Coincidences...really???

So now a shoe has been hurled at Arvind Kejriwal in Uttar Pradesh, where he has gone to strengthen the anti-corruption movement. Just a few days back, Prashant Bhushan-another member of Team Anna was attacked by goons, allegedly for supporting a plebiscite in Kashmir. 

 

All this happens at a time when Anna has openly declared to denounce the Congress for not passing the Jan Lokpal Bill, and the Congress itself has received a major blow by the electorate in the Hisar Loksabha byelection.

What really intrigues me is that how come, a group of individuals (Team Anna), who had become countrywide heroes for starting a nationwide campaign against corruption, and had also successfully brought the government to its knees in their demand to get it to pass the legislation of the Lokpal Bill, are suddenly becoming the target of physical attacks.

In Prashant Bhushan’s case, for example, a group of goons beat him up for publicly sharing his support for a plebiscite in Kashmir, to resolve the conflict there.

Firstly, such a view (of a plebiscite in Kashmir) is not such an out-of-the-blue, scandalous proposition. It has been shared before. It has been heard by people before. There is nothing surprising about it, that it should warrant such a radical response.            

Secondly, the group that attacked him seemed to consist of Ram Sena Activists and another group, hitherto unknown, called Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena. Any organisation which has ‘rashtriya’, ‘kranti’, ‘sena’ etc will automatically attract attention of the people to the BJP or the RSS. So these groups are immediately given a saffron tinge and they seem backed by the BJP or the RSS.

The Congress has been pushed into a corner, with hardly any alternatives left. It cannot attack the members of Team Anna openly for their support of the Jan Lokpal bill because public support is still hugely in favour of Team Anna.

So the recent attacks on Mr. Bhushan and Mr. Kejriwal seem to me to be the handiwork of the Congress, rather than the work of thugs. Or wait, it could be a nexus of both.

When the Congress cannot attack Mr. Bhushan for his role in the anti-corruption movement, why not target him for his views on Kashmir? The aim here is to basically create a deficit in his credibility in the eyes of the people so that they lose their public support-little by little, and the anti-corruption movement receives a setback.

The political inclinations of Arvind Kejriwal’s attacker remain unknown. One does not know which organisation he is affiliated to. But I have a gut feeling that when the attacker is interrogated, he would claim his motive to be anything other than being against the anti-corruption movement.

Just a gut feeling, that’s all.