Boycott of Ferozepur meeting and PM’s security in Punjab : A Marxist View

Boycott of Ferozepur meeting and PM’s security in Punjab : A Marxist View On 5th January, 2022, Sri Narendra Modi, who is also the Prime Minister of India, had to address a public meeting organised by BJP in Ferozepur, Punjab. In this meeting, he was going to lay foundation stones for development works for Punjab, worth 42,750 crore rupees. In view of the forthcoming assembly elections in Punjab, this programme was of great importance for BJP. According to scheduled programme, Sri Narendra Modi was to fly from Delhi to Bhatinda base airport by aircraft and from there he was to take a helicopter ride. The programme included Prime Minister’s visit to National Martyrs Memorial at Hussainiwala to pay tributes to martyrs, before Ferozepur public meeting. Prime Minister’s aircraft landed at Bhisiyana airport at 11:05, but because of rain and bad weather it was not possible to continue onward journey by helicopter. Travel by road from Bhisiyana to Hussainiwala was very long, 120 km, about 2 hours. The farmers in Punjab were protesting and were staging dharnas at every Tehseel, Block, and District headquarter, and they had declared to show black flags to the Prime Minister and to burn his effigies. Prime Minister’s programme to pay homage to martyrs at Hussainiwala was also not so very important that, in spite of bad weather and the farmers’ protest, he should have been taken to Hussainiwala by road. But for BJP, Sri Narendra Modi’s reaching in BJP’s public meeting was of utmost priority. After due deliberations, out of the two options - return to Delhi or to take up the road journey to Hussainiwala and then to the public meeting in Ferozepur - it was decided to take the Prime Minister’s convoy by road to the Martyrs Memorial and then to the public meeting. After informing Punjab government and the administration, within half an hour Prime Minister’s convoy started for the Martyrs Memorial at Hussainiwala by road. At 12:15 chief minister Sri Channi informed that two employees in his office have been found Corona positive and he will not be accompanying the Prime Minister in person and he would be joining through video conferencing. At 01:30 Prime Minister Sri Narendra Modi posted on Twitter, “I look forward to being among my sisters and brothers of Punjab today. At a programme in Ferozepur, the foundation stone of development works worth Rs. 42,750 crore would be laid, which will improve the quality of life for the people.” (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetail.aspx?PRID=1787138). For the past several days, farmers' organizations have been making announcements through Gurdwaras and by meeting people personally urging to boycott the meeting. They were stopping the buses being brought by BJP by staging dharnas and pradarshans from place to place. Due to all this, the lack of enthusiasm for the rally on Wednesday morning was clearly visible. A leader of the BJP's Kisan Morcha himself said, “The party leaders [to mobilize the crowd] could not get much help even from the “Labor Chowks”. Meanwhile, the rain had also increased the trouble at the meeting place. From 12:15 onwards, news started doing the rounds in the media with pictures that the crowd could not gather at the meeting place and the chairs were empty. It was informed at 2.15 pm that PM Narendra Modi's rally in Ferozepur has been canceled due to rain and he will return to Delhi from Bhisiana airbase in Bathinda. After this, a round of allegations and counter-allegations started doing round between the Congress and the BJP regarding Shri Narendra Modi having been stranded on the flyover and demonstrators having reached close to his vehicle. While BJP has been claiming it a security lapse and holding Congress government of Punjab responsible for it, Congress is alleging it to be a BJP drama to garner public sympathy in the face of falling popularity of the Prime Minister. As usual, the lower middle class intellectuals are divided and supporting or opposing this or that depending upon their prejudices. It is the responsibility of socially conscious intellectuals to analyze the situation objectively and accurately and guide the new generation so that the new generation can play a meaningful role in social change. The great philosopher Hegel said that a king is a king because people think so and the king knows it. And Marx had explained, "Society is not made up of individuals but represents itself as the sum of inter-relationships, the relations between which the individual stands". For those who have seen the Guide picture of Devananda and understood his mental discourse while fasting for the rain, it should not be difficult to understand the statement of Hegel and Marx. Shri Narendra