BJP and Narendra Modi’s election win has been some sort of a traumatic experience for a large number of people. It is with a sense of disbelief and grudge that they are reacting to the results and in the process spawning some strange theories. If Modi were to succeed and the minorities were to say that they are happy, the entire “hate Modi, minorities not safe” industry would be rendered obsolete. So, it is now what Modi did not do than what he did is what the political discourse all about. The fact that this election actually changed paradigms is lost on these left, liberal intellectuals. Like Kumar Ketkar, for instance believes that Modi should have invoked Ambedkar and Nehru in his maiden speech in the parliament.
The best however has come from Rajmohan Gandhi who has written a very distasteful and condescending “open letter” to Narendra Modi saying that his spin was not captured and not approved by 69% of the people of India. So, actually he is a minority leader; never mind the absolute majority that the BJP returned in the parliament. I wonder if Mr R. Gandhi wrote a similar letter to the other R. Gandhi when we won 414 seats (or actually did not win 129 seats) and did not get a 51% vote share.
Firstly, it was the NDA that went with Modi as the prime ministerial candidate and not just the BJP. With a return of 334 seats and 40% vote share, it is a scintillating performance, especially in times where a coalition was an accepted reality. Secondly, what good is a vote share calculation on a national basis where a party did not contest at all? The true vote share for a party should be calculated taking the voting population only in the constituencies where the party fielded candidates as the base. What relevance is the vote share calculation for a National Conference or a BJD on a national level. They are not even national parties.
So, it was not just me, but somebody else too, who took exception to Rajmohan Gandhi’s letter and called it “odious”. R. Jagannathan in “First Post” tells us that if vote share is to the basis, then the French method of election should be adopted where elimination rounds are held where parties getting less than 5% of the vote get disqualified and eventually there are two parties in the reckoning. And here is the interesting part of the analysis. If we were to go by, Rajmohan Gandhi’s perspective, then 81% did not want Rahul Gandhi, 96% did not want Mayawati, over 95% did not want Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mamta and Jayalalitha and close to 100% did not want Kejriwal.
Modi did well; just 69% did not want him.
The-White-Belt 