Dear Swapan, BJP no different from Labour

All that can be said of Swapan Dasgupta is that he writes good English. What he writes about is bunkum -- I am sorry to say that -- if you read his front-page piece in The Pioneer on Sunday. He is all out criticising British PM Brown for trying to cobble up a government with the help of Liberal Democrats. It is going against the wishes of the people, he says, Cameron style. He lambasts Brown for readily agreeing to reform the British electoral process in return for Clegg's support. This is not done, this is not justice, this is not democracy, he laments. Perhaps he thinks Indian readers are idiots. That is why he has conveniently brushed under the carpet what the dead and beaten BJP is doing to somehow remain in circulation. For example, the BJP's attempts to come to power in whatever way in Jharkhand. Or, for that matter, the so-called alliance based on compromises including the BJP's own position on Aydodhya, to cobble up an alliance governmetn at the Centre. He flays Brown for trying to undo a 60-year-old electoral law just to appease the LibDems and without the backup of the electorate. For one, he again conveniently forgets how the BJP thrust upon unsuspecting Indians a 5000-year-old lie or fantasy about Ayodhya. For another, Brown in the same breath said there would be referendum. For yet another, if Dasgupta thinks a mere change of law cannot make the budget deficit of Britain go away, he should be told in equally clear terms that a dumb mound of earth in a place called Ayodhya cannot make India's poverty go away. He looks quite ill wearing the collar of a pedagogue. Best he returns to what he is -- a good journalist -- for which he has always been respected.