What is a political party, really? If we go by the sentiments expressed by Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule in an alleged audio recording quoted by The Hindu, it’s just a name and a symbol. I mean, that is what anyone might find themself having to conclude after hearing him exhort his party workers to “empty” the Congress.
The BJP has been criticised for its washing machine tactics before. In case you were lying unconscious under a rock after drinking three-and-a-half buckets of gaumutra for the last several years, that is the name given to the practice of criticising a political party as corrupt and then inducting people from that party – those committing the corruption – into the BJP. Apparently, they were only corrupt while they were in the Congress. The moment they join the BJP, they get clean somehow, as if they have been through some kind of a washing machine.
However, such washing machine have given pause to even BJP workers. Many of them have found themselves in the curious position of having to praise and support former Congress members that they used to revile and abuse mere days ago. In 2019, NDTV quoted a BJP worker complaining about the fact that several Goa Congress members had crossed over into the BJP.
“Our bosses don’t have to meet the people. We have to face them. We have to ask them for votes and membership. I am not ready to compromise with my principles and I am against this move. I am deeply hurt. Is this the party with a difference?”
Then there is the matter of prospects. You are a BJP underling who has built a career for himself by being anti-Congress, but then your most hated Congressi crosses over into your party and becomes your boss. Can’t possibly feel very good.
Bawankule seemed aware of the possibility of such discontent. The report quotes him reassuring his party workers.
In the purported audio clip, assurance was also given to the party workers, saying, “Do not worry about the tickets. The first priority will be given to the BJP workers. Congress leaders joining the BJP will only benefit you politically.”
On one level, this is just obviously stupid. But the stupidity does not belong to the ones pressing the buttons on the washing machine. It belongs to everyone who ever supported them under the illusion that they have some kind of ideological mooring. As if they meant what they said about being against corruption, or being against the Congress, or being supporters of the Hindu religion, or anything really. None of it means anything – they’re just words with no more weight than the wind that carries them.
I have written and spoken about the age of meaninglessness before. The washing machine is just one manifestation of it. The general theme is that nothing means anything anymore. People who supported the British are called freedom fighters, politicians with demonstrated records of heinous crimes are bringing laws to label good people criminals, and those who laid down their lives in service of the country are being called traitors.
It is conventional in present-day debunk discourse to focus on the lies and the misrepresentations, but in this war being waged against memory and understanding, the battlefields stretch way past the here and now. What they seek to destroy is not a political party or a certain ideology – it is reality itself. For those whose understanding of the universe comes from self-contradictory religious doctrines, this is an easy mental switch to make. For those who don’t think fiction is reality, it is harder to read the fiction that reality is being turned into.
