Shades of Saffron: From Vajpayee To Modi by Naqvi Saba

Author:Naqvi, Saba [Naqvi, Saba]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9789387578333
Publisher: Tranquebar Press
Published: 2018-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

WHEN TERROR STRUCK

The world was reeling in shock. The sight of planes flying into the twin towers, followed by balls of fire and smoke would henceforth define global terrorism. Just a few months after the 9/11 attack on New York City, on 13 December 2001, five men made an attempt to enter the Indian parliament. Fourteen people died including the intruders, six Delhi police personnel, two parliament security personnel and a gardener.

I reached parliament that day but found it under siege and stood outside the security cordon, hearing distant gunfire and watching the huge security build-up.

The government swiftly blamed terror groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba or LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad (the one led by Masood Azhar who had been released in Kandahar) and demanded that Pakistan act against the leaders operating from that country. On its part, Pakistan claimed that the attack on parliament was an operation mounted by Indian Intelligence agencies to defame the legitimate movement for freedom in Kashmir.

Within two days of the attack on Indian parliament, there were indications of a war-like situation between India and Pakistan. The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) met and initiated the biggest mobilisation of troops on the border since the 1971 war with Pakistan. Operation Parakram was launched on 15 December 2001, and lasted ten months. The result: over four hundred Indian soldiers were dead, many in landmine explosions, even as the world watched helplessly, dreading a full-blown war between two nuclear-armed nations. Subsequently, the government stated in parliament that Operation Parakram had cost the nation a whopping 800 crores. Most military and defence experts would critique the Operation as a costly misadventure that served no real purpose.

This, therefore, was the backdrop to the politics that unfolded in 2002. By the time Operation Parakram had been initiated, Narendra Modi was chief minister of Gujarat for over two months; the US had begun its ‘War on Terror’; every Indo–Pak peace initiative had failed spectacularly; and Atal Bihari Vajpayee continued to dodder between poor health and moments of lucid brilliance.

The BJP found itself facing two state elections—first, in Uttar Pradesh at the beginning of the year, a state that had catapulted the party to national prominence at the time of the Ram temple movement, but where it had subsequently lost ground.

The quick sequence of events that followed is known. The BJP fared very poorly in Uttar Pradesh, down to seventy-seven seats in a House of 403, the party was in the third place after the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party or BSP.

The poor results was seen as a personal drubbing for Vajpayee. Uttar Pradesh has the highest percentage of Brahmins in the country, about ten per cent of the electorate of the state. Much was made of the fact that the Brahmin prime minister had failed to draw in the pundits of the Hindi heartland. Simultaneously, the verdict was also the rejection of the Ram mandir card, which the VHP had continuously worked on, even as the BJP was ambiguous about its efficacy. Given the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.