Dalit rage: Why BJP should blame its bad karma and politics of gau

Politics of gau and polemics of r**di are threatening to extract a huge price from the BJP. Call it the deserved fruit of bad karma. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is fond of carrying the Bhagwad Gita around, gifting it to world leaders and friends like Barack Obama. His ministers and legislators often argue that the holy book be made part of school and college curriculum to make our future generations more sanskari. But, has any of his followers ever read the Gita? Does the Hindutva brigade have an iota of knowledge of the basic tenet of Hinduism: The karma theory. It is apparent that they don’t. The Parivar that makes the loudest noise about Hinduism makes itself the most miserable by notching up bad karma and then paying a heavy price for it. [caption id=“attachment_2909124” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The horrifying incident of the four Dalit youths getting beaten up in front of a crowd was recorded and the video went viral on social media. Photo: IANS video[/caption] Much to the party’s misery, many poll-bound states are on the boil because of the BJP’s own karma. It is paying a huge price for its past follies of practising a polity that encourages communal agendas, hate speeches, brute majoritarianism and divisive symbolism. To put it bluntly, it is paying for the sins of tolerating those who call gau a mother and then shamelessly abuse women as v**shyas and r****s. In Gujarat, a massive uprising of Dalits has exposed the fault lines in the party’s model of governance, threatening to strike at the very edifice of the Narendra Modi raj. In UP, in spite of the BJP’s attempts to reach out to Dalits, artificially assimilate them into the folds of its Hindutva, a blowback by the community has led to panic among its leadership. Such is the turmoil within many states that the BJP, whose supporters till recently assumed that its electoral march across was a fait accompli – an inviolable destiny – are wondering where the party will win an election next. Punjab? UP? Goa? Gujarat? Remember what the karma theory says? What goes around, comes around. As you sow, so shall you reap. You can’t avoid the deserved punishment for bad, selfish acts. Every time dharma is threatened, the Lord rises to punish perpetrators of injustice and adharma. Let’s begin with Gujarat. For the past several years, atrocities on Dalits have been on the rise in the state. Since 2014, crimes against Dalits rose nearly 20 percent, the highest in the country. There was, obviously, a groundswell of adharma on the ground, meriting the prophesied retribution. To this tinderbox, the BJP added its own fuel, especially in the aftermath of Rohith Vemula’s suicide in Hyderabad. Had the party been guided by the principles of Hinduism and humanity – penance, empathy, and love – and followed raj dharma, it would have immediately owned up its mistake in harassing and persecuting Dalits students, taken remedial measures. But, out of sheer arrogance and hubris, it took a series of decisions that reignited fears of the BJP being anti-Dalit, a party of Tilak, tarazu and talwar (Brahmins, Traders, and Rajputs). This accumulated angst is now manifesting in the biggest mobilisation of Dalits in Gujarat. The conflagration that began in Hyderabad is spreading like wildfire in BJP’s Hindutva laboratory, threatening to burn down its facade and expose the underlying hypocrisy, injustice, and contradictions. The cows of bad karma have finally come home also because its chief ministers needlessly raised the political temperature of the country by turning gau into an emotive issue. Alarm bells should have started ringing the moment raids were carried out to check kitchens for beef when beef-eating hypocritic social media warriors of the Hindutva started feeding a frenzy on the issue. The madness should have been stopped when a group of loonies killed Mohammad Akhlaq on the suspicion of eating beef. But, the BJP tried to brazen it out, arguing the victim deserved to be lynched for his food habits. Bad karma, as we all know, is a systemic disease of the mind. Once it sets in, it spreads itself insidiously, feasting on itself, thrives on the victim’s arrogance of underestimating the imminent threat and the silence of those who ignore and endure it. When politics of cow was claiming victims, the BJP adopted a strategic silence. Deep in its mind, it believed that the hysteria would help it create a communal divide and unite the Hindutva Parivar. This conspiracy of silence emboldened hoodlums and thugs who found a valid excuse for perpetrating crime and violence in the name of ‘gau raksha’. Now this deranged beast is eating its own Hindutva tail. A similar denouement has been brought about by the deafening silence on the politics of presstitutes and r**dis that became the preferred mode of polemic of many BJP leaders and supporters – an alphabet of their social media lingua franca. Nobody uttered a squeak when General VK Singh, presumably an officer and a gentleman, castigated his critics in the media by calling them presstitutes. Nobody objected when trolls on the PM’s Twitter list called their rivals r****s and v*****s. This conspiracy of silence created an impression that such filthy language is part of Indian sanskriti, the preferred language of its role models and proselytised a legion of uncouth, foul-mouthed trolls. All of it adds up, bhakts. As Ida Maria once sang: Bad karma (oh, yeah) Baby that’s what you got Bad karma (oh, yeah) Whether you believe it or not The universe is gonna getcha You’ll be scratchin’ the seven year itch You know what I think? Bad karma’s a b**h The BJP is today grovelling at Mayawati’s feet for letting the discourse veer too far away from the tenets of civility. The cumulative bad karma of continuously chanting ‘’tu r**d, you presstitute" has thrown its poll strategy into disarray, energised its rivals and mobilised Dalits. The b**h of bad karma has returned to bite it for the putrid politics of cow. Somebody gift them a Gita, please!