Sitaram Yechury
The BJP general secretary’s revelation that its prime ministerial candidate is the mukhota (mask) hiding the real mukh (face) of the BJP is a description that is not confined only to Mr. Vajpayee. As the elections draw closer, the BJP’s behaviour exposes it as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. While it seeks to maintain a public posture to attract new allies, it continues to privately nurture its hidden agenda _ the establishment of a fascistic and intolerant “Hindu Rashtra”.
In its desperation to capture power at Delhi, the BJP is resorting to subterfuge. Amongst the various means that it adopts, the most important is the spread of systematic disinformation. Its methodology is based on Hitler’s propaganda minister, Goebbels, who said: “If you tell a big enough lie, frequently enough, it becomes the truth”. Its entire communal campaign has been based on this dictum. Let us examine the reality behind some of the myths that it ingeniously seeks to spread through subterfuge.
Myth 1: That all political parties ganged up prevent the BJP from ruling after the 1996 elections, where it had allegedly received the popular mandate.
The charge that the BJP was denied its rightful role to rule is completely baseless. In the 1996 elections, though the BJP emerged as the single largest party winning 161 seats, it fell far short of the required majority of 272. Further, it polled only 20.29 per cent of the vote, while the Congress polled 28.8 per cent, and the major constituents of the United Front together polled 29.45 per cent. Therefore, both in terms of the number of MPs (the United Front numbering 187) and in terms of the vote percentage, the United Front was the largest formation in the 11th Lok Sabha. Thus, the Saffron Brigade’s claim that the people had given it a mandate is a lie.
Further, despite not having a majority, the BJP formed the government in 1996. It, however, could not survive even the vote of confidence and had to make an ignominious exit after 13 days. The BJP thus, was not denied its chance to form the government. The truth is that it simply failed in its effort. In fact, the BJP was prevented from clandestinely highjacking the leadership of the government which the people had not given them.
Myth 2: That coalition governments are inherently unstable, hence vote for the BJP.
It is indeed strange that the BJP, which is forging the most opportunistic alliances, throwing to the winds all norms of political morality, principles and ideology with the single aim of capturing power by hook or by crook, should today decry coalition governments. It had mocked at the 13-party United Front coalition, yet today it has a greater number of parties with whom it has forged an alliance in its lust for power. To name only a few: 1) Shiv Sena; 2) Samata Party; 3) Akali Dal; 4) Haryana Vikas Party; 5) AIADMK; 6) MDMK; 7) PMK; 8) Ramamurthy’s breakaway Congress party in Tamil Nadu; 9) Hindu Munnani; 10) Ms. Laxmi Parvathi’s Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh; 11) Ramakrish¬na Hegde’s party in Karnataka; 12) Naresh Agarwal’s break away Congress party in Uttar Pradesh; 13) the breakaway BSP group in Uttar Pradesh; 14) Navin Patnaik’s Janata Dal in Orissa; 15) Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress in Bengal; 16) Kukapare’s party in Kashmir. And it is still looking for more. Such ideo¬logically disparate parties constitute the stew that the BJP is brewing for the country.
On the other hand the Left Front government in West Bengal has successfully governed the State for over two decades, while steadfastly defending the rights of the working people. Com.Jyoti Basu is by far the longest serving Chief Minister ever in this country. This only shows that it is not the number of constituents in a government, but ideological homogeneity and commitment to democratic values that provide stability.
Myth 3: That the BJP is the only party that can provide stabil¬ity.
With such an cocktail of parties, the BJP is the worst placed today to provide any stable government. Such have been the divergent opinions of its ‘friendly’ parties today that the BJP has formally announced that its common minimum programme will be told to the nation only after the elections are over and “it forms the government.”
In any case, one needs to question what stability means and for whom is the stability to be ensured? In the recent past, not to mention earlier periods, the country had experienced long periods of uninterrupted rule by the Congress. In that sense there was tenural stability. But for the people of the country it has meant :
** intensified communal tensions assuming grotesque proportions,
** intensification of upper caste oppression leading to caste conflicts.
** an economic reforms policy, that inflicted unprecedented burdens _ price rise, growing unemployment, retrenchment closure of lakhs of factories, all leading to growing destitution and in extreme cases poverty-induced deaths.
