is their final chance to impose pax Beijing-ana and get the pogrom moving in earnest.
BJP’s twin challenges
Furthermore, BJP does not have the luxury of not standing on its track record. Liberal regimes are exempt from any scrutiny of their track record. Their mere existence or survival is certified as doing a good job. When was the last time Ravish Kumar worried about the problems of Bihar? They have been all solved unless a way can be found to blame Modi. That is how we lasted 60+ years of dynastic rule, not because they solved even one of India’s myriad problems, but rather made it worse. Kashmir and China border are good examples.
When Congress fought elections in 2004, it was not standing on its record, as one would logically expect it to. Instead, media crooks and the “eminent intellectual” army borrowed from Politburo were busy writing articles attacking Modi, questioning the Gujarat model. In other words, speaking truth to the opposition of the day. Just as CNN or NYT does today. Well, that is exactly what they will do next year: question Modi. But then that is now speaking truth to power. Why can’t we learn tricks from them?
In this scenario, BJP faces twin challenges – how to spread the word on its own achievements, both in isolation and in comparison, which by most measures is far better than the dynasty’s. It must do it all alone because the entire media is ganged up against it. Do you think BBC or NYT will write about the banking sector’s recovery and credit Modi? Or for that matter Wire, Quint, or The Hindu?
As it did in 2019 on the Rafael deal, it must face an avalanche of vicious venomous lies spread by the Stalinist propaganda ecosystem. All greased by Soros billions and woke left elite West’s promises of Op-ed chances and academic gigs for more dollars.
It is BJP’s job to project its own track record and highlight its achievement without too much bragging. Remember “India shining”? It must stay humble but put forth its argument clearly. Be it on infra, exports, PLI, GST, war on corruption, welfare schemes, foreign policy whatever. It must sell the wisdom of investments that will pay off in the medium and long term to today’s youth. That was ABVs failure, and we lost ten years to loot. That is not the focus of this article though I will say it is not doing a good job of that. If they don’t it will be the political equivalent of pissing in your dark suit. A nice warm feeling and no one notices.
The second and arguably bigger challenge is to convince Indians that the ‘CONLEFT’ ecosystem that seeks a return to power has done so badly that we are still paying the price for its incompetence and hence cannot be handed back the controls.
The banking sector, after much hard work, has bounced back. The economy too is doing well without fiscal loosening. Any return will doom us to another decade or more of dacoity, depravity, and misery, waiting for another Vajpayee or Modi to emerge. Can we and our children afford that?
Remember, our votes are not for some mysterious Mahdi that will descend from heaven. It’s not like a bottle cast away in the ocean with the hope that some message will land on some friendly shore. It is either to Modi or to some sort of coalition controlled by the CONLEFT continuum. To put it simply, controlled by the left. That is the choice before us. That is what we must evaluate. In 2014, we didn’t vote for “anything but Congress”. We voted for Modi.
We need to look at India’s post-independence history more than we do at Mughal history
This is where more recent history comes in. And my original statement that we must forget the Mughals and instead read and write more about recent history. I mean post-war history or post-independence history.
In doing so, we must also benchmark ourselves and our economy and governance against countries in our part of the world: not Germany, UK, or even Japan. We must benchmark against very similar economies because that is not just fair it is also perhaps the only way to measure relative performance. Yes, there can be excuses and explanations some rational and some made up. But the starting point is always a comparison.
How many Indians, many of whom are voting for the first time, are even old enough to remember the loot era? How many stood in long queues for a bag of rice or waited 5 years for a phone connection? Or booked scooters or HMT watches and waited years for it? The corrupt dacoit ecosystem romanticizes this era as if it was fun standing in the queue for essentials, waiting for the dial tone or reading with candles and dying of simple diseases.
How many even know of the dramatic progress achieved by our near and far neighbors who were also Asian, people of color, colonized, poor, and deprived when the race started off? This is where benchmarking comes in.
A few brave souls, especially Prof Abhishek Banerji have been posting and writing about how much India and Indians lost in the CONLEFT era. How India not just remained poor but got a lot worse, relatively speaking.
But those are voices in the wilderness. The larger RW ecosystem as well as BJP’s own motor mouths are too focussed on Mughals, Bollywood, Ayodhya, cow etc., to bother.
Today we talk about the benefit of hindsight. But a prescient genius like Nani Palkhivala (and a few others) pointed out decades ago about the Southeast Asian tigers like Malaysia, Indonesia, and Korea and begged the CON regime to relax controls and reform. It fell on deaf ears. Entire generations grew up in depravity and shortages thanks to Nehruvian socialism even as the dynasty sent its Shehzadas to London or Doon school.
Why does it matter today? Because the exact same dynasty wants its entitlement back and is talking the exact same language of socialism and “anti-poverty”. In collusion with the same left economists that gave us a 90% tax rate, inflation, and a banking sector reduced to nothing through loot and plunder and pervasive shortages.
The familiar excuse of ‘Why discuss this now?’ doesn’t apply. Because it’s the past that is sought to be brought back- the India “I grew up in” as if that was a land of milk and honey. I am perfectly happy to stop discussing the past if Congress will stop using them as franchises to be milked.
Their track record needs to be told, retold, and recalled again and again. If not we are allowing them to lie and fool us into empowering them again.
The exact same demonization, by fascist dynasts, commission agents and dalals, of Indian businessmen that create jobs is going on. Who benefits?
Efforts are on to sabotage Make in India by the entire ecosystem including the NRI charlatans and enablers of dynastic dacoity. Notice the joy with which palace servant quarters greeted the recent announcement of Vedanta-Foxconn? Thankfully even before they could raise their toast of ‘first flush’ and say bottoms up, it turns out Foxconn wants to proceed by itself.
Notice also the vicious assault on PLI that is producing billions in exports and thousands of jobs at very low cost. Notice the cheer when a Vande Bharath train loses the front plate after an animal hit on the tracks?
We can forget the past if the present Dynasty or its ecosystem has shown any contrition and promises not to repeat its sins and stops its association with the poisonous Hindu hating left. On the contrary, all signs point otherwise. From Priyanka Vadra’s proud assertion of her IG heritage to the dynasty setting off its rabid sycophant army on anyone daring to question the family’s past misdeeds. Do they permit a rational or logical discussion at all?
In other words, the present iteration of the dynasty wants to absorb the worst of everything from its past– Nehru’s socialism, Rajiv’s intellectual strength, IG’s fascist emergency mindset, SG’s collaboration with fringe left, poverty rhetoric, anti-business noise, and so on. Their advisors and hangers on are cut from the worst possible cloth: closet or proud Marxists, Maoists, and assorted Hindu-hating loonies borrowing from the JNU-left cesspool. This is the ecosystem that wants it’s hands on the till again. So the past does matter.
To give but one example, Rajdeep Sardesai will praise Nehru almost every day but attack BJP or the RW for criticising Nehruji, saying why are we talking about it now! Pehle aap!
What did socialist madness and dynasty corruption do to India: the young generation has to be aware of it
Do our 18–25-year-old voters for whom even the loot of UPA is unfamiliar, as they were mere kids then, deserve to know the post-war history of socialist madness and economic mismanagement? And how others marched ahead with more sane policies and good governance while we wallowed in corrupt loot and babu control in the name of socialism?
I know this point needs much more elaboration than one random snapshot. But just to highlight the importance of what I am trying to say, I have posted a summary of the economic growth of a few Asian countries between 1970-90. Those are the lost years for older Indians like myself and their fathers and mothers. The green cells show growth of over 7%. Red is for <4%. Indonesia has just 2 red years, we had 10. Thailand had none! Malaysia had 13 green years, we had 4! Remember Malaysia just emerged from race riots and a painful separation from Singapore. Yet they did better.
Korea is almost entirely green. They were sending workers to the Middle East doing low-end jobs. No longer. We still do. This is exactly what Palkhivala was saying almost tearfully begging the Indian government to wake up and smell the u know what.
Just a glance will show how depressing it is. The so-called reforms era kicked off in India, thanks to World Bank pressure, in 1991. We are doing somewhat better. But what is lost is lost. It will be worse if we bring that exact same gang back to rule over our lives.
Don’t we want to read more of such history? Yes, battalions of palace coolies aka liberals and eminent intellectuals, some happily sitting in New York or Boston will rush to defend the indefensible. Remember- they are the beneficiaries of the plunder era. They want it back. But facts will speak for itself. Look at the oil shock years – did these countries that did well not need oil? Did Thailand produce it? Or Korea? I don’t know!
Between now and May 2024 we must read a lot more of this sort of history, with facts and figures. As important as it is to raise awareness of Modi Sarkar’s good work in reviving the economy from the UPA loot era damage and banking system disaster, it is equally important to make younger Indians understand that the choice before them is too dreadful to even contemplate. The Congress Prince Rahul Gandhi controlled by likes of Aiyar and Jairam and beholden to Karats and Yechuris in the Politburo, their all-weather allies and the MOU will not be something we Indians can recover from for another 50 years. It will be, as the Tamil saying goes, a garland in the hands of a monkey.
So to repeat, forget the Mughals, let us focus on recent history! All hands on deck!
