BJP: A party that’s always in currency

Don’t know about you, but I found Babubhai Katara’s bid for his 15 minutes of fame on national prime time last week simply audacious.

Don’t know about you, but I found Babubhai Katara’s bid for his 15 minutes of fame on national prime time last week simply audacious. That he actually managed to grab eyeballs that were fevicol-ed to the Ash-Abhishek road show (the population of TV cameras and journalists per square centimetre outside the Bachchan and Rai residences for the marriage festivities was surely more dense than that of forager bees in an average honeycomb) must be seen as a tribute to his indubitable sense of enterprise.

While some credit for this should go to the man himself, I believe that it is only fair we acknowledge the role of his party. Here is a party that has always demonstrated its timeless appeal, a party that has always striven to be in currency. The country is not short of political parties who showcase sterling examples of fraudsters. But the BJP has, arguably, afforded this nation the best and most definitive visuals of political profit. I believe this is because ‘the party with a difference’ seems to possess more-rounded political talent than most other parties. It has people who can conceptualise enthralling CD fare, do some quick para-banking, or double up as tourist operators, should the need arise.

Who, for instance, can forget the patent transparency of a Bangaru Laxman as BJP party president, sitting behind a transparent desk and transparently and gracefully accepting Rs 1 lakh in crisp currency notes, and then transparently locking the bundle in a special drawer? He did this while he was transparently reading something that appeared extremely important and which had obviously consumed his entire attention even while he transparently conducted the financial transaction.

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Then there was the flack-jacketed and dashing Dilip Singh Judeo, minister of environment and forests, in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s cabinet. There was a certain verve and felicity that marked his pocketing of a bundle of currency notes handed over to him. After that he gratefully acknowledged its healing properties with the immortal quote: “Paise khuda to nahi par khuda ki kasam, khuda se kam bhi nahin (Money is not God, but by God, it is no less powerful).” Who can disagree with such an honest appraisal?

Again, of the 11 MPs involved in the cash-for-queries scam, it should not really have surprised us that more than half of them were BJP’s own — men who had no doubt internalised that great constitutional principle: “Everything’s on the House”. Here again were brave individuals willing to raise uncomfortable questions in pursuit of their fundamental right to information and their even more fundamental right to encash that right.

And now we have Man of the Moment, Babubhai Katara, trained in Gujarat and dedicated to the nation. I find it outrageous that he is now in the clutches of the police in Delhi’s punishing heat, when he should be feted as a man who had selflessly lent his wife’s diplomatic passport to further human mobility, felicitate international employment and unite separated families. Here is a man who needs, in fact, to be acknowledged by no less a body than the United Nations for having attempted to demolish the artificial borders that keep apart the nations and peoples of the world.

As for the BJP, I am told, it is now planning to produce a pre-formated letter so that it can respond even more quickly to any scandals involving its puttars/putris and that it reads: “The Bharatiya Janata Party hereby expels you, Shri/Shrimati ——- from its primary membership with immediate effect.”

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Such misguided attempts to suddenly inject ethics into party conduct would, in my humble opinion, be a terribly wrong way to go about the issue. The BJP should instead make Judeo’s words its own guiding principle: “Paise party to nahi, par party ki kasam, party se kam bhi nahin (Money is not the party, but it is also not any less than the party).”