Modi is one person but the roles he plays are two, one as the representative of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the other as the representative of the state. As the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, he has to behave according to the sum total of the aspirations of the RSS and its affiliated organizations and the followers of the BJP and, as a representative of the state, he has to behave in accordance with the aspirations of the nation and the general public. More or less the same is the situation of Shri Amit Shah also. The political system that the country had chosen after independence under the leadership of the Congress was a step ahead of even the most developed bourgeois democracy in England and in line with the thinking of the Utopian Socialist lower middle class intellectual, the constitution was also framed on the lines of the Government of India Act of 1935. But the economy was mainly feudal backward, within which capitalism was making its debut, that is, the beginning of bourgeois production relations. In the early stages the contradictions between feudalism and capitalism were not very sharp and it was not difficult for the Congress leadership to strike a balance between the elements representing both within the Congress and within the country. But with the integration of global capital and the alliance of Indian capital with it, the contradictions between feudalism and capitalism in India have become very sharp. A detailed discussion of India's plural socio-economic structure is not possible here, but today the main contradictions are represented by the Congress and the BJP. It is becoming impossible for both the political parties to maintain an internal balance and the process of intense polarization is going on in both. Just as an individual has a vision, every organization has its own ideology. Congress is a bourgeois democratic party with progressive thinking, believing in collective leadership and policy of economic development through industrial capitalism. BJP is a totalitarian party with a regressive mindset, a belief in individual dictatorial leadership, and a policy of economic development through a system-backed crony-capitalism The kind of rapid polarization that is going on in the country with irreconcilable contradictions both in the political parties and in the country, it is bound to be finally resolved according to the natural laws with the negation of regressive forces. Despite the regressive thinking of all its subsidiaries, it is a practical compulsion for the BJP to feign support for progressive policies to gain majority support in the current democratic system. And who could know it better than Shri Narendra Modi that the followers and supporters of the subsidiary organizations and BJP accept him as their leader because they think that Narendra Modi can fulfill their agenda by maintaining his honest image and garnering support from the government and crony capitalists. He also knows that to remain in the seat of Prime Minister, the support of the liberal lower middle class is more necessary than the support of allies and the followers of BJP. Shri Narendra Modi is well-versed in playing the dual role - when to play the role of a Hindutva religious leader and when to play the role of a secular leader with ‘Sarv dharm sam-bhaav’, committed to the Constitution. As always, Modi wanted the UP elections to be fought in his name so that after the election his trusted chief minister could be installed, but he had to give up before Yogi's insistence and had to announce the name of Yogi as the future Chief Minister. In West Bengal, in spite of the campaign by the entire cabinet he had to face defeat. After accepting defeat in front of the solidarity of the farmers, a decision had to be taken to withdraw the three laws and apologize to the farmers. Modi was beginning to see his and the BJP's political ground slipping due to the falling economy, rising unemployment and a vocal opposition. In order to strengthen the position of BJP in the upcoming elections in five states, strategy was formulated to announce development plans worth thousands of crores. Announcements have already been made in UP as part of the strategy to announce the gift of schemes worth thousands of crores. The proposed public meeting of Ferozepur was also part of this strategy. Had his program as Prime Minister been only to pay homage at the martyr's site, the Home Ministry would have brought him back to Delhi from Bathinda airport by not allowing the Prime Minister to go to Hussainiwala by road. But here, as Narendra Modi, he had to play his second role as the top leader of the BJP which was far more important to the party and to Narendra Modi himself. Therefore, it was decided to travel by road