Sunday Anchor

Sunday Anchor: The politics of iconography

September 27, 2015 00:12 IST

Updated: September 27, 2015 00:49 IST

September 27, 2015 00:12 IST

Updated: September 27, 2015 00:49 IST

The BJP is busy collecting an eclectic list of heroes who it claims were sidelined by the Congress in the quest to play up the Nehru-Gandhi family. The idea is to build itself a legitimate history dating back to the Independence, something that it does not have. But the party is also using this as an electoral strategy to gain a foothold in the States where it has no presence yet.

Image: Deepak Harichandan

The BJP is busy collecting an eclectic list of heroes who it claims were sidelined by the Congress in the quest to play up the Nehru-Gandhi family. The idea is to build itself a legitimate history dating back to the Independence, something that it does not have. But the party is also using this as an electoral strategy to gain a foothold in the States where it has no presence yet.

By including figures like medieval saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Rani Gaidinliu and Tamil poet Subramania Bharati, it seems as if the BJP is trying to reach out to Bengal, the North-east and Tamil Nadu, respectively, where the party is non-existent.

>The politics of iconography

>Wooing the northeast

She fought the British, says the BJP. She also fought the Naga National Council, says Nagaland. The tussle for Rani Gaidinliu has just begun.

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>Getting back its heroes

“Gandhi’s great role was to provide a canopy for different political persuasions fighting... to secure independence for India. Elections before independence in the Congress Working Committee (CWC) were hard-fought. At no stage did people of one persuasion exist at the top and there was no attempt to whip different opinions into one,” former Union Minister and Congress Rajya Sabha MP Mani Shankar Aiyar says.

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