Herald View: Assam NRC is classic BJP tactic of divide and rule     

The Bharatiya Janata Party is back at what it knows the best. It is the old divide and rule game that the BJP has set in motion in Assam in the garb of NRC. The target for the saffron party is to win the 2019 general elections through polarisation. The game has started from Assam where the foreigners’ issue is cleverly given a Hindu-Muslim twist. It’s the same game that is being played in Europe and in the US: raking up the fear of migrants. Here in Assam, the ‘Bangladeshi’ migrant is projected as a “threat to national security”.

None other than BJP president Amit Shah, on the floor of Rajya Sabha, gave it the ‘migrants versus Indian citizens’ colour. He even dared the Opposition to clarify their stand vis-a-vis “national security” and reminded them not to play “vote bank politics”, an old BJP euphemism for ‘Muslim-friendly’ stand of secular parties.

It is vintage BJP. Right from the early 1990s, when its then president LK Advani launched his rath yatra, till date, the BJP has been on a constant drive to divide the country for its electoral game. It reaped good results in terms of its growth in national politics. The party moved from two seats in 1985 in Lok Sabha to the status of the single largest party in 1998 and finally hit the tally of having the majority on its own under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. But it is a game that is now dividing the country. The rath yatra ended with pulling down the Babri Masjid when they pitted Lord Rama against Allah in an attempt to cultivate Hindu vote bank to maximise seats in Lok Sabha. The party succeeded in its plan.

But the country witnessed a bloodbath in the form of widespread riots. The same game was played in 2002 with ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Gujarat that saw the rise of Narendra Modi in his home state. Modi in 2014 changed the course a bit when he personally played the development card while the RSS used divide and rule tactics which propelled Modi to power as a Hindu warrior. Now that the development hoax is exposed, Modi, Shah and the RSS, with overt media support, is getting ready to get back to its basic hate game.

Assam is the first step in the direction where the clear attempt is to pose the BJP as the Hindu saviour while the rest stand against it as pro-Muslim/foreigner and are therefore anti-national and not worthy of the majority vote bank. It’s time for the entire liberal opposition to stand up, as it did in Parliament, on this issue to expose the BJP on the NRC issue. Because 2019 would be an election where the sane Indian elements have to work for protecting core Indian civilisational values which are inclusive and not exclusivist.