Keep it real, stop vitiating campaign

Vote seeking shouldn’t acquire a communal colour

As the campaign for the 18th Lok Sabha election gathers momentum, there are fears about the communal orientation it has been acquiring. No longer are there any debates about rising income inequality, growing unemployment, and the need to provide free foodgrains to nearly 800 million people.

Former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav is lambasted not for his excesses, but for eating fish during the Navaratri celebrations. None less than Prime Minister Narendra Modi attacks the Congress, not for its failures, but for its leaders not attending the Pran Prathishta ceremony at Ayodhya, which purists like the Shankaracharyas had boycotted because the temple was far from complete. Would it have made any difference if a prominent Congress leader had attended it?

Of course, the purpose was to take credit for the temple, when in reality it was the Supreme Court’s verdict which settled the issue once and for all, paving the way for a grand temple. For someone who held the office of prime minister for 10 years, it did not redound to his credit that he was boasting about a temple. Instead, he should have listed his accomplishments, be it on employment, doubling the income of farmers, or lifting people out of poverty. That would have made sense to voters who could have verified his claims and come to an informed decision on whether to vote for him or not. Nor did he crown himself with glory when he said that what the country witnessed during the last 10 years was just a “trailer” of what was going to come, amounting almost to a threat.

As if this was not sufficient, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has been talking about how biryani was served to terrorists, when the truth is that no such incident has occurred. He also threatened that in the ‘new India’, terrorists would be hounded out of their homes. All this is to scare a section of the population. The Congress manifesto can be criticised for what it contains or does not contain, but to say that it expressed what the pre-Partition Muslim League stood for is to be outright communal. The tragedy is that the charge was made by Modi himself. How one wishes they had stopped vitiating the campaign, and instead, discussed the bread-and-butter problems of the people.