Phase 2 of the Lok Sabha 2024 elections is ongoing today, 26 April, with 89 constituencies spread across 13 states and Union Territories (UTs) going to polls. If you want to check your name on the electoral rolls and find out your polling booth, check this post.

The elections seem to have come alive in the last few days after the PM tore into the Congress manifesto that was released on April 4, following a comparatively quieter build up to Phase 1 polling on April 19. There are several lessons that we need to draw from these developments, and Hindu attitudes towards politics & religion in general.

1. It is staggering that so many Hindus are still unsure as to whom to vote for in the elections. The decision should have become a foregone conclusion after the state-sponsored pogrom which followed Mamata Banerjee’s May 2, 2021 assembly election victory in West Bengal. Dozens murdered, thousands of women and girls molested/raped, and around 1 lakh people driven out of their homes, forced to take refuge in neighboring states like Assam – these are just some statistics of what BJP supporters faced. The horror lies in the details of what Hindus of Bengal underwent. Families that were driven out were asked to send their women for sexual exploitation, if they wanted to return to their homes.

No one in the Opposition called out Mamata Banerjee. She is part of the I.N.D.I Alliance. Congress ecosystem lawyers like Sibal and Singhvi represented the TMC govt in Supreme Court, opposing the CBI investigations that Calcutta HC ordered in the worst cases of post-poll violence. Courts dragged their feet, media watered down their coverage of this pogrom. Videos like that of an old Bengali woman sitting on the floor, her grand-daughter on her lap, wailing “Modi ji, save us”, or the elderly woman, gangraped in front of her grandson, sitting dazed on the ground saying “I am no longer Hindu” are seared into memory.

Then came Sandeshkhali – the pain of those women, victims of systemic rape by TMC leader Sheikh Shahjahan and his men night after night in the local TMC party office, was clear for all to see. Ignored by local police, those women finally mustered the courage to speak up after Shahjahan went absconding following an ED raid for his arrest in a corruption case.

West Bengal today is the textbook definition of fascism. And no crime done by Mamata Banerjee seems to shake the Constitutional institutions which are supposed to intervene in such dire situations where a CM has gone totally rogue. Why President’s Rule has not been imposed in West Bengal will remain a mystery for ordinary citizens. If you had to criticize Narendra Modi, it would be for this strange reticence in intervening in West Bengal, the complete opposite of what a ‘dictator’ would do as he is bizarrely being labeled by a YouTuber propagandist.

Despite their serious shortcomings in West Bengal, the fact remains that only BJP is talking about the horrific situation in West Bengal and trying to do something to rectify it. That alone should ensure that every Bharatiya votes for the party.

2. Modi’s governance delivery – Toilets, electricity connections, cooking gas, houses for the poor, piped water, streamlined welfare delivery through JAM (Jan Dhan account + Aadhar + Mobile), free rations since Covid is what the poor across the country, especially women, will tell you if you talk to them.

For those who already had the above basics of life, there is the improved national security environment with terror attacks on our cities almost eliminated, the boom in infrastructure roll out, improved manufacturing scenario with successful PLI schemes, Bharat being the fastest-growing major economy, progress on defense equipment indigenization, tax reform, digital payments revolution, increased diplomatic heft, relatively better handling of pandemic compared to even many developed nations, and much more.

This address by journalist Palki Sharma does a good job of capturing the transformation the country has undergone under Modi.

3. Congress manifesto – Anyone who has been following Rahul Gandhi’s political trajectory over the last few years will sense that he has taken a far-Left turn, whose rhetoric about the ‘dispossession’ of the masses, his mocking and distortion of core Hindu beliefs like rebirth while instigating Scheduled Castes to violence, the demonization of the general caste male as an ‘oppressor’ of everyone else i.e. SC, ST, OBC, minorities, women; the unhinged attacks on Ambani and Adani as secret puppeteers who receive a fixed amount from every transaction commoners do…all this betrays heavy Maoist/Communist overtones. This should not come as a surprise seeing the kind of former CPI(ML) activists who have now become his close advisers.

At the formal release of his manifesto, Rahul Gandhi clearly committed to the following:

(a) Caste census – the X-ray (b) Financial and Institutional Survey to determine who possesses/controls Hindustan’s wealth (c) After these ‘historic steps’ (census and survey) will come ‘REVOLUTIONARY WORK, to give everyone their due’.

Going by the poisonous and divisive rhetoric he has been spewing for the last few years – inciting janjatis/adivasis against everyone else, inciting caste wars by taking quota rhetoric to a dangerous extreme, denigrating all institutions and casting aspersions on integrity of elections, threatening country will burn if BJP wins….the implication of what he said at the release of the Congress Manifesto is clear.

It is absolutely logical to arrive at the conclusion, like the PM did, that Congress is planning a REVOLUTIONARY, Communist-fascist style purge and seizure of personal assets for redistribution. History tells us how Communist revolutions and accompanying class conflict, from USSR, to China, to Cambodia, to North Korea, have inevitably destroyed those countries in pursuit of a utopian equality which only kills human enterprise and freedom and gives rise to ruthless dictatorships. Mao wrecked China with his radical social justice campaigns like Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution – it was only after the pragmatic Deng Xiapoing took control and introduced state-backed capitalism to power China’s economy forward, that China was able to eradicate poverty and emerge as a true superpower. Within Bharat, we have seen how Communist ideas and rule have wrecked West Bengal, a state that was once a leader in industrialization and economic output.

The PM has explained the dangerous intentions of Rahul Gandhi and Congress in layman terms, as you can see below:

4. Why did Modi have to deliver such a ‘communal’ speech?

Some of you may be feeling upset at why the PM explicitly called out Muslims, while explaining the dangers of the Congress manifesto.

