There was much skepticism when the exit polls
gave the BJP and NDA an unimaginable majority. The consensus among rational
thinkers was that since the NDA peaked in many states in 2014, the vote share
and hence the number of seats would only come down. This belief can’t be
shrugged aside. Because this is what logically happens. Five years of
incumbency and a sustained attack on the government by the opposition and a
section of media was likely to have this impact on the elections. But then the
voters spoke.
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| Image: ToI |
Opinions in India are not shaped on social
media or news rooms. The sharp divide we see today, among the people torn
between BJP and everyone else is not how India behaves. The outlandish campaign
by anti BJP camp was very successful. But the success was limited to a very
small section of the electorate. This section was upwardly mobile, English
speaking, comfortable in their secure jobs, financially sound and blissfully
unaware of the ground realities. These people are the ones who identify
themselves as liberals, sometimes fiercely so. These were the people who had
their reasons to dislike or even hate the BJP. Much of their world view was
shaped by the Western narrative of politics.
The Western narrative which is full of binaries
of the Right and the Left. The Western narrative, which caters to a largely
homogenized but relatively small population. The divide between the Right and
Left works well in countries like the US, UK and some European countries. The
history of the Western world makes it much easy for the divide to be exploited
by the media or the politicians. Throw in words like Nazi, Fascism and
nationalism and one can easily scare a large section of the society.
But India is not the West. We are not a
homogenized society and we are definitely not a small population. The problem
with the liberal section of the Indians is that they do not understand this
vast difference between the West and India. They copy the Western template of
binaries and put it to use in India. A battery of liberal messiah were propped
up to peddle the Western style narrative to influence the opinion of people.
Stand up comedians, YouTube warriors, sulky looking TV anchors, disgruntled
journalists, historians and so on. A whole new breed of online news portals
came up, which were unabashedly biased against the ruling party.
Needless to say, propping up such individuals
and organisations requires a lot of money. Let there be no doubt, no matter how
much one hates a political party, they will not co-opt unless their needs of ‘roti-kapda-makan’ are addressed. So the
likes of Kunal Kamra, Varun Grover, Atul Khatri, became popular because they
spoke what the liberals wanted to hear. The liberals thronged to their comedy
nights and paid to listen to their canned comedy.
The likes of Dhruv Rathee, who started off as a
small time YouTuber, often posting Islamophobic content, suddenly became the
darling of the liberals because he changed his tune and was now playing
Saxophone instead of the Nadaswaram. The fact that he patently lied on multiple
occasions was not a problem because the liberals thought lies are fine as long
as it serves their purpose.
The Wire, Scroll, The Quint, Alt News, etc.
came into existence and pretended to be the ‘neutral media’. But anyone with
half a brain and an eye could see what they really were. They were simply an
extension of the liberal ecosystem, which was tasked to devour the BJP, slowly
but surely. It is almost impossible to find out one positive piece of reporting
on these portals. They were invariably full of apocalyptic future where the
days were gloomy and the nights scary. In the five years of the BJP rule, these
‘news’ websites could not find a single positive piece of work done by the
government. That is how ‘neutral’ and ‘independent’ these websites are.
So coming back to the question, ‘who lost this
election’? The likes of Kunal Kamra and Dhruv Rathee have made their money, so
have the ‘neutral’ websites. The loser in this election is the small section of
liberals who thought their cheers for Kunal Kamra will bring down the
government. It is almost as if they spent the last five years in an echo
chamber, listening to their own dissenting voices and no one pointed this out
to them. Blissfully unaware of the sorry situation they were in, they carried
on with the hubris.
Some people might say this victory is a defeat
of the liberal media and the likes of The Wire and Scroll. But don’t forget,
the people working for The wire or Scroll took their salaries home every month.
They have nothing to lose. The joke is on that small group of liberals who
handed over their money to Kunal Kamra for thirty minutes of cheap thrills.
