prasad1
Active member
Union minister of urban development M Venkaiah Naidu’s description of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as ‘God’s gift to India’ has provoked derision in the ranks of the opposition while causing discomfiture within BJP, and might invite the sceptical observation that the remark is a point in favour of atheism or at least agnosticism.
NaMolatory – idolising Modi – is only one of several dissensions concerning iconic – or would-be iconic – figures, and who holds proprietary rights over them.
When ‘nationalism’ has become the catch-all buzzword of the day, can ‘Bapu’, the ‘Father of the nation’, be commandeered by a single political organisation to the exclusion of all others, the coincidence of his surname chiming with that of the ruling family within that party notwithstanding?
Conversely, should Savarkar – the redoubtable freedom fighter who coined the term ‘Hindutva’ and had the honorific of ‘Veer’ added to his name – ‘belong’ to only one shade of India’s many-hued political and ideological spectrum?
Perhaps the most amicable way to settle such squabbles would be to devise a share-and-share-alike policy of national icons by which different political organisations could claim exclusive rights on them on a turn-and-turn-about basis.
Such a roundabout solution would mirror the system of a revolving chief ministership once devised in UP between BJP and BSP, where each could have the gaddi for a six-month stretch before relinquishing it to the other. Or one could think of a quota system, like the one currently in force for education and jobs.
The disenchanted voter, however, might well conclude that such games of political won-upmanship are exploiting our icons for electoral ends in a ploy best described as an ‘I con you’.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatime...&utm_campaign=TOInewHP&utm_medium=Widget_Stry
NaMolatory – idolising Modi – is only one of several dissensions concerning iconic – or would-be iconic – figures, and who holds proprietary rights over them.
When ‘nationalism’ has become the catch-all buzzword of the day, can ‘Bapu’, the ‘Father of the nation’, be commandeered by a single political organisation to the exclusion of all others, the coincidence of his surname chiming with that of the ruling family within that party notwithstanding?
Conversely, should Savarkar – the redoubtable freedom fighter who coined the term ‘Hindutva’ and had the honorific of ‘Veer’ added to his name – ‘belong’ to only one shade of India’s many-hued political and ideological spectrum?
Perhaps the most amicable way to settle such squabbles would be to devise a share-and-share-alike policy of national icons by which different political organisations could claim exclusive rights on them on a turn-and-turn-about basis.
Such a roundabout solution would mirror the system of a revolving chief ministership once devised in UP between BJP and BSP, where each could have the gaddi for a six-month stretch before relinquishing it to the other. Or one could think of a quota system, like the one currently in force for education and jobs.
The disenchanted voter, however, might well conclude that such games of political won-upmanship are exploiting our icons for electoral ends in a ploy best described as an ‘I con you’.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatime...&utm_campaign=TOInewHP&utm_medium=Widget_Stry