In other words an uninterrupted tenure for successive ‘stable’ governments to loot the country and people and heap upon them untold miseries.
What we need today is stability for the people, and not for a government to plunge the country into a communal holocaust and deepen the divides between the people still further. On this score, the performance of the United Front government, though for a short 18 months, stands out in favourable contrast.
A government that lasts a full term is only a necessary but not the sufficient condition to provide stability for the people. Such stability can come only on the basis of a concrete people’s oriented policies and a political will to implement them. In other words, stability requires not just the throwing up of a motley crowd to form a majority, but a commitment to secularism, national unity, federalism and pro-people economic growth. The BJP has displayed itself as a party which lacks all commitments except one _ to capture power and by imposing its communal agenda, unleash a barrage of communal viciousness.
We would do well to recollect that even Hitler provided a so-called `stable’ governance in Germany for a period of time. So did Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, Pinochet in Chile, and many others of the same ilk. But at what expense? Millions dead. Many more persecuted. If this is the cost, one can well ask, ‘stability’ for whom? India can ill afford such ‘stability’ at the cost of sacrificing its unity and integrity.
Myth 4 : The BJP has become much more “responsible” now and has shed its earlier agenda of creation of a “Hindu Rashtra”.
The BJP, by its own assessment, finds itself incapable of crossing the 20% barrier in terms of votes polled unless it is “seen” to have purged itself of its communal baggage. It is this assessment that is prompting the Saffron Brigade to adopt its usual duplicity and double-speak. On the one hand, a section of its leaders adorn `democratic’ clothes appealing to various regional parties to join hands with it in order to provide a viable government. It seeks to create a veneer of respectability by ostensibly abandoning its hard line Hindu communal agenda. On the other hand, its other outfits and leaders brazenly whip up communal passions in order to preserve their traditional support base and if possible, to garner additional support. Mr. Kalyan Singh hence, honours the kar sevaks who demolished the Babri Masjid five years ago. The VHP issues a strident war cry that Kashi and Mathura will be liberated and the mosques there demol¬ished like in Ayodhya. The Bajrang Dal, in the meanwhile, is busy perfecting its notorious muscle powered support services for such activities.
Even many of its allies disagree with the BJP on its most important agenda, namely, Ayodhya, Article 370, and a Uniform Civil Code, i.e., its communal agenda. Wearing its mask, through one leader the BJP disclaims all these as being part of their agenda, while another leader reiterates that these constitute the BJP’s agenda. The diabolic game-plan is clear: while the mukhota is for public consumption, the BJP continues to implement its communal agenda.
The BJP, all along, had maintained that Kashi and Mathura are not on its agenda. This has very recently been repeated by Mr.Vajpayee while gearing up his party for the forthcoming elections. On the other hand Mr. Advani stated in a recent interview with The Asian Age, “… in case of Ayodhya there may be doubt about whether there was a temple or not, but about Kashi and Mathura there is no doubt”. Mr.Advani has gone on to offer what he presumed to be an olive branch to the Muslim community by stating that, if the latter relinquish their claim on Ayodhya, then he (Advani) would persuade the VHP to give up their claims on Kashi and Mathura. A very diabolical way, indeed, to reintro-duce Kashi and Mathura onto the BJP’s agenda.
That communal polarisation will be the core of the Saffron Brigade’s strategy in the forthcoming elections, is no longer in doubt. This is testified by the fact that its UP Chief Minister and national leaders have repeatedly stated that a temple at Ayodhya can be built only when the BJP is in office at the Centre. Thus, stoking communal passions urging people to vote for it, if they want a temple in Ayodhya. With such an agenda that it is pursuing, the occurence of communal disturbances like the recent ones in Coimbatore in Tamilnadu is not surprising. As is known, this part of our country has been relatively free from such communal polarisation. But in order to achieve their politi¬cal ambitions of capturing power at Delhi, the Saffron Brigade is bound to engineer such conflicts particularly in those areas where it does not enjoy a traditional support base. As the recent train blasts in the South have shown, in these efforts the Saffron Brigade is admirably aided by the Muslim fundamentalist forces. As the elections draw closer, the Saffron Brigade would try its utmost to intensify this communal polarisation to the detriment of our country’s unity and integrity and the welfare of the people.
