Well, our opposition leaders have found another humiliating issue to disrupt the public welfare proceedings of the Parliament and mobilize the people by creating ruckus from the streets to the Parliament. This will make the opposition’s path easier for the Mission General Elections 2029. It is said that during a parliamentary discussion, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said in the Parliament that taking Ambedkar’s name has become a political fashion these days. If you had taken God’s name this much, you would have got heaven for seven births.
According to Shah, “Why are you saying Ambedkar-Ambedkar-Ambedkar? If you say Bhagwan-Bhagwan, then 7 generations of you will go to heaven.” Regarding just this statement, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi of the main opposition party Congress and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge have started opposing Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP.
In this way, there was a scuffle in the Parliament between support-protest and defense politics of various parties and even an FIR had to be lodged by the BJP leaders against the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi and his associates. On the other hand, Congress has also given a complaint against BJP MPs. This also brought some relief to the disintegrating India alliance, because the same leaders who opposed Rahul Gandhi now started speaking his language again.
Read this also: It is true – Ambedkar ji is a matter of respect and not of fashion.
Since we have to cross the political hurdles of Delhi Assembly elections in February 2025 and Bihar Assembly elections in November 2025, an issue is needed. Therefore, Congress found an issue of its choice. BJP has booked Muslims for itself through its policies and to grab Dalits from BJP, it has given rise to issues ranging from changing the Constitution to insulting Ambedkar. This is so that the ‘power equation’ of Congress, the Dalit-Muslim alliance, gets strengthened. Let us tell you that while strengthening this, the founder of Lok Janshakti Party, Late. Ram Vilas Paswan and his son Union Minister Chirag Paswan joined the BJP.
At the same time, you are seeing the political plight of BSP leader and former UP Chief Minister Mayawati, who was considered to be the second strong advocate of power equation, who has been accused of being the B team of BJP. Therefore, it is too early to say what success the Congress will achieve by strengthening its claim on the equation. Because this equation has given him freedom from 10 years of political misery in the Lok Sabha elections 2024.
It is a matter of fact that as soon as the Congress became the leader of the opposition, its political allies i.e. the allies of the India Alliance have lost their sleep. Therefore, as soon as the Dalits dispersed in Haryana and Maharashtra, the Congress, which became the center of criticism from the opposition, exaggerated the insult of Ambedkar to such an extent and adopted aggressive tactics that a scuffle broke out in the Parliament. With this, Rahul Gandhi again seems to be becoming the hero of the opposition leaders.
Now it is expected that after the Delhi and Bihar assembly elections, Congress will make a strategy to win the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in 2027 and then the assembly elections of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in 2028. Since in the meantime, elections to the assemblies of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, West Bengal etc. will also be held as per the election calendar, hence Congress will make the insult of Ambedkar a main issue after the caste census. Because BJP has also been raising logical questions against Congress on both these issues.
If we look at the words of political commentators, then political commentary on President Mahatma Gandhi, first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘murderer’ Hindu leader Veer Savarkar, and now Constitution maker Baba Saheb Dr. Bhimram Ambedkar is nothing new. Rather, the new thing is that the Congress, which has been tolerating the insults of Gandhi-Nehru, is killing two birds with one stone by making the insult of Ambedkar a political issue.
First of all, it has grabbed the issues from the Dalit parties and the parties doing OBC politics and has intensified its efforts to straighten its political agenda by putting the BJP in the public dock, which is giving it an edge. You must have seen that political comments were made against innumerable leaders like Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Ram Manohar Lohia, VP Singh, Lalu Prasad, Honorable Kanshi Ram, Mayawati, Ram Vilas Paswan, LK Advani, Atal Bihari Bajpayee, but the matter never became such a big deal.
Sometimes politics was done on the question of independence, sometimes reservation, sometimes equality, sometimes harmony, sometimes leftism, sometimes socialism and sometimes nationalism. After food, clothing and shelter, there was also politics of education, health and respect. There were announcements ranging from Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan to Jai Vigyan. There were talks about Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas and Sabka Vishwas. But the financial condition of the people continued to deteriorate. In the last three decades, the gap between rich and poverty is widening every day.
Another bitter truth is that the income of elected leaders is increasing at the speed of rocket, but constitutional efforts to establish an equitable society remain missing. Because whenever something beneficial for all started, the constitutional rights of Dalits, tribals, OBCs and minorities were made legal shields. Reservation was given to some people and by getting their support, family politics was strengthened at some places and fiscal loot was carried out at some places. The most unfortunate situation is that no attempt was made to establish administrative and judicial balance. Either laws were made in accordance with self-interest or they were defined. The side effects are visible to everyone. Violence, retribution and inequality have become our destiny.
The bitter political truth is that as a side effect of the ‘New Economic Policies’ implemented in the country since the early 1990s, the Indian Parliament seems to be distancing itself from public welfare issues and is only interested in public opinion in order to fulfill capitalist agendas. In between, emotional issues are being fueled. The Congress, which implemented these policies in the country, and then the BJP, which later became its supporter (forgetting the Swadeshi movement), gave so much air to capitalist politics that regional politics itself became marginalised.
Therefore, regional parties should understand this political dilemma of BJP and Congress, but they have also become pawns of the alliance of these two parties. This is simply because the economic resources required for politics can only be provided by capitalist companies. You notice how expensive life is becoming after the company rule that started in the 1990s. The market tendency to weigh everything on a monetary scale, beyond human sensitivities, has made everything from food, medicine, living to transportation expensive and left us at the mercy of God in matters of quality.
At the same time, the Parliament, sometimes controlled by the Congress and sometimes by the BJP, kept weakening the strong laws in favor of the capitalists, due to which the anarchy in the areas of education, health, communication, transport etc. kept on increasing. This continues even today. Due to the increasing influence of rupee in the society, the administrative system became more corrupt. Due to the increasing prevalence of the words OBC, Dalit and minority in politics, the army of public representatives who came to Parliament knowingly or unknowingly corrupted the politics. The situation is such that the difference between the king and the people and the difference between the people and the king has disappeared. The privileges of public representatives and the rights of judicial contempt of judges sealed the mouths of the media.
There is no scope left for healthy political debate in the country now. Because first there was independence, then socialism, then politics of Hinduism, in which minority appeasement, caste appeasement, communal polarisation, Dalit-backward-tribal mobilization, then in the midst of their mutual conflict, capitalist politics continued to establish its roots and right from the basic employment of the people to Policies related to livelihood were marginalized.
Whatever ostensible public welfare policies are being implemented now, the primary agenda behind them is corporate loot, which most of our leaders and their supporters, the illiterate or less educated public, have failed to understand. All the new economic measures taken like Aadhar card, free housing, free or low interest rate loans, DBT are all aimed at benefiting the companies. People do not have work and the government is emphasizing on AI. The infiltration of mechanization into power will only benefit the capitalists.
To be honest, one country, one election is also their agenda so that small parties are eliminated. Small companies have already been robbed of their online market. That is why the country is waiting for a people’s revolution, because a handful of people will benefit from Indian companies dancing at the behest of global capitalist forces, while a large population is entangled in emotional issues and is no less than a national curse. The question is again the same, till when will our regional parties understand the ploy of Congress-BJP to inflame emotions and bake political bread and increase pressure on them to protect public interest, otherwise after some time they too will become irrelevant among the people.
– Kamlesh Pandey
Senior journalist and political columnist