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‘Pragya Thakur represents struggle against vote bank politics’: Vinay Sahasrabuddhe
“The younger generation is increasingly less inclined towards identity politics, one reason why, according to him, the BJP will win the Lok Sabha elections,” he said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Bhopal, Pragya Thakur, who faces terror charges, represents women who have been at the receiving end of mindless atrocities and injustices and also the “decades-old struggle against vote bank politics”, according to Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, who is also incharge of the party’s affairs in Madhya Pradesh. In an interview with Amandeep Shukla, he said that the younger generation is increasingly less inclined towards identity politics, one reason why, according to him, the BJP will win the Lok Sabha elections.
For three specific reasons, the BJP is going to succeed in renewing the mandate. The first is that we have been talking about politics of performance. The Prime Minister has spent more than 60% of his speech-time on developmental issues, but unfortunately, they don’t grab headlines. Which is why, other statements, which are naturally more political, attract attention. But we have been insisting that we are seeking this mandate on the basis of our performance.
Second, as a natural corollary to this, the politics of identity on the basis of which people talk of caste, community, religion, language, region — all these issues are slowly but certainly taking a back seat. The younger generation, the millennials, the new voters, are definitely not enamoured by these identity issues. The factors that influence voters are shifting from identity to performance issues.
The third reason: this election is about leadership. And leadership involves integrity, decisiveness and efficacy. I think on all these counts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stands apart because of his established purity of purpose.
Another aspect is his decisiveness. We do not want to capitalise on recent happenings, but the fact remains that when a decisive leader is your Prime Minister, things change.
I think we should not be looking at it from that angle. Because there is history. It is not that India has been seeing such attacks by terrorists only very recently.
The proportion was much more, say between 2004 and 2014, but every time attacks would happen there would be some kind of stereotyped response from the government. And the government is not [just the] bureaucracy; it is also leadership.
Leadership is all about political will, courage of conviction. And if that is what Prime Minister Modi has shown, naturally the credit will come to us.
Even in the case of Masood Azhar, it is the robust follow-up that we engaged in that gave us this kind of result.
Not at all. What is the symbolism behind Sadhvi Pragya’s candidature? She represents all the women who have been at the receiving end of mindless atrocities and injustice. She represents those women and their fighting spirit. She represents our struggle, and that is a decades-old struggle, against vote bank politics.
And she also represents the popular feeling against the coinage which was again a blatant example of appeasement of a certain community when the opposition leaders used the term, without an application of mind, irresponsibly, and talked about saffron terrorism. We have always been saying, “justice to all; appeasement to none”.
In Madhya Pradesh, our vote share has increased. The first-past-the-post system, where there is always some kind of mismatch between votes polled and seats gained, this time, worked against us. And it was with just a wafer-thin majority that the Congress could establish its government.
So it is not our defeat; nor is it their victory. And I know for sure that people are repenting this kind of turn of events in Madhya Pradesh.
I am sure they will rectify the mistakes that they committed during the Vidhan Sabha [Legislative Assembly] elections.
