Machibet777 Casino Why BJP is banking on past political stalwarts to woo voters

On February 25, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a scathing attack on the Congress at a public meeting in Puducherry. Hours later, he flew down to Coimbatore for another public meeting, where to the surprise of many, was a gigantic cut-out of Congress stalwart K Kamaraj. Next to Kamaraj was AIADMK founder M G Ramachandran. MGR’s cut out, one could presume, was because the AIADMK was an ally of the BJP. But Kamaraj? large81290118This is part of the BJP’s national agenda to make its presence in the forthcoming assembly elections in states where the party was not considered to be a factor till a few years ago. To create a sense of oneness with the culture and tradition of the states, the party has tried to fall back on the past and appropriate some of the regional leaders of yesteryears, even if they are ideologically on opposite poles.For example, in West Bengal, BJP leaders are going soft on former CPM chief ministers such as Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. Sections of the Tamil Nadu BJP unit have long help that they are not opposed to what legendary Congress leader Kamraj believed in. medium81290054Three years ago, former union minister Pon Radhakrishnan equated PM Modi with Kamaraj for his humble background and clean governance. “Perunthalaivar Kamaraj took a path that was marked by a corruption free, clean, honest and development-oriented governance. PM Modi is travelling the same path,” he said. He later also said the present crop of Congressmen have no right to talk about Kamaraj. In 2018, there was a clash between the BJP and the Congress cadres, when they vied with each other to garland a Kamaraj statue in Salem.The BJP sees no contradiction in using the image of the icon of a party, which it wants to banish from the political landscape. The bid to appropriate the Congress leader’s legacy seems to have come a full circle ahead of the assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, where the BJP is making every effort to make political inroads. “Kamaraj contributed a lot to the development of TN, especially in the education sector. So instead of looking at him through the political prism, we wanted to take a positive approach, and look at him as a leader who worked for masses. That is the reason we had MGR’s hoarding too,’’ said BJP national women’s wing president Vanathi Srinivasan. medium81290127The criticism aimed at the BJP was that the saffron party was idolising Kamaraj not just to appropriate the late leader’s legacy, but also to woo Nadars, the mercantile community numerically strong in several southern districts to which Kamaraj belonged. “If one says so, then it is an insult to the great leader to label him as a representative of just one caste,” Vanathi said.The Congress is ostensibly angry at the alleged bid to appropriate the tallest leader the party ever had in Tamil Nadu. “The communal forces who were taking out a procession against the Congress government, attacked Kamaraj’s house in New Delhi and set it on fire in 1966. Kamaraj was the Congress president then,’’ said senior Congress leader A Gopanna. medium81290068Political commentator and author R Kannan, however, cautions not to read too much into the use of Kamaraj’s life-size cut-out. “We have to wait to see if it was a calculated attempt to appropriate Kamaraj,” he said. “If the BJP was seeking to do so, then which constituency was the party aiming at?’’ he said.The reason for laying claim to Kamaraj now is because the BJP has no icons who can connect with the masses, Gopanna said. Congressmen fume that it is not just Kamaraj. The BJP had also tried to use the legacy of Sardar Vallabhai Patel and P V Narasimha Rao to its own ends.In Bengal, the BJP is insisting that the fight is against the corruption of Trinamool Congress and that despite ideological differences with the Left, the likes of Basu and Bhattacharya were “not corrupt”. “Buddhadeb babu was a good man and I was never against the politics of the Left Front... Some very good work was done by the Left Front in Bengal,” Suvendu Adhikari, Mamata Banerjee’s former righthand man and now a possible BJP CM candidate, said at a number of political rallies recently. medium81290435The approach appears to be helping the saffron brigade. In Bengal, the Left vote share from the 2016 assembly to 2019 Lok Sabha polls saw a sharp decline of 13% and political observers say the chunk went in favour of the BJP, which saw a rise of 33% votes in the same period. The Bengal BJP unit believes Left followers who loved the clean ‘bhadrolok’ image of the former CPM leaders are disgusted with the corruption allegations against the TMC brass, and would prefer the BJP, which shows a sense of discipline that characterised the Left rule.But whether such an attempt would help the BJP in TN is uncertain. “The question is, will appropriating the legacy of leaders help the BJP in the polls. I doubt it,’’ says Kannan.