very well written..
________________________________
From: Goanet-News <goanet-news-boun...@lists.goanet.org> on behalf of Goanet
Reader <goanetrea...@gmail.com>
Sent: 19 August 2019 10:52
To: Goa's premiere mailing list, estb. 1994! <goanet@lists.goanet.org>
Subject: [Goanet-News] In new BJP, a social recalibration in the making (Devika
Sequeira, Herald)
In new BJP, a social recalibration in the making
Devika Sequeira
devikaseque...@gmail.com
Herald on August 18, 2019
Two photographs of Chief Minister Pramod Sawant stand out:
the first, taken in his first term as MLA, shows him in RSS
fatigues, dhanda on shoulder, posing before a jeep carrying
portraits of the founders of the RSS and VHP with Shivaji in
the centre.
That photograph went viral after Sawant became
chief minister, shared frenetically by cheering
saffron trolls on Twitter. Shivaji's prominence
alongside Hedgewar and Golwalkar in that Sangh
event (probably in Sawant's constituency) is
significant in the context of the caste-based
(Shivaji was a Maratha) political moves by the
current chief minister, but more of that later.
As Manohar Parrikar struggled with the last days of his
cancer and Vijai Sardesai sought amusement in the garish
carnival, Pramod Sawant, the then Speaker of the Goa assembly
-- a position that requires at least a pretence of neutrality
if not actual lack of bias -- was marching through the
streets of Panjim in Sangh gear.
At the Azad Maidan he solemnly took the RSS salute. The
event took place on March 3 this year, a fortnight before the
former chief minister Parrikar passed away. A photographer
friend was dutiful and intrigued enough to take several
pictures.
In the cacophony of the carnival, the significance of
Sawant's right-wing play went largely unnoticed in the media.
Thanks to his staunch loyalty to the Sangh, the MLA of
Sanquelim was perhaps prescient about the events to follow.
On March 19, he became chief minister of Goa. The
second photograph was taken the day Pramod Sawant
occupied the chief minister's office. On the chair
next to him sat a portrait of Parrikar, to whom, he
said, he owed his political all, though his actions
to "recaste" his mentor's legacy and openly embrace
defectors has been seen as a betrayal by many of
the former chief minister’s supporters, not least
among them, Parrikar's son Utpal.
Politically inexperienced for the high office -- he'd not
even been a minister before -- Sawant has proved a quick
learner on the job.
After procuring a super majority with the 10 Congress
turncoats, he first turned his gaze inwards, strategically
prising out key players and advisors from Manohar Parrikar's
time, the most prominent among them, the additional solicitor
general Atmaram Nadkarni.
In Goa, Nadkarni powered backroom politics to such an extent
that his exit was seen as something of a coup for the new CM.
A half dozen other heads -- Rajendra Talak, Santosh Kenkre to
name two -- rolled as well. The developments convulsed a
section of the BJP's -- rather Parrikar's -- core supporters
among the Saraswats who are still seething in resentment.
The new leader after all was expected to be but a soft
acolyte of the former defence minister.
Those who see the upending of the old social order
in the new BJP as mere payback for upper-caste
domination under Parrikar, are missing the point.
This is as much a social recalibration as it is a
silent but determined bid for total power within.
And currently it rests in the hands of two
individuals: Sawant and Satish Dhond, the BJP's
invisible man. With the calculated inclusion of
Babush Monserrate, from the Panjim constituency no
less, Utpal Parrikar has been thrown under the bus,
at least for now. Within the BJP's Hindu-Sangh
formula, he alone would have posed a leadership
challenge to Sawant if it came to that.
The Congress might learn a few uncomfortable facts were it to
revisit the political moves before the Panjim by-election.
Did Monserrate approach the Congress merely because he knew
that that was his best platform to win the seat? Or did he
approach the party after he'd already done a crossover deal
with Dhond and Sawant? Exposing political deception of this
level is important, at least for the sake of voters who are
being taken for a ride election after election.
Whatever his flaws, Manohar Parrikar spent years
building and shaping the BJP narrative in Goa, to
the extent the party came to be completely
associated with him. Sawant got to the top with no
achievement to speak of, except his ties to the RSS
and the cruel (not for him though) twist of fate
that catapulted him there. The flattery that
gushed out in the assembly for a bogus award given
the chief minister by a questionable NGO run by a
crony editor of an unapologetically communal
newspaper, speaks to the pathetic level of those we
vote.
Michael Lobo who was all sound and fury only a few weeks ago
for being left out of the Cabinet -- "I want to be CM, but my
party is not making me," he had said -- put on a real sob
show at the praise session. The chief minister is
hardworking, honest and has come up through his "simplicity",
Lobo said. He claimed Parrikar no less had praised Sawant's
leadership qualities saying he was preparing him to fit into
his shoes. When he conveyed this to the current CM, he had
wept.
Peddling a fake narrative for a party pushing increasingly
for a Hindu rashtra, Sawant recently claimed "the Goa BJP
government is the most secular as it has 15 MLAs from the
minority community". Another way of looking at it is that
the BJP in Goa now has a majority of minorities (15 out of 27
MLAs, eight of them poached from the Congress). But tied to
saffron, they will have to contend with being second-class
MLAs, never able to ascend the throne.
ENDS
