What colour are you?

When the political campaigns were gathering momentum in November, being an old hand in advertising, I thought it was time to break away from the same old symbols and promises. I wanted to evoke Patel, Tilak, Tagore and Dayanand, take one of their best-known sayings and make them relevant. I began with Tilak, and re-used Vasundhara Raje’s apt slogan of ‘Su-raaj’, but then I got busy with other matters. The Congress Government was harassing us over the Tijara PPP project in Rajasthan that we had re-named the Private Party’s Problem!

When the political campaigns were gathering momentum in November, being an old hand in advertising, I thought it was time to break away from the same old symbols and promises. I wanted to evoke Patel, Tilak, Tagore and Dayanand, take one of their best-known sayings and make them relevant. I began with Tilak, and re-used Vasundhara Raje’s apt slogan of ‘Su-raaj’, but then I got busy with other matters. The Congress Government was harassing us over the Tijara PPP project in Rajasthan that we had re-named the Private Party’s Problem!

We appealed to everyone we knew in the state and Centre: the Planning Commission, various ministries, the PMO; but they were all busy with their Aadhaar bribes and NREGA seductions, announcing plans instead of results, and harping on the dynasty. That is what led me to create this poster. It’s born of a citizen’s anger and disbelief. And now, the usual pseudo-secular intelligentsia are going on about how we have all become ‘saffron’! What is wrong with that? India has been ruled by two monotheisms for 1,000 years: for about 700 by the ‘green’ lot and for 300 by red-and-blue-flag-flying colonialists, both of whom had terrible records on tolerance. Why should anyone feel insecure under a democratic regime of the most passive and tolerant religion the world has known—unless they have such a guilty racial memory that they feel Hindus will give back what they received in those days? Collectively, Hindus are far too evolved for that.

AAPHindusNarendra ModiSu-raaj