10) THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE

 

By B. Prasant

 

            With elections to the lower house or Lok Sabha of the Indian Parliament creeping nearer than a year away, the reactionary, bourgeois outfits have started to posture at their slagging worst.

 

            In the age‑old, hoary tradition of Indian politics, two leading outfits are in the fray. The Congress is shaking like a leaf in the seat of power, bedraggled with mammoth financial scams and a failed foreign policy, fearing the worst cometh the elections, versus the aspirant proto‑fascist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), backed to the hilt by the Hindu communal Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS). Fearfully referred to in India as Bharat, the BJP has to cope with internecine feuds along lines of caste, region, and ‑ oh, horror! ‑ gerontocratic supremacy.

 

            Congress has realised that making a subservient former IMF official a prime minister has been a complete mistake. Loyalty can be a political burden, starting from poor performance administration-wise, to being accused of scams and scandals of an interesting variety. The accusations, now enquiries, encompass a diverse spectrum, from cell phone MNCs and allotment of coalfields to the favoured few of the Indian bourgeoisie. Sadly, amongst the accused in the latter category is the house of the Birla family, which played a stalwart role in supporting Gandhi in his form of independence struggle.

 

            The media has just started to warm up to the game of forecasts, and they chose the BJP. This is apparently an easy exercise, since the Congress is so much burdened with corruption and malgovernance. Inflation runs riot, land reforms have come to a grinding halt, rights and privileges of the common people are cut down, the rich become richer, foreign investment is basically confined to the money market, making the whole cycle more vicious all the time, all the way.

 

            The BJP yet awaits a test in the seat of power in the present turbulent times. It is a scenario where the economy sinks deeper into the morass of multi‑dimensional crises, social tensions increase, the country is confronted with wider and deeper fault lines of religion, sects, region, and language. Riots of fearsome proportions are kept from the public eye by a docile media kow-towing to the bourgeois diktat, while the political leaders make oblique, crude references to such horrific armed conflicts as the Muzaffarnagar riots between two communities.

 

            What does the BJP's PM‑in‑waiting Narendra Modi, he of the Gujarat riot infamy, have to say? Well he speaks of the glorious past and of the heinous present. He speaks of moonlight, power outages and eyes of needles.

 

            He also attacks the Congress family rule. On the last point he is on more stable ground in the hearts and minds of the Indian. But moonlight and needles?

 

            On seeking to clarify from our BJP source, we learn what Modi said, and we would not blame anybody who either gets confused on reading this, or ends up laughing hysterically. Addressing a rally in the Hindi heartland, a traditional Congress bastion, Modi said that on every night of the full moon, people should switch off power, and come out in the streets or semblance thereof, we presume he implied, with a short length of thread and a needle in hand. And why? Because that would: a) save electricity; b) improve the eyesight (try passing a thread into the eye of the needle in the dark and you would realise the iron‑clad illogic of the RSS supremo); and c) enhance the sale of said needles and threads.

 

            "After all I am a businessman at heart," Modi is said to have chortled during his speech, which met with an awkward silence borne no doubt of awe and fear.

 

            Is this the leader that India deserves?

 

(The above article is from the November 1-15, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)