If more evidence is required about the BJP’s utter contempt for the law of the land a perusal of the BJP’s official web site on the Internet would be instructive. An article titled “Hindutva: The Great Nationalist Ideology” says, “Truth won when Hindus, realizing that Truth could not be won through political or legal means, took the law into their own hands” (emphasis added). So much for the responsible face of the BJP!
Myth 5: That the BJP will pursue a ‘swadeshi’ economic program¬me.
The slogan of ‘swadeshi’ and the BJP’s championing of India’s economic self-reliance is, once again, only a mask to cover its real and long-standing economic agenda of complete subservience to imperialist finance capital. Seven years back, on the floor of the Parliament, its leaders claimed that the Congress had highjacked the BJP’s economic programme when it introduced the World Bank-IMF dictated economic reforms in 1991. The BJP was clear in recording its basic commitment to the New Economic Policy ushered in by Manmohan Singh in 1991. Wherever the BJP has been in power in the states, it has indiscriminately invited the multinational corporations to come to plunder our resources. Today, seeing the discontent growing amongst the working people they adopt populist slogans so that they may take advantage of this popular discontent, and befool the people with regard to their real beliefs.
In 1996, the Sena-BJP election campaign for the Maharashtra assembly elections, had highlighted the fact that the Enron power project in Maharashtra constituted loot of the people. Some of its leaders thundered that if they came to power, they would throw Enron into the Arabian sea. However, we all know the somersault they made after being installed in power. When they took charge at the Centre for 13 days in May 1996, the BJP promptly approved central government counter guarantees to the multinational Enron _ thus endorsing the provisions of the con¬tract which in fact would mean looting the people and the state of Maharashtra. What is even more deplorable is that this deci¬sion was taken by the Union Cabinet on the very day the Parlia¬ment was debating Vajpayee’s confidence motion. The Union Cabi¬net met during the lunch recess of Parliament, a few hours before the voting took place, and approved the Enron power project. What morality can they claim when they rush through such an important decision knowing full well that their government was about to fall. A clear example of their firm commitment to their multinational friends. Where was the commitment to ‘swadeshi’ then?
Soon after independence, a report in The Times of India stated: “The Sangh leader has opposed the nationalisation of industry. He has objected to pressure for landlord abolition. ….” (Sep¬tember 2, 1949). At a time when India was trying to establish its economic self-reliance, at a time when millions of Indian peasants were engaged in the struggle to realise their dream of land to the tiller, the Saffron Brigade stood directly opposed to such demands of the working people. It is the same philosophy they continue to propagate today. While they seek to destroy the very foundations of a modern India on the one hand, on the other, they seek to impose reactionary economic policies that will worsen the livelihood of the vast majority of Indians.
Myth 6: Atal Behari Vajpayee is the only person suited to be Prime Minister of the country.
The BJP’s projection of Mr. Vajpayee as the “people’s” Prime Minister, on the strength of orchestrated opinion polls is based on cooked-up premises and hollow image management. A person who can be a `helpless’ witness to the destruction of the Babri Masjid, a person who has repeatedly displayed impotence in dealing with his own party’s communal agenda, is in truth nothing but a cosmetic mask behind which will operate the diabolic communal agenda of the Saffron Brigade.
While the BJP is exhorting its people to anoint Mr.Vajpayee as Prime Minister of the country, its own senior leaders say that he is just a mask. If the BJP itself does not think that its Prime Ministerial candidate should be taken seriously, what right does it have the demand of the people that he be accepted as the next Prime Minister? Further, the “people’s P.M.” is yet to conclusively answer charges of his dubious role during the freedom movement especially the 1942 Quit India movement. The BJP’s bombastic claims that Mr. Vajpayee is a freedom fighter jailed during the Quit India movement has been thoroughly exposed by both the electronic and print media (See Frontline, February 20, 1998).
Even the mask that is Mr.Vajpayee seems to be unable to decide what kind of an image he should project. On one hand he would like to be seen as the “reasonable” face of the BJP. On the other hand he writes in the Organiser (in May 1995) that the BJP seeks to carry out “parishkar” (cleansing or purification) of Muslims in India. Have the people of India given him the mandate to “purify” 12% of the Indian population? Does he deserve to be given such a mandate? Mr.Vajpayee now claims that his article was wrongly reported in the Organiser. But a perusal of the back issues of the Organiser would show that Mr.Vajpayee had never retracted his desire to purify 12% of the Indian population.
