Mother India! We love you madly!

Every time American politicians visit India and expound on our democracy, they secretly thank God (the secular, globally accepted one) that they don’t face such a parliamentary democracy back home. They also thank God they don’t have a party like the BJP in the USA.

In the last decade, if LK Advani was the leader of the opposition in the USA, he would not have attacked the president’s for failing to find Osama bin Laden. He would have shamed him. Publicly. Perhaps streets in Washington might have had posters and graffiti of Osama lying on a bed, connected to a dialysis machine, with the caption: The sick, ageing, most dangerous man in the world who we can’t find.

Now before you start thinking about how the BJP would have tackled 9/11 and the non-transparent way in which the US government handed out information, let me remind you that for the BJP, the national interest is supreme. (If you want an Indian politician to take on the USA government on 9/11, the man you are looking for is Subramanium Swamy. But I don’t think he has the time. National interest is supreme for him too.)

I love the BJP because I like to listen to my elders (who are beyond reproach). It’s a party madly in love with the nation. And love means never having to say you are sorry. Even if it is Mother India. For love is love.

But I really love the BJP because I am a brick- holder in the proposed Ram mandir at Ayodhya. One morning, when I was 10 years old, Advaniji came to my neighbourhood in Delhi with the message of Hindu awakening. “Hindu ghata desh bata” was the slogan. By then (September 1990), VP Singh had found his nemesis: “Thakur buddhi, Yadav bal, Jhandu ho gaya Janata Dal”. His days were numbered.

Advaniji’s mood was strong and the message was clear: Mandir wahi banayenge! At any cost. Since politics is about loving Mother India truly, madly and deeply, and not about petty cash, the average Hindu had to pitch in.

My mother gave five rupees each to my brother and me to book a brick each in the Ram mandir. In the light of what’s happening in Parliament now, I wonder if I am wrong in asking what happened to my money? Is the loss notional or real? But then I check myself: My elders are beyond reproach. Plus Advaniji is an elder not just to me but also to my retired father.

Which is why I don’t ask silly questions. The BJP wants the PM to tell us how he let Raja do what Raja did under his leadership? I want to ask the BJP how LK Advani let the kar sevaks bring down a mosque in front of his own eyes and against his will? If Advaniji is allowed his darkest moment in personal history with sincerity, Manmohan uncle should also be allowed his darkest minister in the cabinet.

What say?

Mayank Tewari is a struggling writer mayankis@gmail.com