It happens only in ‘incredible’ India. In the week we discover that the economy is growing faster than it has in fifteen years, we pay the price for the primitive, divisive politics that has been the bane of India since independence.

The Sachar Committee report tabled in Parliament last week, Dalit violence in Maharashtra and the vandalism we saw from Mamata Bannerji’s legislators in the W. Bengal Assembly all fit into my category of primitive politics.

We like to blame the British Raj for our divisions but those of us who disregard political correctness know that blame must rest on the broad shoulders of the Congress Party. It was this party that came up with the idea of uniting voters under it by playing up divisions. Dalits in one ballot box, Muslims in another, upper caste Hindus lured into the fold by giving Brahmins high positions in government, and thereby keeping the caste system intact. All under the billowing umbrella of Congress.

Mandal and Mandir ended this happy arrangement with the Yadav chieftains from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh running off with the other backward castes, the BJP taking the upper castes, Mayawati the Dalits, and Muslims falling away because a Congress prime minister allowed the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Sadly, little has changed since because no political party has come up with a new idea in more than 50 years. From the centrist ‘secular’ parties to the supposedly rightist Hindutva BJP, we are offered a combination of doddering old leaders and their baba log.

... contd.