In the clip above, the PM first says, “When their govt (UPA) was there, they had said that Muslims have the first right on the nation’s resources”. Well, former PM Manmohan Singh had indeed made a statement about who has first right on the nation’s resources, where he included minorities, especially Muslims. So there can be no dispute that MMS said that Muslims have more rights on the nation’s resources than ordinary general category Hindus.

Then the PM says, “this means they will confiscate assets and distribute to whom? To those who have more children”.

Do Muslims have more children than Hindus and others? Yes, they do. Statistics clearly show that to be the case, and in states like Kerala Muslim live births outpaced Hindu live births way back in 2016 itself. There is no dearth of anecdotal evidence about how many Muslims look derisively at any notion of family planning – see this, this, this.

Then the PM says, “they will distribute it to infiltrators (ghuspathiyon)”.

Informed citizens know that Bharat is beset with a massive illegal Muslim infiltrator problem, majorly from Bangladesh, estimating atleast 2 crores, many of whom have fraudulently acquired identity documents and are aided and abetted by all so-called secular parties like Congress, TMC etc. Obviously, the asset redistribution program indicated by Congress is going to benefit these illegals too.

The PM just spelt out what the Congress intends to do.

In other speeches, the PM has spoken about Congress plot to give Muslims a share of the reservations from SC/ST/OBC quota. He is spot on about this too.

Congress has been batting to give reservations to Muslims for a long-time now. In July 2004, within 56 days of forming Congress govt in undivided Andhra Pradesh, Congress CM YS Rajasekhara Reddy issued orders giving 5% reservations to Muslims, fulfilling the party’s promise in its poll manifesto. This was later struck down by courts as religion-based reservation is not allowed in the Constitution.

Now, while Congress and other ‘secular’ parties are continuously pushing for Muslim reservation, they have found a sly workaround in the interim – just classify Muslims as OBCs and give them a share from the OBC quota. There is another push underway to include Christians & Muslims in the SC category too.

The sensibilities of many Hindus are offended when they hear such facts being spelt out. Ideally, a society that is organized and aware of the threats it faces, would not need the top leader of the country to give such a speech. But unlike the so-called minorities where their religious institutions, social orgs and clerics keep giving them political direction and mobilizing them in pursuit of their perceived community goals, Hindus lack such a cohesive structure, which explains their lack of awareness on burning issues like WB post-poll pogrom, Sandeshkhali, Hindu exodus from Mewat, conversion gangs, Grooming Jihad against Hindu girls by Muslim radicals etc.

5.) So here is the million dollar question – do Muslims pose a threat to Hindus? Why is the PM only talking about the threat of Hindu personal assets being diverted to Muslims?

The plain, unvarnished answer to the above question is – Yes, Muslims, radicalized Muslims to be precise, pose a clear threat to Hindus. We may have forgotten it, but the country was divided on religious grounds a mere 75 years ago. Many of the Muslim leaders and religious organizations who opposed the partition did so primarily because they felt partition would turn Hindus so virulently against Islam that their dawah (proselytization) work would suffer.

The radicalized sections of ‘minorities’ are brainwashed by their clergy to live, breathe and dream about Islamization of this country. Many of us have already forgotten that now-banned Muslim outfit PFI had even created a ‘India Vision 2047’ document outlining their plan to Islamize all of Bharat by 2047. There can be no gainsaying that the prophecy of Ghazwa-e-Hind or future conquest of Bharat before Qayamat (end times as per Islam) is believed by many subcontinental Muslims, including well-travelled cricketers like Shoaib Akhtar, to be an integral part of their scriptures.

Pro-Pakistan sloganeering, hate speech (often coded) against Hindus by Muslim clerics and leaders, threats of more partitions occur so frequently, yet are censored so effectively by mainstream media, that most Hindus just don’t understand the threat these radicals pose.

5. Is Modi anti-Muslim as Zubair, Afra, Saba, Sayema, Rana, Owaisi etc claim?

No, Modi is not anti-Muslim. In fact, he has faced criticism from Hindutva supporters for not disbanding the minority ministry and actually increasing the allocation to minority-only schemes. Did you know that there are Muslims who have acknowledged the good work done by the Modi government, many Muslim women have welcomed the banning of instant triple talaq, and many Kashmiri Muslims are happy after abrogation of Article 370 and dismantling of the earlier conflict economy – See this, this, this, this, this, this.

Yet, the harsh reality is that such is the brainwashing and immense pressure put by Muslim religious bodies, groups and fundamentalists, that Muslims vote as a block against BJP and Modi. Sample these two election-related stories –

In masjid & market, BJP’s Muslim candidate is treated as haram in Kerala – “Dr Abdul Salam, BJP’s Muslim candidate, faces challenges in Malappuram. During an interaction with voters in a remote village near Pulikkal, he recounted his bitter experience after attending Eid Namaz at Madin Masjid in Malappuram town. Salam, a popular academic and former VC of Calicut University….“

Muslims say law and order has improved in western UP. ‘But voting for BJP against our imaan’ – “Muslims under the Yogi Adityanath govt ‘feel secure’ when stepping out of the home at night, and acknowledge that incidents of snatching, looting, and molestation have reduced. But voting is a different issue….”

There are many rational Muslim voices who are backing the PM and trying to fight the vice-like grip the Islamist clergy, fundamentalist religious outfits like Deoband, Barelvi, JeI, AIMPLB and political outfits like AIMIM, IUML, ISF have over the Muslim population – we covered some of them here.

Islamism, Christian evangelism and Marxism all pose clear threats to Bharat, its social harmony and unique civilization. It is the duty of every right-thinking Bharatiya to oppose these ideologies.

Vote for the ongoing elections, keeping all this in mind. Vote wisely.