A sizable section of our political class is armed with endless notoriety with lies, falsehood, duplicity, foxiness and even violence and cold-blooded crimes at times as their hallmarks.
The victims of the venom spewed by such Frankensteins are always the innocent lot.
In India, election time may be dubbed as “festival of foolery, fakery, deceitfulness, double-dealing and group clashes” while even the minimum of honesty, ethics, values, nay, humanism itself have totally disappeared on account of the insatiable greed of a vast majority of our political honchos.
With the 2021 Assam Assembly elections at our doorstep, the run-up is getting boisterous and turbulent.
General principle is that when the contest turns stiffer, the bigwigs tend to violate all norms, code, and rules in their endeavour to win the polls by hook or by crook.
Let the heavens crumble, let the people go to the dogs, the power hungry political lot, mainly the bigwigs, would remain unmoved from their sinister design.
For them their goal is paramount, the means adopted – legal or Machiavellian – don’t matter.
It may be foolish for the public to even ponder if at all the political lot would ever deliver.
Today, in their drive for more power, even in the extra-constitutional realm by the political Czars, vandalism, intimidation, assault, road rage and such crimes have become common place events in the electoral arena.
Added to the poll outrage is the chapter on blackest of lies and falsification, perpetrated mainly by the heavyweights, to dupe the electorate.
Further, the hell-raising Godi media, rollicking in wealth, is always around to salute the cheat masters in bombastic & high-flown words.
Presently, amidst growing poll rumblings, the going seems to be getting tougher by the day for all parties, but apparently more so for the saffron brigade heavyweights as the 2021 state Assembly polls gong beats louder.
Significantly, the last seven years of BJP rule at the Centre in the Assam context and in Assam since 2016 was a period marked by foxiness, double-dealing, cheating and fascist disposition let loose on the people.
The biggest thuggery was the announcement in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and in the 2016 Assam Assembly polls that all Bangladeshis would be deported from Assam.
However, giving no heed to the massive protest by the indigenous people of Assam and the Northeast, the BJP-led Centre went ahead with the enactment of the CAA.
The anti-Assam Act guarantees citizenship and “mati and bheti” to millions of Hindu Bangladeshis who illegally entered Assam till December-end 2014.
Also read: Assam Assembly elections: BJP trying to influence voters, says AGP candidate Utpal Dutta
Again, dumping the Assam Accord in the dustbin of history, the saffron governments at the Centre and in the state played havoc with Clause 6 of the Accord which now has been sent on its “antim sanskar yatra”.
The saffron dispensation has also seemingly cemented the path for total and complete destruction of the hitherto prepared NRC.
The purpose is crystal clear – to include the names of all Hindu Bangladeshis left out so far in a newly prepared saffronised NRC.
On the basis of the above, it needs no elaboration that lies and falsehood are cardinal to the ethos of the saffron party.
Chronologically speaking, prior to the passage of the CAB in the Parliament to become CAA, a law of the land, the Northeast, with Assam in the forefront, was rocked by anti-CAB protest almost on a daily basis for more than a year.
Further, the day the CAB was passed to become CAA, people in millions across Assam took to the streets, protesting against the enactment.
In certain places the stir turned violent with protesters burning tyres and logs on the streets.
That was about the only violence indulged in by a section of protesters in some places.
In return the trigger-happy saffron government at Dispur ordered the security forces within hours to let lose all hell with its indiscriminate and mindless firing in several places in the state.
The result being that many died while a lot more were injured – some crippled for life.
Thereafter the Dispur Czars labelled charges like “war against the state, urban Naxals, Maoist links, sedition, disturbances caused to social and communal harmony” and the like on the protesters.
Dispur’s action is reminiscent of those notorious fascists who had polluted the pages of history.
The outcome being that many were sent to jail, while KMSS and now Raijor Dal leader Akhil Gogoi is still languishing in Jail with such draconian charges overhead.
From the above review, it is clear as daylight that foxiness, falsehood, lies, deceptiveness et al lie at the core of the political ethos of the BJP.
This finds manifestation in the statement made by Union Home Minister Amit Shah at a recent election rally: “During the last 5 years of BJP rule in Assam under the leadership of Sarbananda Sonowal, there has been no protest and none died in police firing.”
Instead of wasting words, space and time on the issue, one may ask: what could there be on earth blacker than this nauseating lie coming from the mouth of the Home Minister of a country?
Likewise, in another such meet the BJP national president JP Nadda said that there were no incidents of curfew imposed by the BJP-led Assam Government in the last five years.
The bitter truth is that the day CAB was passed by the Rajya Sabha, with both the Assam BJP and the AGP voting in full strength in favour of the CAB to become a law, the entire state was rocked by massive anti-CAA protest.
The saffron bigwigs of Dispur immediately imposed curfew in Guwahati and in due course in some other parts of Assam.
Along with curfew, the administration resorted to random firing by the police on the protesters.
What happened thereafter has already been stated above.
Now when the super heavyweights and policy makers of the party in power can resort to “lies for votes”, what could be the people’s expectation in terms of delivery from a party that banks on blackest of lies?
(Zaheer Akram Bora is a Guwahati-based journalist and can be reached at zaheerakram20@gmail.com)