Using casteist politics as per convenience

With the latest instance of IIT Madras a view has formed that those who speak against caste system can't belong to BJP and RSS. Though it is true to some extent but we can't paint everyone in BJP as casteist.

Let's look at composition among other political parties too. For example if we take a look at spectre of all political parties except BSP and Janta Parivar almost all parties have individuals who don't like reservation system including newly formed anti corruption AAP party. It is, I must say I sad thing in Indian political system that no party can claim to be non casteist. Each and every party at some or other time has used caste as per their convenience and accusing others of using caste politics. Let's look at some of the examples -

Indian National Congress - I will cite a recent example of Maratha reservation and Jat reservation given in Maharashtra and North India respectively in the hope to gather votes

BJP - In run upto last 2 phase of General elections 2014, Narendra Modi distorted Priyanka Gandhi's "Neech Rajniti" (Low level politics) statement to play the victim and portray himself as one of the backwards. Here, he said to electorates, they don't like me and call me a "Nichi Jatwala"(Lower caste guy).
A second example is a more recent one where Bihar BJP leaders participated in Kushwaha caste conference. They are trying to appropriate legacy of King Ashok of 3rd century BC as one from Kushwaha community.

AAP - Apart from saying that "I am a Baniya too" and "why are you attacking Agarwal community"(This one was an similar instance to what happened earlier in case of Narendra Modi and Priyanka Gandhi only difference being here Kejriwal played Modi a victim and BJP did a Priyanka by using controversial word like Gotra in their advertisement in newspapers), there is not any big example to cite in their case. It would be interesting to see how they keep themselves away from this phenomenon.

I think, I need not give any example of BSP, SP, AIADMK, Shivsena, RJD etc.

Phtoo credits - DNA 

So, why this happens? It's not that simple to simply blame politicians. Most of them are forced into this because of us. As VN Gadgil, a veteran Congress politician once said, "In India, people don't cast their vote, they vote their castes". This effect is still there though there has been an improvement and if people find a good leader to vote to or a good local Leader, they vote for him irrespective of his community or surname, if you know what I mean.

Keeping your heroes alive via Twitter

Screenshot of @DrunkVinodMehta's Bio

When I started using Twitter for the first time in 2009, mostly what I saw there was some accounts which will share Movie quotes. Then came an era of political campaign over twitter. But amidst all this one interesting thing I noticed is that, there were accounts of Mahatma Gandhi, Nathuram Godse, Winston Churchill, BhagatSingh as well. These accounts are probably run by the people who admire them and often quote what their heroes said or written at one time in past.

These are the very early heroes but then I saw some accounts of living generational legends like the one of Vinod Mehta which goes by name @DrunkVinodMehta. Within a very shorter time this account got very popular among non BJP group. That account or as we call it handle claims to tweet in the same spirit as Vinod Mehta. In March we received a bad news about Mehta saab's demise but this account still is continuing in the same spirit, with same vigour putting forward views as if they were of Vinod Mehta's once. It makes us feel that Mehta is still alive and writing, speaking. A wonderful feeling it is.

Same can be said of some of other accounts of famous celebrities who are No more but these handles keep their spirit alive in this social media generation.