The people of this country want a Prime Minister who can protect the unity and integrity of its social fabric, not a Prime Minister who is ready to act as a mask, and then, when communal poison and insecurity spreads among the minorities, can only break out in ‘poetic agony’, a ‘helpless’ bystander.
Myth 7: The BJP is a party with a difference and shall usher in an era of “clean” governance.
By its conduct, the BJP is daily exposing its lack of principles or character. Its high sounding rhetoric of being ‘a party with a difference’, a party whose chehra (face), chaal (line) charitra (character) and chintan (ideology) are different from all other parties is beginning to boomerang and may well turn into a back¬lash, as it emerges more and more as the most self-seeking oppor¬tunist conglomerate ever seen in Indian politics.
Its chaal is now reduced to the most naked opportunistic attempts to install itself as the government at the Centre by hook or by crook. The BJP today stands as the epitome of political immorality and debauchery in its lust for power.
Both in the period preceding the dissolution of the 11th Lok Sabha and after, the BJP has displayed its readiness to throw to the winds all scruples and its eagerness to stoop to the lowest depths of degeneration to capture power at the Centre. Having perfected the art of engineering majority through defections induced by monetary and ministerial allurement, the BJP sought to repeat the Uttar Pradesh experience at the Centre. So brazen were their efforts that its President, L.K. Advani, de¬clared shamelessly that they could manage to lure only 40 Con¬gress MPs _ falling 7 short of the requisite one third under the Anti-Defection Law. As far as UP is concerned, it needs to be recalled that earlier the BSP had withdrawn support from the Mulayam Singh government. On that occasion, the BJP insisted that the government be dismissed and had Ms. Mayawati installed as the Chief Minister in the late hours of the night. This time around, when BSP withdrew support from the BJP government, they tried to occupy the high moral ground and sought to prove their majority on the floor of the Assembly. And how they achieved it, as is well known, is a contemptuous mockery of democracy.
Its charitra has taken an about turn given the unabashed factionalism that rocks the BJP in almost all states. Power mongering and personal aggrandisement are major characteristics of its leaders. In every state that it is in power, factional feuds dominate erasing any difference with the Congress party. The BJP today represents the fastest route for the political degeneration of Indian parliamentary democracy controlled by criminals and opportunists. Its true character is reflected in the corruption of its leaders and their links with the multina¬tional corporations in states ruled by them like Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
As far its chintan is concerned, the less said the better. No better exposure of its duplicity of ideological commitment can be given than the declaration of one of its General Secretaries that Mr. Vajpayee represented the mukhota (mask) concealing the real mukh (face) of the BJP. While the mask appeals to other parties to support it as a “democratic viable alternative”, the face represents its real diabolic agenda of unfolding the creation of a fascistic Hindu Rashtra. One cannot resist the temptation of drawing a parallel from history _ the rise of Nazi fascism. In a similar tactic, Hitler had used the slogan of National Socialism to garner popular support from the German people. Once having achieved it, history is witness to the worst possible crimes committed against humanity. The BJP today is seeking to repeat this. Only the naive or the opportunist who has sold his con¬science to the enemies of our country can fall prey to such a sinister strategy.
Thus, the Saffron Brigade today, by its own definition of four ‘Cs’ _ chehera, chaal, charitra and chintan _ stands totally exposed. It uses everything in its arsenal to hoodwink the Indian people to support it and thus facilitate the implementation of its not so hidden agenda of creation of a fascistic Hindu Rashtra.
Myth 8: The BJP and its leaders are also inheritors of the Free¬dom Movement in this country.
The womb from which the BJP, as well as its predecessor the Jana Sangh, was born is the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. Even today the RSS wields immense influence on the BJP and its leaders, and its shadowy presence can be sensed in all that the BJP does and says. The role of the RSS during India’s freedom struggle is an open secret. The Bombay Home Department, during the 1942 Quit India Movement observed: “The Sangh has scrupulously kept itself within the law and in particular has refrained from taking part in the disturbances that broke out in August 1942”. Even its leading light, Nanaji Deshmukh once raised the question: “Why did the RSS not take part in the liberation struggle as an organ¬isation?” Further, throughout the national movement the RSS always collaborated with the princely states who stood in firm opposition to the freedom struggle. One of their closest allies was Raja Hari Singh of Kashmir who was reluctant to join India.
