The villages of Gundrampalli and Terathpalli in Nalgonda district of Telangana are important spots in the itinerary of BJP president Amit Shah, currently on a visit to the State, as part of his 95-day tour of the country. A whirlwind tour, that nevertheless apportions 26 days to States of the south and Odisha, is significant as the BJP eyes to spread its wings in the South. The 95-day tour ends on September 28, after a three-day stopover in Tamil Nadu.
Telangana with a weak Congress and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in power is an important part of the tour. In Terathapalli, a bastion of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Mr. Shah stops to unveil a statue of Gundagoni Mysaiah Goud, a former State secretary of the BJP, killed in Naxal violence in 1999. In Gundrampalli, he visits descendants of nearly 250 people killed by Razakars during the rule of the Nizams. Shrines to those who fought the Razakars dot the countryside.
The late G. Masayya’s son, Gundagoni Bharat, is currently the president of the BJP’s youth wing, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, in the State. His posters, along with State president K. Laxman and Mr. Shah, in a style reminiscent of Matryushka dolls of Russia and peculiar to Telangana, dot Nalgonda’s district headquarters.
Reaching out
Mr. Shah has been reviving connections with party workers in these interior areas and making local, culturally and ideologically nuanced points in his visits to various places so far.
The BJP’s ideological tug of war with the Left, and the emotional scars of the actions of the Razakars under the Nizam, are both important emotional connects.
“Nalgonda was the centre of the struggle against the Nizam and also the armed struggle of the Communists,” says BJP general secretary P. Muralidhar Rao.
The party headquarters in fact is cheek by jowl with the United Teachers Federation, a Left-affiliated teachers’ union.
According to Mr. Shah however, these events have to be framed in the context of the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre.
“The poor have similar problems across the country, and the Central government has worked for the poor, regardless of segmentary interests, after that cultural gaps and other things don’t matter, our leaders here are local,” he said.
He felicitated the sarpanch of Chinamadaram village, Pindi Bhagyamma, for 100% delivery of the Ujjwala scheme in her area.
Goes house to house
There is a very back-to-basics approach to Mr. Shah’s relentless programme. He goes house to house, even applies BJP propaganda stickers to walls of various homes, exchanges literature and holds booth committee-level meetings. “The one thing that this does is that if someone here takes initiative and improves the position of the party, there is an assurance that his ticket will not be cut because somebody in Delhi lobbied better,” said a booth-level worker to The Hindu .
In the mid-term of the Modi government, his party chief seems to be on the road, paving some sort of path to 2019. Whether it will be thorny or smooth, only time will tell.
