“Whatever be his politics, Ramdev knows how to work a crowd,†Revati Laul wrote in Tehelka magazine, as she described the scene at Delhi's Ambedkar Stadium on the last day of the yoga teacher Baba Ramdev's five-day public fast against graft and the governing Congress party. “Ramdev's appeal is a strange mix of religiosity, television fame, rustic braggadocio and OBC aspiration,†she wrote, referring to the category of castes and communities known as “Other Backward Class.â€
The article, which highlighted Mr. Ramdev's ideological inconsistencies and drew attention to allegations of corruption leveled against his close aides, sought to answer a fundamental question: What makes Ramdev click with the crowds? “Ramdev was never designed to be a left-liberal intellectual's favorite,†the author explained.
For him, they don't matter. The left-liberal intelligentsia is not his constituency. Ramdev's people are the middle class from middle India. To them, his simple idiom is not his weakness, it is his strength. His appeal is among the autorickshaw drivers and traders, the ordinary schoolteachers and the pensioner homemakers, spread across small cities and semi-rural townships of northern India.
In an article titled “Murky Politics,†Frontline magazine traced the journey of Bodo politics from the tribe's first accord with the central and state governments in 1993, which gave birth to the Bodoland Autonomous Council, to the continuing communal violence in the northeastern state of Assam.
The writer, Sushanta Talukdar, wrote:
They tried to assert their territory-linked ethno-linguistic and ethno-cultural identity and clamoured for political and cultural autonomy through movements spearheaded by mass organisations as well as armed groups, with each group claiming to be their sole representative . In the course of this long journey, the Bodos developed sharp contradictions not only with various communities sharing the same territory but also among themselves, which often overshadowed their movements for autonomy.
In the Independence Day edition of the magazine India Today, Mark Tully argued against the demonization of dynastic politics in India as “feudal†and “backward.†In the article, titled “It Runs In the Family,†he wrote that dynasties appear to hold political parties together. “There must be many in the BJP who, seeing the disarray in their leaderless party, wish Atal Bihari Vajpayee had an heir,†Mr. Tully quipped. He also suggested that the vast majority of Indians did not object to political power passing from one generation to another, quoting Inder Malhotra's book “Dynasties of India and Beyond,†which said “the vocal minority's denunciation of dynasties â€" particularly loud in India and primarily directed again st the Nehru-Gandhis â€" is indeed out of sync with the basic reflex of the silent majority.â€
