Meet Varun Modi

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He is the face of the new young India we talk about with such arrogant insouciance in business forums. He is amongst the few youth candidates being fielded by the BJP, obviously buttressed by that magical brand name, Gandhi. His family lineage is enviable. But it took just one speech, perhaps some more, to make Varun Gandhi , son of Maneka and late Sanjay Gandhi , one of the controversial yet defining personalities of elections 2009, his vituperative utterances against fellow Muslims echoing the kind of hatred we read about in those partition stories of 1947. 62 years have passed since the tri-colour first flew atop the Red Fort and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru made that famous midnight speech. But Varun , his great grand-son has just made his own tryst with destiny with his Pilibhit election speeches. It looks like a long hard dusty road for the fiery lad.

Any keen political observer of India's treacherous terrain of Delhi would tell you that the BJP welcomed Varun Gandhi with undisguised glee; it was for them sure-shot vindication of their so-called emerging "moderation" in 21st century India, even as they believed that they had found a tactical weapon to keep 10, Janpath on the defensive, taking calculated advantage of a bitter family squabble. In politics, such a pedestrian ploy is considered " a strategic break-through , carefully orchestrated". LK Advani and illustrious company walked with a peacock's strut at their new acquisition, using Varun as their youth mascot.

Yet in deriding and condemning Varun Gandhi we all miss the central , germane issue; what really is the BJP's plan for governing a billion plus , fast-track, rapidly evolving, world favorite India ? Nothing. It is a resounding vacuum, an empty shell, the saffron party has absolutely no agenda whatsoever, except one-----religious extremism, Hindutva. Riding atop a decorated chariot in 1989, LK Advani may have fooled vulnerable sections of a struggling, confused India into the Ram Mandir dream, when the temple erection at Ayodhya had become a palliative ointment for a disillusioned middle class, and the Hindu psyche. Post-Independence, it saw the re-emergence of militant Hinduism for the first time, evident in the mob fury that was to disintegrate the Babri Masjid. But this is 2009, and two decades have passed.

The BJP and LK Advani have just one raison d'etre for launching a massive campaign to re-occupy Race Course road---Ram Mandir. It is indeed a monumental shame for the BJP , and reveals its intellectual bankruptcy and electoral impotence. Which is why Varun Gandhi went into a vitriolic spin, spewing venom and vehemence unparalleled against the minority community. Because there is nothing else that Varun Gandhi knows about the BJP's game-plan that he can talk about ; employment, nuclear deal, rural development, stimulus packages, corruption, foreign policy, HRD , IT revolution, nothing. So Varun did what came to him most logically; he launched into the single-point BJP election manifesto with the rabid passion of a fanatical zealot. He succeeded, and how! Even the Shiv Sena now wants him as their knight rider on a big-wide poster.

They say that one day the chicken comes home to roost. The Varun factor has boomeranged into an embarrassing egg-splash on the BJPs face, and no amount of media gobbledygook their spin doctors do can now save the obsolete, obscurantist -thinking party from shrugging off it's obnoxious reputation of being nothing but a communal party , shorn of any global vision of India and bereft of any socio-economic-political ideology, which is in any case a hard reality.

Every time I log onto the world wide web these days, Mr Advani pops up in front, in a major BJP cyberspace campaign to hook the youth , the internet browsers, casual surfers and the hard addicts. Unfortunately for Mr Advani , the young Turks who apparently call themselves the Friends of BJP , have failed to comprehend that mere advertising visibility does not win at the ballot-box. India Shining, should have taught them that. The young crowd have seen with shock and awe, and horror and fear what happened in a Mangalore pub and on Valentine's Day in India's yuppie Silicon Valley under the BJP dispensation. But we rarely learn, I guess, from past blunders.

Friends of BJP should understand the basic management principle; the buck stops at the top. It is not Varun Gandhi of the Blackberry generation who owes the Muslims and the people of India an apology, but Mr Advani himself. But he will not. Because he will hate to admit that the BJP has been check-mated by a Gandhi.