Elections ’09 are heating up in India. A shrill noise is reverberating across everywhere, as leaders and politicans adopt every single trick in the crook-book to get elected. And sadly instead of issues of development or growth the parties across the lines are just debating and discussing inane issues like ‘secularism’ or ‘communalism’.

Every single party belonging to the UPA (or rather former UPA) or the newly formed opportunist 3rd Front, swears by the word secularism and takes a solemn oath to do every thing to keep them out of power. Dubbing the right wing saffron party as a communal one, portrayed as danger to the very existence of this nation.

To be fair, BJP party has not helped its case either, by not coming out strongly on a lot of issues, like the latest controversy on Varun Gandhi. It has at times shown a rather lackadiscal approach when it comes to reacting to issues. For instance, when the Mangalore Pub attacks happen, the central leadership of the party took their own sweet time to condemn such violence in an outright manner. The result, the party is seen to be abettting such issues. Now, whether that is true or not, I know not but that is what a perception that is formed about the party.

Now, BJP or rather NDA’s 5 year term was not all that bad when you compare it with the current government’s, there were scores of infrastructure projects that were undertaken like the Golden Quadilateral one, etc.  Thus, when the party is simply dubbed as ‘Communal’ by the rest, it seems a bit odd.

Gujarat is the one whip that BJP is constantly flogged with by all, and I just wonder one thing, that the electorate that has given such a mandate to rule to the BJP, is it communal as well. Then by the same definition, so many states in India become communal ones.

The media too is to be blamed for the same. Most of the time, it seems to be outright biased against the party. When there is some talk of development it is sidelined by the intelligentsia and only the tidbits are highlighted. Take for instance, when Advani released the ‘IT Vision’ document, all the media channels were busy discussing about the rift between Arun Jaitley & Rajnath Singh. None of them paid even scant attention to the document itself.

On the other hand, even when the Congress (I) talks of something as divisive as reservations for Minorities in the private sector, it’s secular credentials are not affected. One look at the anchor and newsreaders that moderate the debates and it will be obvious that they have there own pre-set notions. They seem to be a victim of their own promotion. This media doublespeak is really odious.

If from today, the media would stop highlighting all the things said and done by the likes of  Varun Gandhi, Raj Thackeray and Muthalik, there would be none of the communal elements lefts. These demons or demi-gods are creation of the media itself.

In all these debates and discussions, I am really confused as to who or what is communal and who or what is secular in this nation. I just so wish that we would stop debating on innane stupid things like this and move forward on real issues that matter, like development, poverty, population and environment. Till that happens, I really don’t know who is communal in India, or even am I? What about you?