Even Atal Behari Vajpayee _ the “man India awaits”, according to the BJP’s propaganda machine _ betrayed his revolutionary col¬leagues in the 1942 freedom struggle. Mr Vajpayee has falsely tried to glorify his “involvement in the Quit India Movement” in his ancestral village of Bateshwar in Agra and claimed that he was part of the group which attacked British government buildings and was therefore arrested and imprisoned. The records of the incident however show that he behaved like a coward who helped the police and revealed the names of the leaders of the protest. Vajpayee gave a confessional statement to the police, disasso¬ciating himself from the Bateshwar action, giving full details of what had taken place, and naming two persons who were imprisoned, tried and one of them was setnenced to rigorous imprisonment. Vajpayee on the other hand confessed to the police and was in jail for just three weeks. He managed to get out of jail by cooperating with the police, using family contacts and furnishing a personal bond. The man who was just “part of the crowd” 55 years ago is now trying to give the impression that he was an anti-imperialist hero whose “nationalist zeal” was awakened by the Quit India Movement!
Before Independence the RSS and its communal forces regarded the freedom movement as a diversion from their objective of establishing a ‘Hindu Rashtra’. For this, they required to spread hate against the Muslim community and not against the British. For, in the struggle against the British, all Indians, irrespective of their religion were united. So steadfast was the RSS in its opposition to the freedom struggle that when the Congress adopted the slogan of complete independence and declared to observe 26th January 1930 as Independence Day, the RSS sent out a circular to all its units stating: “On the evening of 26.1.1930 all the sakhas of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh should hold rallies of Swayam Sevaks at their respective places and worship the national flag, that is the Bhagwa Jhanda”. Such is their patriotism and respect for the national flag! Jawahar¬lal Nehru in Discovery of India noted: “These communal organisa¬tions, while in theory, standing for India’s independence were more interested in claiming protection and special privileges for their respective groups. They had inevitably to look to the British government for such privileges, and this led them to avoid conflict with it”.
That the BJP still stands by the role played by the RSS in the freedom movement is borne out by an article on its official web site on the Internet, where it says “In comparison to the freedom movement though, Hindutva involves many more people and represents the mental freedom that 1947 did not bring”.
It is thus clear that the communal forces led by the RSS, of which the BJP is the true inheritor, neither strove for the freedom of the country nor for the liberty of the people. Their basic aim was spread of communal poison for their political ends. It is such communal poison that finally claimed the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Thus one of the most obnoxious fallouts of its efforts to capture power in Delhi lies in its attempt to highjack the symbols of the freedom struggle. It is, indeed, an irony that the BJP-Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra organises a commemorative meeting at that very ground in Bombay from where the Quit India Movement was launched. Having betrayed the freedom struggle the very same Saffron Brigade today, seeks to highjack a legacy that truly belongs to the Indian people.
Myth 9: The RSS claims to be the true inheritor of the Gandhian legacy.
The most diabolic of BJP’s efforts, however, has been the effort to appropriate the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. It is an insult to the Indian people that the murderers of Mahatma Gandhi are the ones seeking to exploit his legacy in pursuit of their political ambitions. Making a radical departure from its tradition (of addressing the nation on the Vijayadashami day, the RSS), in 1997, organised its public `drill’ at the Nehru Stadium in New Delhi on Gandhi Jayanti on October 2nd. The RSS chief, in his address, exhorted the RSS to appropriate the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and bemoaned that, “After independence, though the followers of Gandhiji ruled the country, they have made him irrelevant. Nowhere are any sincere efforts to realise the above dreams of Mahatmaji today”. Sickening reverence! What greater duplicity can be possible? The murderers of Mahatma Gandhi _ the very same forces that plunged the country into a communal holocaust, the very same forces that seek to destroy the social unity of our country by spreading deep the communal poison, the very same forces that negate the cherished Gandhian goal of Hindu-Muslim unity _ are the ones that today invoke Gandhi’s legacy for their political aggrandisement.
