The youth of Karnataka posed some unsettling questions to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership about the party's stand on moral policing when the state unit went about recruiting new members in recent months. The queries from young urban men and women made the Karnataka unit think long and hard about its responses on such issues as what the youth should wear, and Bengaluru's thriving pub culture, as also about attacks on churches and religious conversions.
According to a local BJP leader, the Karnataka unit told these youth that the BJP stood for good governance and economic development and that it had little to do with people espousing moral policing.
The unit has also conveyed the feedback from the exercise to the central leadership and is hopeful that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will send out an unambiguous message when he addresses a public rally here on Friday that the BJP stands for reform and development and not for orthodox views of the larger Sangh Parivar or that of outfits like the Sri Rama Sene. The last bit might be too much to ask for, but a BJP state unit spokesperson says the party needs the youth on its side if it is to defeat the Congress in the Assembly elections that are a little less than three years away.
Modi is here to attend the two-day national executive meeting of the party.
The BJP made 6.5 million new members in Karnataka, of which as many as 35 per cent are youth. According to the state leader, these youth appeared concerned at recent statements by some BJP and Sangh Parivar leaders on how women should not wear jeans or Hindu women should give birth to 10 children and so on. They also expressed concern over the recent attacks on churches. Some Karnataka cities were the site of pub attacks on Valentine's Day by activists of the Sri Rama Sene a few years back. The BJP had then distanced itself from the outfit.
"Modiji's credibility remains impeccable, and the youth will listen to him if tells them that his government stands for development and suraj, or good governance," a BJP Karnataka spokesperson said.
The BJP believes Karnataka, currently Congress ruled, is something of a low hanging fruit. It is hopeful of winning Karnataka in the next assembly elections. According to Karnataka unit leaders, this is the reason why the party held its national executive meeting in Bengaluru instead of Assam or West Bengal, which go to polls by early 2016.
Land ordinance to dominate national executive, Advani sulks
The contents of a power point presentation that the party is preparing on the contentious land ordinance issue kept the BJP leadership occupied today on the eve of the start of its two-day national executive meeting, although there was also some anxiety on whether veteran party leader LK Advani would eventually relent and agree to address the meeting.
Advani, piqued at being ignored and now a member of the largely ceremonial 'mentor group' of the party, has conveyed to party leaders that he wanted to address the national executive. Today, party spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain confirmed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would deliver the valedictory address at the two-day session but was noncommittal when repeatedly asked if Advani would address the meeting.
The assessment in the party is that Advani will agree to speak rather than embarrass the party. Barring the June 2013 Goa meet, which Advani had skipped and where Modi was declared the BJP's national campaign chief, the senior leader has attended and addressed all national executive meetings of the party since it was founded in 1980.
The BJP office-bearers, later joined by its parliamentary board members, today met to discuss the shape of the two resolutions the national executive would adopt, a resolution lauding Modi's foreign policy initiatives and a political resolution that will also refer to the government's economic agenda, particularly its "pro-development reformist" agenda.
The party, deeply apprehensive of the propaganda by the Opposition of it being pro-corporate and anti-farmer, is working on a powerpoint presentation on the land issue, which will be shown at the national executive meeting. It believes it first needs to convince its national executive members and later its cadres that the land bill is in favour of farmers. It is aimed at "exposing" the Congress "lies" on the issue and how even state governments run by regional parties like the Trinamool Congress, Janata Dal (United) and the Samajwadi Party found lacunae in the United Progressive Alliance's 2013 Act.
The meeting will also laud the success of the membership drive.
