The BJP’s national council meet – its national convention – concluded on a high note at the iconic Bharat Mandapam. The Bharat Mandapam symbolises what Prime Minister Narendra Modi envisages and is also a mirror to the Opposition which continues to indulge in a pipe dream of preventing his return for a third term. As Home Minister Amit Shah reminded the humongous gathering, the Congress had filed PIL after PIL to stop the construction of the Bharat Mandapam, the new Parliament building, the Kartavya Path and the world’s largest convention centre Yashobhoomi in Delhi’s Dwarka. And yet failed in preventing the erection of these iconic structures of a self-reliant India.
While Modi aimed at transforming our scale of thinking, creating and achieving, the Congress-led Opposition parties and leaders aimed at holding back India, at somehow retarding this phenomenal transformation and of preventing the unleashing of our multi-sectoral and multi-dimensional potential. It was therefore a resounding victory when the Bharat Mandapam was eventually completed and India, led by Modi, hosted the world within its impressive and fascinating precincts. The Bharat Mandapam signified India’s emergence as ‘Vishwamitra’ and symbolised India’s rise as a power that counted in the world and with whom the world is eager to engage. The Bharat Mandapam symbolises Modi’s triumph and of his idea of India – an idea that will shape and direct an era over the next quarter century. It stands as a testimony to the narrative of Viksit Bharat.
The 10,000-plus plus party workers who had gathered at Bharat Mandapam were well aware and PM Modi’s exhortation and Amit Shah’s assertions redoubled that conviction that they were witnessing the beginning of a new age for India. The agenda for India for the next quarter century was being set, that the vision of India as a leading power in the world is no more just an aspiration. Its foundations were being laid and PM Modi’s third term would further concretise a roadmap to achieve it within a foreseeable future. As Narendra Modi said, “Only we, only the BJP can promise ‘Viksit Bharat’ and work to realise it. No other party can make this promise or has made it.”
PM Modi’s resolve to make India the third largest economy in his third term, and his mention that India was preparing to host the Youth Olympics of 2029 and is bidding for hosting the Olympics in 2036, gave a glimpse into his thinking and vision. A vision that was far-seeing, a roadmap already laid that would lead India to become a recognised and developed power. What could not be done in 60 years, Modi has done in a decade and India’s rise on the ladder as an economic power from 11th position to 5th best signifies the scale of transformation and performance.
It was not only the global dimension of the India story that Modi reminded the workers and leaders at Bharat Mandapam. Even the manner in which India observed and celebrated the 75th year of independence was unique, never thought of, never done before, he told them. He spoke of how 60,000 plus “Amrit Sarovars” were built in commemoration of the seventy-fifth year of India’s freedom. It was a replenishing of India’s essence and its fabric. He was the first Prime Minister, Modi reminded the BJP rank and file, to speak of toilets and of the need to stop using abusive words and actions against women, from the Ramparts of the Red Fort.
He has set each new milestone higher than the other. The democratic texture and essence of the country is maintained and reinvigorated, inclusion and unity are the driving ideals of his government. He movingly narrated his experience of following the 11 days of penance prior to the Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha at Ayodhya, and how across his peregrination through some of the most iconic temples in southern India, he concretely experienced the essence and core of the sustaining philosophy of ‘Ek Bharat Shrestha Bharat’. “It was in me,” he movingly told. “We celebrate our diversity, and this is reflected in our governance as well,” he asserted, describing the manner in which India’s Northeast has seen unprecedented inclusion in governance and development.
The Congress in disarray, which is the progenitor of instability, corruption, appeasement and dynasticism, Narendra Modi asserted, is only obsessed with abusing him. “The conflict in Congress is not on principles or policies, but on Modi. One section of the Congress says abuse and attack Modi personally, while another section says attack Modi on policies and issues”, he said. While Modi best delineated the mission ahead, he also best spelt out the disarray, disillusion, and desperation in the ranks of the Opposition, especially the Congress and repeating how this was India’s time and how it was the right time for India.
The Ram Mandir resolution was inspiring and precisely articulated the mood and emotions of not only those who had gathered at Bharat Mandapam but also the sense and feeling of the nation as a whole. The political resolution listed out the achievements of the Modi government. India, led by PM Modi, has achieved an all-time high in many fields, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh observed, while the Opposition’s approach and politics is at an all-time low. The Sandeshkhali horror perpetrated by leaders, patronised by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, was forcefully condemned as a blot on civilised society.
The resolution tabled and steered by Amit Shah, on the Opposition’s complete lack of direction and issues, was the most hard-hitting resolution of the national convention. His was a masterly detailing of how the Congress, in its six decades of uninterrupted rule perpetuated corruption and conflict. The INDI alliance, Shah thundered, “comprises of 7 family parties for whom quality, capacity, performance had no value, the only value is in which family you were born…”
Shah undertook a detailing of the various obfuscation and false promises the Congress made in the past. He spoke of the party continuously hacking away at democratic and constitutional institutions. Shah spoke of how the Congress repeatedly reneged on its promise of granting constitutional status to the backward classes commission, how it opposed backward classes reservation, delayed and prevaricated whenever the issue came up, the way it opposed GST, the manner in which it worked overtime to demoralise people by opposing the Covid vaccine drive, dubbing it as “Modi Vaccine”. The Congress’s culture of criticising the country and the government abroad was vicious and unprecedented, but even that could not arrest the rise of India. “People ask you, when you go abroad, you are from Modi’s India”, Shah asserted.
Speaking of Congress’s irresponsible politics and the “politics of violence and lawlessness by the INDI Alliance” Shah mentioned, without mincing words, how the Congress and most of its alliance partners have indulged in violent politics over the years. The horrifying incidents in Sandeshkhali in West Bengal “have shaken everyone. The Trinamool Congress has been consistently targeting BJP workers in West Bengal, attempting to suppress the voice of the people through violence,” Shah asserted. He did not fail to mention Kerala, where, under a CPIM government and its allied parties, several incidents of violence and murder have taken place against the BJP workers. The BJP, he said, “applauds the dedication of its workers who are risking their lives to fight against the violence and lawlessness promoted by the Congress and its allied parties across the country” and that it “was committed to continuing its struggle against such a negative politics.”
From violence to corruption, from promoting some of the biggest scamsters in recent times to obsessively misusing constitutional powers against political opponents, to obsessively promoting family members, the Congress has become a symbol of all kinds of “vices and evils in politics…It has become synonymous with divisive politics based on caste, region, community, appeasement, thanks to the politics of vote-bank,” Shah summed up. It was the most accurate, concise and heavy-duty description of the Congress’s nefarious politics by the one who has done much to dismantle it across the country over the last decade.
Perhaps Shah best summed up the reason for Congress’s anger against Modi, its dilemma and desperation. PM Modi, Shah told the giant gathering at Bharat Mandapam, “had in the last decade, championed the politics of performance, ended our collective inferiority complex and had rid free India of the symbols of colonial subjection.” These were anathema to the Congress, hence its desperation.
Modi 3.0 has set the agenda of a comprehensive national self-renewal and rise. This national convention met after witnessing a decade of history and renewed its pledge to be part of the shaping of a civilisational Bharat over the next quarter century.
The author is Chairman, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation & Member, BJP National Executive Committee. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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