Opinion: Opposition unity and the Quit INDIA movement

By Kaushal Kishore: After the Congress victory in Karnataka assembly elections, ‘Bengaluru Pact’ among the 26 opposition parties led by the grand old party is a new development defining the battlefield for the parliamentary elections next year. The Congress-led political experiment -- United Progressive Alliance (UPA) -- no longer exists now, and it has metamorphosed into INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance). This is the key mantra which is going to have as powerful an impact on the next elections as the February 14, 2019 Pulwama terror attack had the last time.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has referred to it as Asli (real) INDIA, before a senior BJP leader, Ravi Shankar Prasad, reminded us of the British bureaucrat and ornithologist Allan Octavian Hume, who started the Indian National Congress in the 19th century. The ruling dispensation has compared it to the India as in the likes of the East India Company to Indian Mujahideen and the Popular Front of India. In the United States, its top proponent has defined earlier the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) as a completely secular political party.

Former Congress leader and Chief Minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma replaced India with Bharat, defining a new Quit India movement on Twitter. One day, it will culminate into a constitutional amendment modifying the definition, ‘India that is Bharat’ to something like ‘Bharat that is Aryavart’ and in the process, it will help to revisit a series of debates that initiated on September 18, 1949 in the Constituent Assembly. It could be helpful to remove colonial identity like the Sri Lanka that the British referred to as Ceylon, and redefine the lost spirit of the Aryans that Maharshi Dayanand had defined after the sepoy mutiny in the 19th century. And after its centenary, Baba Amte had revisited the same spirit in Bharat Jodo (Knit India) march.

The same day, the ruling alliance NDA (National Democratic Alliance) gathered at the national capital to show its strength. The BJP-led alliance, with 38 partners, is ready to fight the next battle. And certain others like BSP led by Mayawati is ready to challenge these two in Uttar Pradesh, in addition to K Chandrashekhar Rao’s BRS in Telangana, Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh and Naveen Patnaik’s BJD in Odisha. Their response on the Delhi ordinance in Parliament is going to define the equation further.

It seems development has replaced democracy in INDIA. However, it was heard in the conclave when Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar had raised objection on the name of the opposition alliance. Nitish Kumar has been nourishing this dream for a long time, and also played key role to bring Rahul Gandhi, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal together. But still, the opposition alliance lacks its convener and secretariat. It could have been the reason behind the early return of the leaders of Bihar. Leaders of RJD and JD (U) abruptly left Bengaluru before the joint press conference that day.

Meanwhile, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe reached New Delhi on his first official visit since taking up the top job last year. Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu MK Stalin wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi a day before his arrival. He had reiterated his demand to retrieve the Katchatheevu island from Sri Lanka. In 1974, the government of India transferred it to Sri Lanka, a move which his father and former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi had opposed. The new move of the DMK supremo is being interpreted as a step to initiate the Quit INDIA movement by certain pundits of politics.

More than a century ago, the fishing communities from India and Sri Lanka started to claim Katchatheevu island, which was created in the Indian Ocean due to the volcanic eruption in the 14th century. J. Jayalalithaa, former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, observed that the Union of India had handed it over to our nearest neighbour without the consent of the state, which it used to be a part of. The state assembly passed the resolution to that effect, and declared it unconstitutional to retrieve Katchatheevu island. Tamil Nadu had filed a petition in the apex court in 2008. The attorney general told the court that such demands can surely damage the relations between the two neighbours.

Tamil Nadu can hardly forget the fact that this is the same Ranil Wickremesinghe who issued a statement to shoot the Indian fishermen surrounding the same island, when he was the Prime Minister in 2015. The DMK issued a kind of whip to its 24 members in the Lower House to raise this case before PM Modi and Sri Lankan President Wickremesinghe. The two leaders exchanged enough on this issue. As a consequence, 15 fishermen were released from a prison in Malladi (Sri Lanka).

In addition to retrieve the island, the DMK focused on detention of the Indian fishermen by Sri Lankan authorities, and on aspirations of Tamil-speaking section of the island nation’s populace. After the departure of Wickremesinghe, the Sri Lankan Navy arrested nine fishermen near the Katchatheevu and the Neduntheevu islands. The fishing community in Ramnathapuram and Thoothukudi are outraged. The Dravidian politicians can go to any extent to settle such a critical issue.

Almost a decade after the birth of the Congress, the Christian Press coined the term -- White Man’s Burden. Before the end of the 19th century, the poet singing songs of British imperialism -- Rudyard Kipling -- had defined its politics in the poetry that first time appeared in The Times of London as The White Man’s Burden on February 4, 1899. The next day, The Sun, one of the top five dailies from New York, published the same in order to lead public discourse from Asia to Europe to the America. Kipling has defined a so-called moral duty of the West to civilise the rest of the world.

The sepoy mutiny of 1857 was in its backyard that Muslims and Hindus had fought together against the British. The Lucknow Pact during the First World War that Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Muhammad Ali Jinnah devised was an effort to revive that spirit of unity and harmony that Mahatma Gandhi seemed to carry forward. The old policy of divide and rule is at play since then onwards. This is the same politics that reflects from the Partition of the united India. Rahul and company have been trying hard to redefine a similar politics in modern times. He recently visited Europe and America to build support base among the anti-India forces.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has defined the politics of NDA and New India in terms of development and aspirations. He said, “In politics, there can be competitiveness but not enmity. Unfortunately, today opposition has made it its identity to abuse us. We always kept India above all political interests.”

Before the 82nd anniversary of the Quit India Movement next month, the grand old party has created an opportunity for the likes of RSS to do whatever they can to support the two new initiatives defined today as ‘Quit INDIA’ and ‘Quit India’. Between these two, anyone can see the Congress that appears all the more White. Indian democracy seems to die long before attaining its maturity. In such a hydra-headed state, it will be rather difficult for the ruling dispensation to ensure participation of all parties in the newly inaugurated Parliament.