For the very first time because India very first celebrated Republic Day on January 26, 1950, there will be two parades in Delhi next week. One will be the official parade to which the only folks invited now are higher officials and their good friends and relations. The other is a parade that is getting organised by the folks of our republic to which no officials have been invited. It will be a parade of tractors carrying angry farmers and their households. It seeks not to disrupt the official parade but to make the point that the government has stopped listening to the folks. If this have been not correct, why would the Modi government insist on farm reforms that farmers so deeply resent that they have camped on the borders of Delhi for more than two months? The unofficial parade may well be stopped from getting into Delhi, but the farmers have produced their point.
There was a time in the early years of our republic when ordinary folks could attend the official parade. As an individual who lived inside walking distance of Rajpath, I try to remember properly these cold, wet January mornings when we would go further early to get very good seats on the green wooden benches that lined each sides of the parade route. Security was no difficulty so we would carry with us baskets filled with meals and hot beverages and wait for what seemed like hours for the parade to commence. It used to be a celebration in which ordinary folks participated with joy and excitement. But, for numerous years now, it has been a parade which only VIPs can essentially witness. This tends to make the other parade next week more fascinating, even if it is stopped at the final minute.
The farmers are attempting to be heard and the Prime Minister ought to listen. Last week an India Today poll declared that Narendra Modi is as well-known as ever and that if an election have been held today the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that he leads would get more than 300 seats. This could have more to do with the dismal state of the Opposition, but that is neither right here nor there. Modi’s charisma, according to this poll, remains as lustrous as ever. So then why do we have this second parade taking spot at all? Why have angry farmers been protesting on the borders of Delhi for more than two months? Why is the government unable to persuade them that the farm laws it has brought will be very good for them? Why with even the media firmly on his side has the Prime Minister not been capable to convince the protesting farmers that their protest is incorrect?
Having mulled more than these queries extended and difficult, I have concluded that the actual cause for this apparent dichotomy is that Modi’s government is getting observed as arrogant and contemptuous. When the farmers started their siege on Delhi’s borders, the very first reaction of senior ministers was to charge them with getting Khalistanis and ‘anti-national’. Some BJP spokesmen essentially mentioned on national tv that this was absolutely nothing but a continuation of the Shaheen Bagh protest against the citizenship laws. In the case of that protest, it was straightforward to spread conspiracy theories since the protesters have been Muslims. In the case of the farmers, it has not been straightforward to get away with wild charges since they responded angrily and usually that it is their sons, brothers and fathers who defend India’s borders. Sikh farmers have been more aggressive since of the sly campaign the government has run that seeks to build the impression that it is only Sikh farmers who are angry about the new laws.
The truth is that arrogance has been the defining characteristic of Modi’s second term as Prime Minister. Parliament has been treated not (to use his personal words) as that ‘temple of democracy’ on whose measures he bowed his head on his very first day there. But, as a automobile to ram by means of laws whether or not the folks want them or not. This was straightforward when it came to the abrogation of Article 370 since most Indians outdoors Kashmir authorized completely. It was with the adjustments to the citizenship law that items began to get more complex. Modi’s ministers and his minions on social media shrieked their heads off that Indian Muslims would not locate their citizenship beneath threat, but they remained unconvinced with very good cause. In more methods than one particular the Hindutva project that has been launched in Modi’s second term has produced it clear that Muslims are second-class citizens.
Instead of attempting to address their fears, the response has been to pass ludicrous like jihad laws in BJP-ruled states, whose major goal appears to be to jail Muslim guys who marry Hindu girls. This is a law that demeans girls by denying them the basic suitable to opt for who they marry, but somehow BJP chief ministers do not see it this way. Could it be since, in emulation of the Prime Minister, they have decided that they know ideal what is very good for the folks? This contempt for their opinion is some thing the folks have noticed, which is why we have observed this spate of public protests. An option Republic Day parade in Delhi next week could be the starting of some thing that bodes ill for Modi unless he resolves to listen to the voices of the folks.