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| 'BJP Update' not to help BJP improve its image | | Needed: Action On The Ground | | NEHA
JAMMU, June 9: The state BJP on Thursday released with much fanfare the first issue of "B. J. P Update", a monthly news magazine. Releasing the magazine, the state BJP president expressed the hope that it will go a long way in "educating the party cadres as well as common masses about the ideology and goals of the BJP". The fact that the BJP leader made this statement only indicated the party's failure in making the people as well as the party workers aware of what it stood for, notwithstanding the fact that the party had been active in this part of the country since decades. However, to say all this is not to undermine the decision of the state BJP leadership to start a monthly news magazine containing details on the party activities, as also information about its aims and objectives. The decision is indeed appreciable. Political parties need to educate the people and their cadres about what they stand for.
However, the question to be asked is: What is the ideology and goals of the BJP? The answer is simple and straight. The today's BJP has no ideology. It had a definite ideology before 1998. That ideology advocated abrogation of Article 370, application of uniform civil code across the country, construction of Ram temple, unity and integrity of India and nationalism and patriotism. In 1998, the party discarded what it had stood for till then. It forged a front with those bitterly opposed to its ideology in order to grab state power. The truth is that the BJP abandoned its ideology even before capturing power. After 1998, the BJP treaded the path the parties like the Congress had been treading and continue to tread. That's the reason many of its supporters dismissed the BJP as the extension of the Congress party and held aloof from it. The humiliating defeats of the BJP in the 2004 and 2009 general elections was the immediate fall-out of what the BJP leadership at the national level had done to fulfill their lust for power and pelf. The state BJP has to explain what made the high command to abandon its ideology and what it now stands for. This is imperative to win back the trust of the estranged people or those who maintained a long distance from this party, which right now is in turmoil or in a serious crisis.
The state BJP leadership has not only to explain in clear terms what is its ideology, but it has also to tell the people of this state, especially the people of Jammu province, as to what is its political agenda. It is Jammu province which is its core constituency. As of today, the state BJP has no definite political agenda for the state in general and Jammu province in particular. Its stand on Kashmir is as ambivalent as that of the Congress. And its stand on Jammu province appears quite vague when compared with the Congress's stand. Notwithstanding the fact that the Congress has harmed the people of Jammu province to keep the people of Kashmir on its right side, it has a clear stand on the state constitution and its stand is that it is unitary in character and spirit and that if the people of Jammu province are to be empowered to an extent, the state constitution has to be amended and the state polity to be federalized. As for BJP, it does support the demand in Ladakh for Union Territory status and advocate the need to preserve, promote and respect "Kashmiriyat", but it vehemently opposes the demand in Jammu province for the state's reorganization, saying such an organization would only help Pakistan achieve its goal in the Indian Jammu & Kashmir. Just look at the BJP's 2008 election manifesto and see for yourself that the party had not even promised a sham regional development board to the people of this province, which houses marginalized and grossly discriminated people, including 1.5 million refugees, all victims of terrorism and fanaticism.
If the state BJP really wishes to win over the people of Jammu province, it has to come out with a definite roadmap. It can win back the trust of the estranged people. The condition is that it must put attractive and nationalist wares in the political market of Jammu for sale and make it loud and clear that it will not allow the party high command to follow the Congress's line on Kashmir. Will it?
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