Swati Chaturvedi: I am a Hindu, but who is this ‘Hindu voter’ the BJP panders to? // Krishan Partap Singh: "Modi Shining" Campaign Is Showing Skid Marks

I am a Hindu and I wonder who this mythical 'Hindu voter' that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its political wing, the BJP, are pandering to when they make a terror-accused, Pragya Thakur, their candidate from Bhopal, and an extremist monk Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh. The BJP fought the Uttar Pradesh assembly election on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name and then anointed Yogi Adityanath as chief minister. It was not as if the voters of Uttar Pradesh knew they were voting for Adityanath. Similarly, the voters of Bhopal did not raise an outcry that Pragya Thakur be made their candidate.
Modi and his consigliere Amit Shah foisted the terror-accused in the Malegaon blasts of 2008 as the Bhopal candidate against Digvijaya Singh of the Congress, who the BJP claims is a “Hindu baiter” and who they say coined the term “Hindu terror”. Singh categorically denies that he coined the term.
Candidate Thakur, has in a bizarre campaign, given serial interviews where she seemed to gloat over the death of martyr and Ashok Chakra winner Hemant Karkare, who died fighting terrorists on 26/11 in MumbaiThakur said she had “cursed” him. Karkare as chief of the anti-terror squad had investigated the Malegoan blasts...read more:
https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/india-elections-2019-i-am-a-hindu-but-who-is-this-hindu-voter-the-bjp-panders-to-1.1556794366026

Former Civil Servants Protest Selection of Terror Accused as Lok Sabha candidate by BJP

Krishan Partap Singh: "Modi Shining" Campaign Is Showing Skid Marks
The unspoken story of the election is the dramatically lower credibility of the media in the eyes of voters as a result of the last five years. I suspect it is why journalists on the ground are having such difficult finding anti-Modi voices to balance against the easily accessible Modi-chanting horde. After seeing the attack on Arvind Kejriwal the other day in open daylight in the nation's capital under the noses of the police, anti-Modi voters are going to be as difficult to find for reporters as the Yeti. They will speak at the voting booth. 
A ruling party trying to ride nationalist sentiment to victory at the ballot box is hardly a novel concept. Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey have been past masters of this political art form for years, albeit with increased signs of voter fatigue this year. If you do not have answers to voter queries about broken promises or unfulfilled expectations, then what better way to avoid answering than to wrap yourself in the national flag and declare yourself the sole protector of the realm. It is a campaign strategy that instils fear and division in the electorate alongside a strong dose of militaristic bombast towards a chosen enemy or enemies, internal and external. As Charles De Gaulle put it, "Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first."

At its very essence, the general election will be decided on the question of whether voters will give Prime Minister Modi the benefit of the doubt and thus another term. Knowing this, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has tailored its entire campaign around the persona of Shri Modi as the indispensable and irreplaceable leader without whom India's security and economic growth would be imperilled. A 'Modi Shining' campaign, so to speak.... read more:




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