The electoral campaign ... has ... skirted substantive political issues and future course of development of the polity and society. The BJP, having ensconced itself as the dominant partner of a so-called National Democratic Alliance, has been projecting itself as the future hope for India. As concerned citizens, we deem it necessary to call this claim into question and bring to public notice the damage already done to the polity and society during the preceding thirteen months of misgovernance.
The communal character of the BJP had never been in doubt ... For a period people overlooked the dangers this posed to the nation over both the short and long run ... Despite the BJP taking on a moderate mask, the Government, far from seeking to check this virus, fanned communal fire all around. Atrocities against Christians, aided and abetted by the BJP, the leading party of the coalition, is only the tip of the iceberg. Above all, it has during this period attempted to create a mindset that has encouraged and hardened and hardened communal antagonisms, social hatred and a cult of intolerance towards social and cultural diversities ... Communalism is a camouflage for substantial social inequalities and economic disparities that continue to characterize this country ...
If the Vajpayee government has impoverished the nation on the one hand, it has at the same time committed the country ... to a mindless involvement in a nuclear arms race. It is our understanding that this has been done to appease the acute national security consciousness of the growing sections of the emerging middle class which constituted the ruling coalition's support-base.
Every democracy requires legitimate political institutions to ensure stability and a degree of fairness and accountability. The BJP-led coalition has ... systematically undermined the dignity and legitimacy of the office of the Rashtrapati, Judiciary and Election Commission ... Never was the PMO used in such an unabashed manner to settle intra-party squabbles ... What is particularly pathetic is that institutions and constitutional functionaries have been de-legitimised in a language which Gandhi or other freedom fighters would have shuddered to use against even the Viceroy ... The standard language of discourse under the present dispensation has acquired an absolutist orientation ... A section of liberal-minded Indians were taken in by the amoral multiple-speak (double-speak is a misnomer) of the Sangh Parivar ... A leader who is unable to distinguish himself from anti-democratic politics ... has no ground for presenting himself as a suitable choice for the prime ministership of this country.