and the Prime Minister's convoy was dispatched immediately after giving proper information to the concerned offices and the local administration. After traveling unhindered for 120 km, the convoy reached the martyr's memorial in about two hours. After paying tribute, the convoy entered the border of Ferozepur in no time. By this time the news had come that there were only a few hundred audience at the meeting place and thousands of chairs were lying vacant. It would have been embarrassing for Narendra Modi as the top BJP leader to address a crowd of a few hundred listeners. So the convoy was stopped on the flyover. Simply canceling the public meeting would have been seen as another victory for the farmers and another defeat for Narendra Modi. Therefore, after waiting for 20 minutes, BJP supporters and opponents were given a chance to raise slogans so that the retreat of Shri Narendra Modi could be given the color of threat to the security of the Prime Minister and the upcoming elections could be won by creating frenzy across the country. Once earlier also the election was won by inciting frenzy in the name of Pulwama. BJP wants to win the election by repeating the history of 2019. But BJP forgets that history repeats itself, but first time it is tragedy, second time it is fraud. BJP will soon realise that the solidarity of the farmers' movement has decided that the workers and farmers will fight together and expose every fraud. Suresh Srivastava 9 January, 2022 __________________________ FOOTNOTE The Ministry of Home Affairs, in a statement, said the Prime Minister landed in the morning at Bathinda airport from where he was to go to the National Martyrs Memorial at Hussainiwala by helicopter.“Due to rain and poor visibility, the Prime Minister waited for about 20 minutes for the weather to clear out. When the weather did not improve, it was decided that he would visit the National Martyrs Memorial via road, which would take more than two hours,” it said. —————————————- ‘Large number of buses were stranded because of the high-handedness of the police & connivance with protestors’ .Jagat Prakash Nadda, President, BJP ————————————— The state BJP unit had claimed that five lakh people would turn up for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Ferozepur rally, but it could hardly gather 5,000 people, proving to be a big embarrassment for the saffron party. —————————— Tribune, 5, January 2022 The BJP had claimed to have arranged 3,200 buses to ferry people from across the state to the rally venue in Ferozepur. The state leadership had allocated buses to each office-bearer of the party. Some constituencies were allocated about 60 buses. However, sensing lukewarm response ahead of the PM’s rally, the party started reducing the number of buses that were to be pressed into service — so much so that the parking arrangement at the rally venue was reduced to just 500 buses. Farmers’ organisations had been preparing for a stiff opposition for several days.They made announcements from village gurdwaras, asking people not to attend the rally. The cold wave and showers added to the BJP’s woes. As a result, the tepid response was all too visible on Wednesday morning. The party could not gather enough numbers to fill the buses to their optimum capacity. “Even party leaders could not get much help from labour chowks,” said a senior leader of the BJP’s kisan morcha. (Source : tribune.com) ——————————— लाइव अपडेट (Source : amar ujala.com) 02:15 PM, 05-JAN-2022 पीएम नरेंद्र मोदी की फिरोजपुर में होने वाली रैली बरसात के कारण रद्द कर दी गई है। सूत्रों ने यह जानकारी दी। वे बठिंडा के भसियाना एयरबेस से दिल्ली लौटेंगे। 02:07 PM, 05-JAN-2022 फरीदकोट के कोटकपूरा में पीएम मोदी की फिरोजपुर की रैली में जा रहे भाजपा वर्करों की बसों को किसानों ने रोक लिया है। दोनों पक्षों के बीच तनातनी हो गई। इसके बाद पुलिस ने बसों को दूसरे रास्ते से भेजा। 01:42 PM, 05-JAN-2022 प्रधानमंत्री नरेंद्र मोदी ने हुसैनीवाला बॉर्डर पहुंचकर शहीद भगत सिंह, सुखदेव और राजगुरू को श्रद्धासुमन अर्पित किए। कुछ ही देर में वह पंजाब के लिए 5 बड़े प्रोजेक्टों का उद्घाटन करेंगे। 01:33 PM, 05-JAN-2022 फिरोजपुर रैली से पहले प्रधानमंत्री नरेंद्र मोदी ने ट्वीट किया कि मैं आज पंजाब की अपनी बहनों और भाइयों के बीच रहने के लिए उत्सुक हूं। फिरोजपुर में एक कार्यक्रम में 42,750 करोड़ रुपये के विकास कार्यों के शिलान्यास रखे जाएंगे, जिससे लोगों के जीवन स्तर में सुधार होगा। 12:22 PM, 05-JAN-2022 फिरोजपुर में लगातार हो रही बरसात ने दिक्कत बढ़ा दी है। अभी तक रैली स्थल पर सभी कुर्सियां खाली पड़ी हैं। 12:17 PM, 05-JAN-2022 प्रधानमंत्री मोदी की रैली में सीएम चरणजीत चन्नी नहीं आएंगे। सीएम चन्नी ने कहा कि वह प्रधानमंत्री के स्वागत के लिए जाना चाहते थे लेकिन मुख्यमंत्री कार्यालय में दो लोग कोरोना पॉजिटिव पाए जाने के बाद उन्होंने अपना कार्यक्रम स्थगित कर दिया है। चन्नी वर्चुअल तरीके से कार्यक्रम से जुड़ सकते हैं।