The Winged Democracy.

I would like to call the new age India as a winged democracy. If you are a regular on social media and if you observed the events that led to the famous 2014 general elections in India, you would know what I mean.

In one of the most one sided contest the BJP and its allies came to power with a landslide victory with BJP having an absolute majority on its own.

Apart from the astonishing numbers, what baffled me was the way the nation was divided on issues and ideology , and in this classification we could see the rise of two wings - the left of centre wing and the right wing.

Various synonyms were attached to each side and on twitter one could easily distinguish the division. The supporters of BJP and its ally's or as they were called the right wing took it upon themselves to be nationalists and patriots who wanted a Congress mukt Bharath (India free of congress rule).

The other wing - the left of centre liberals although not necessarily supporters of Congress had a unique trait amongst themselves. They were all skeptical of BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi primarily due to his alleged role in the 2002 Gujarat riots and his highly hyped portrayal Gujarat model, wherein the reality therep spoke otherwise.

The right wing group also had some support from diverse sections of society be it the business leaders , cine artists or sports personalities. Who all pledged their allegiance to seeing Modi as a leader to take India forward. The other common trait amongst these groups were the disdain and utter dissatisfaction caused by the mis rule of the previous Congress government that also had way too many scams to their credit.

Name calling was another phenomenon that would take place during the flame wars online. Adarsh liberals , sickulars, anti nationals would be pit against adarsh sanghi, bhakts of the right wing.

This continued even after the elections, even a slight criticism of the Govt and you would be subject to an array of abuse by the so called bhakts. Chetan Bhagat recently gave an articulate description of this brigade with an article on TOI.

Whether you are an armchair pundit, a keyboard warrior. It's fun to be involved, because only then can we evolve 😀