Okay, we get it. There are horses for courses. But say there is a course, a very crucial one too, would you then risk trotting out a creature most alien on it and still hope for recourse? The BJP, everybody agrees, has the pulse of the people, and yet it seems quite determined to have Ajay Mohan Bisht aka Swami Adityanath campaign for it for the upcoming Assembly polls in Bengal. The same Bengal it seems desperate to win, quite literally, by the hair of its chinny chin chin.
Fortune favours sanskaris
Some might argue Adityanath’s efficacy on the campaign trail and cite the BJP's big win in the Hyderabad municipal elections last year, but if you jog that memory, in those elections the BJP had pulled out all its big guns from Amit Shah to J.P. Nadda. And what is it that Adityanath said there? Something about the election being all about making the bhagya of Bhagyanagar --- as he promised to name Hyderabad. He gave the examples of Faizabad and Allahabad, and how they had become Ayodhya and Prayagraj, respectively, after the BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh. As if to say, a change of name alone guarantees an improvement in fortunes. Adityanath had campaigned in Bihar last year; there were reports about his "Midas touch". And yet we know now that the Bihar verdict was not unequivocally saffron as a Midas should have ensured.
Spectators
Recently, Adityanath kicked off his Kerala campaign, wherein he told people of the Indian state with the highest proportion of literate persons that its state government had failed to restrict the spread of Covid-19. He is expected to campaign in Assam and Tamil Nadu too. In 2019 he had said that the NRC drive was brave and important and if needed he would implement it in UP. In Tamil Nadu perhaps he will repeat his sentiments about Hindi as a unifying force. The BJP had Adityanath begin his Bengal poll duty with Malda --- erstwhile capital of Gour-Banga and a seat of prosperity and learning --- the same where Hindu and Muslim cultures are braided as closely as a school girl’s morning plaits. Here he thundered about love jihad and expressed concerns about cows not returning home. He is expected to visit at least a dozen places in Bengal by March end. Reports routinely refer to him as the BJP’s star campaigner. Could it be that courses have outgrown horses? And the party that has the whole zoo, hissing cobras and stomping pachyderms et al, on the road gets the most votes. Where does that leave us, I wonder.
