Shrugging off its responsibility towards the crying farmers and indulging in petty politics over Tipu Sultan's birth anniversary celebration in Karnataka clearly shows that the state government is deviating from its path of good governance.
From January-August 2015, at least 400 Karnataka farmers have committed suicide and in July alone nearly 182 farmers committed suicide. In terms of average, six farmers are committing suicides every day.
However, despite these disturbing figures, the Karnataka state government and the right wing supporters are unfortunately engaged in a heated debate on why one should not celebrate Tipu Jayanti. In recent days, the issue became controversial and took an ugly turn, which led to violent clashes across Karnataka claiming two lives. The overall issue diverted significant resources and energy as if the state has nothing else to focus.
India's history and civilization goes back to thousands of years ago. Several leaders have sincerely contributed to the growth of the society and fought for its sovereignty all these years. But cherry picking a leader from 18th century and celebrating his birthday as a state event is nothing but a political obligation for the Congress. They are doing this to prove their secular credentials.
It seems that congress had not learned anything from its Lok Sabha poll debacle. Mishandlinge434 32of minority affairs in desperation to prove their secular credentials and this gave ammunition to the right wingers to spread hatred against the secular practices. Now they have brought the situation to such a bad state that even good secular practices are often misunderstood.
These kind of political obligations are not alien to other political parties either. BJP's "Good Governance Day" on former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's birthday and Bharat Ratna to Madan Mohan Malaviya who had died before Independence are few other examples. The objection to celebrate someone's birthday as a state and national event should not be seen as a disrespect to their contribution. Most of these decisions are partisan and elected representatives are failing to distinguish between their government and party responsibilities. The selfless contributions made by these tall leaders are belittled by selfish intentions of few politically motivated individuals through such unwarranted impose on state.
If the congress is too particular on celebrating Tipu's Jayanti, it should not have waited for all these years. Congress and its party workers are welcome to celebrate Tipu's birthday as their party event. The people who like to join the celebration will join and others will move on. If it truly resembles the secular motive, people like us will show our support by joining such celebrations and voting for the party in next elections.
Government spends hundreds of crores of rupees on celebrating jayanti's and vardhanthi's of several individuals for political obligations at the cost of tax payer's money. The UPA-II had spent Rs 142.3 crores in 4 years on newspaper advertisements for birth and death anniversaries of former leaders. Instead of minimizing such celebrations, Karnataka government's decision to add one more celebration is truly disappointing and definitely not a priority activity. They have taken the people for granted and added fire to the ongoing intolerance issue in India.
(Author Akshay Kumar Anugu is a USA based Food Scientist by profession and coordinated several Aam Aadmi Party 2013-2015 electoral campaigns from US. He no longer work with AAP and has no political affiliations)
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