RED RUG TO A BULL

                                

While returning from  the polling booth after casting my vote, I was thinking to post something election related on my blog. It could be anything like the scene there or the body language of the crowd or the size of the gathering in front of the stalls of polling agents of parties having stake. All  these things were forgotten when I remembered a  strange election campaign scene of Bihar.

An election rally was to be addressed by the RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav at Aurangabad in Bihar on April 9, 2014. Amid thundering applauses and slogan chanting he reached the dias in time. However, within seconds he saw something and his mood suddenly turned violent. The organizers were bewildered and started looking at one another to ascertain the reason of this unimaginable change in the mood of their leader. But within no time, the cat was out of bag. Angry Lalu pointed his forefinger to baskets of arranged lotus flowers to decorate the platform and ordered them to be thrown down immediately. The timid party volunteers meekly obliged by toppling the flower baskets on the ground. The crime of the flower was being the  electoral symbol of of the Bhartiya Janata Party.

We know that the best lotus one can get from the Dal lake of Srinagar. Lalu’s followers should take note of this latest acute allergy of their leader and they should keep him away from the banks of this famous lake while in the capital of J&k, otherwise he will have to be rushed to a psychiatrist.

This attitudinal allergy is not exclusive to Lalu only. Since last Sept, Two leaders of the ruling JD/U in Bihar were unceremoniously shown the exit gate for uttering the name of Narendra Modi. There is a joke in Bihar that a lady leader of the JD/U, fondling her minor son was calling, ‘aaja meri godi’. The party leader standing in the close vicinity could mistakenly hear ‘aaja mere Modi’. She was immediately issued marching order without any explanation or enquiry.

You must have seen the scenes of Spanish bull fight on TV screens. The fighter enters into the ring with a red rug. The moment the bull sees it, he becomes outrageous and pounces on the man to kill him. The trained fighter keeps on teasing the bull and avoiding being hit so much so that ultimately the allergic bull is tired and nailed. To the misfortune of Indian democracy, this bull fight is being reenacted in the electoral field as well.

This country has been organizing general elctions regularly since 1952 and the electorate is now tuned to the importance of this biggest festival of democracy. But have the leaders learnt any lesson?