In this context, it would be interesting to recollect the government communiques following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The communique dated February 4, 1948, declaring the RSS as unlawful, stated: “The objectionable and harmful activities of the Sangh have, however, continued unabated and the cult of violence sponsored and inspired by the activities of the Sangh has claimed many victims. The latest and the most precious to fall was Gandhiji himself…”
Following this, the RSS went through an exercise of deceitful compromises. Its then Sarsangha Chalak, Golwalkar, made repeated approaches to the government for some compromise or the other. The Saffron Brigade, which idolises Sardar Patel today, should note that the very same Sardar Patel, as the Home Minister, refused a number of times to meet the RSS chief after the initial interview.
Finally, in July 1949 , the RSS unable to withstand the pressure of its workers, who had no tradition of either jail or under¬ground life during the British rule, completely compromised its positions leading to the withdrawal of the ban on July 11, 1949. The communique by government on that day states: “The R.S.S. leader has undertaken to make the loyalty to the Union Constitu¬tion and respect for the National Flag more explicit in the Constitution of the RSS and to provide clearly that persons believing or resorting to violent and secret methods will have no place in the Sangh. The RSS leader has also clarified that the Constitution will be worked on a democratic basis..”
Time has shown that such assurances were clearly meant for public consumption and in order to secure a withdrawal of the ban. Even the assurance that the RSS Sarsangh Chalak will be elected democratically has been violated. He continues to be nominated by the preceding chief, who incidentally remains in office till death.
In practice, the RSS, as events have shown, continues to pursue its communal agenda with the ultimate aim of establishing a theocratic fascistic ‘Hindu Rashtra’ in India. The ideological basis for such project, ironically, was authored by the same RSS chief, Golwalkar, in 1939 (exactly ten years before the ban was lifted), in a book titled “We or Our Nationhood Defined”.
The pursuit of such a diabolic agenda of establishing a fascistic Hindu Rashtra has led the RSS to create a political octopus, the Saffron Brigade or what it calls the Sangh Parivar. Its various tentacles spread out in different directions with the same objec¬tive of spreading venomous poison and destroying the basis of the unity of India’s social fabric. Hidden behind the veneer of respectable sounding jargon and sermons lies such a diabolic agenda. For this reason alone, above anything else, the 1998 midterm elections will determine whether India and its people will succeed in safeguarding the secular democratic foundations of modern India or whether such sinister communal forces will seek to take India back into an age of darkness.
Myth 10 : BJP’s commitment to democracy is shown by its opposi¬tion to the Emergency in 1995.
On the contrary, the RSS and the Saffron Brigade spared no efforts to reconcile with Ms. Gandhi. In fact, its chief Deoras had written to Ms. Gandhi twice from jail requesting that the ban on the RSS be lifted. At a time when the entire country was up against Ms Gandhi for imposing the Emergency because of the Allahabad High Court setting aside her election, Balasaheb Deoras in a letter from the Yerwada Central Jail dated 10.11.1975 said: “Let me congratulate you as five judges of the Supreme Court have declared the validity of your election”. This was at a time when the entire country was protesting against the manner in which Indira Gandhi manipulated the law and amended the Constitution to legitimise her election. In another letter from jail to Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Balasaheb Deoras writes, “..this is my prayer to you that you kindly try to remove the wrong notion of the Prime Minister about the Sangh, and as a result of which the RSS volunteers will be set free, the ban on the Sangh will be lifted and such condition will prevail as to enable the volunteers of the Sangh to participate in the planned programme of action relating to country’s progress and prosperity under the leadership of the Prime Minister”. This was in an apparent reference to the notorious 20-point programme of Ms Gandhi during the Emergency. While the democratic masses of India were decrying this, the RSS was willing to accept Ms. Gandhi’s leadership!
As the late Shri Madhu Limaye wrote in Secular Democracy: “The RSS people claimed that they spearheaded the anti-Emergency struggle. Nothing can be farther from the truth. The ban on the RSS frightened them. The morale of their detenues collapsed within a few days after the declaration of Emergency. A vast majority of these detenues abjectly apologised to the authori¬ties. Many deserted the RSS and Jan Sangh in order to escape arrest”.
Given such a record of genuflection towards authoritarianism, it comes as no surprise to find the BJP cohabiting with the likes of the Shiv Sena. On 30 December 1997, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray told Reuters, “I say to hell with democracy. Democracy has ruined [India]. There is too much of freedom without knowing the exact meaning, and the spelling too. