 "Why the Left parties are a bigger enemy for the Sangh than the Congress")
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) plans to keep the pot boiling around the “anti-national” protests at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) until the assembly elections in West Bengal and Kerala.
The reason isn’t just to outmaneuver the Opposition during the forthcoming Budget session of Parliament, but to ensure the irrelevance of the Left parties in India’s electoral politics and eventually purge leftist ideology in centres of culture and academia.
The first step on this road for the Sangh Parivar is to make the Left Front suffer electoral defeats in Bengal and Kerala, even if it means a bigger victory for the Trinamool Congress in the eastern state and helping Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) return to power for a rare second successive term in Kerala.
The Sangh Parivar’s assessment is that another spell out of power in both states will sound the death knell of the Left parties as an electoral force of consequence on the Indian political scene. The Left parties are cadre based. These cadres are full time workers and paid salaries. Failure to return to power in Bengal and Kerala will squeeze the Left’s source of finances and shrink its cadre base.
More than the Congress, the Sangh considers the Left as its ideological enemy. The BJP thinks the JNU issue, with its “nationalist” versus “anti-national” binary, has the potential to achieve its objective. Both Bengal and Kerala go to polls by the first week of April. In Kerala, the RSS runs hundreds of shakhas but because of the Left that hasn’t helped BJP become a political force in the southern state.
The bigger agenda is to gradually displace the leftist dominance in academic institutions and centres of culture. The Sangh Parivar considers leftists, more than the Congress, as a bigger stumbling block in the spread of its brand of cultural nationalism in the centres of culture and learning and eventually the English mainstream media.
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The Sangh Parivar is convinced that the current debate on “nationalist” versus “anti-national” has forced people across the country, including in academia and media, to take positions, just as it did in the aftermath of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
In Kerala, the RSS complains of having suffered long years of violence at the hands of the Left. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is probing two cases of killings of RSS cadres allegedly at the hands of CPI (M) backed goons. An RSS worker was killed in Kerala earlier this week.
“Communists have a long track record of spilling blood of political opponents whether it is Russia, China, West Bengal or Kerala. The murder of young RSS worker Sujith by CPM once again shows that party’s obsession with blood and its philosophy of annihilation,” said veteran RSS pracharak MG Vaidya on Wednesday.
The BJP also hopes that any Congress and Left Front alliance in Bengal will divide the Communist Party of India (Marxist) into Bengal and Kerala factions. It will help the Sangh Parivar discredit Congress as well. The Sangh Parivar is busy spreading the message that both Left Front and Congress are standing with “anti-national” forces like Maoists and extremist Islamists.
The BJP, however, had hoped that Congress strategists would understand that Sangh Parivar's support would help it in Kerala. But Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi spoiled it a bit. According to Congress insiders, some in the party had advised Rahul Gandhi against joining forces with the Left parties on the issue but he was guided more by his "conviction" than realpolitik.
Sangh Parivar has worked out a strategy to discredit Rahul Gandhi’s claims of being born into a nationalist family, with his grandmother and father, former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi respectively, having paid with their lives for protecting the unity and integrity of the country.
The propaganda will focus on how Rahul Gandhi cannot lay claim to the legacy of Indira Gandhi since Rahul’s mother is “foreign born” Sonia Gandhi while Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru.