Philibit,India :- Varun Gandhi,the BJP debutant, now pinned within Pilibhit jail under a hail of charges including the National Security Act, chose to introduce himself to constituents – this isn’t Varun, this is a storm, this is Sanjay Gandhi reborn! That’s the promise tanker loads of wall paint spewed across Pilibhit; Varun’s speeches, part of recorded national infamy, only gave the truth to them.
But his brash hate-mongering in this rural outback of Philibit,from where is has started his political career,came written in by those who scripted his campaign. Its spine is a notorious and malign political legacy that even its one-time partisans are loath to invoke — the ruthless smash-and-grab politics of Sanjay Gandhi, his father,which was also, at the peak of its virulence, deeply anti-Muslim.
On the walls of an abandoned mill in Philibit, flared that ubiquitous signature slogan of Varun embossed with the BJP’s symbol —someone had blackened the “Varun” and the “Sanjay” on it and lavished the lotus with an angry cross,which originally read : “Varun nahin yeh aandhi hai, doosra Sanjay Gandhi hai” .
Though officially, and for reasons of law, Varun has been calling the taped CDs of his speeches a fabrication, but, cleverly, he has never even once involved himself in any specific denials of his hate speech. He cleverly and in a subtle way, reverted— “What I said was in the interest of my society, and I am ready to go to jail if that gives strength to those who believe in what I said.” And that has worked where it was intended to, as Saturday’s shrill upsurge around the Pilibhit courthouse suggested.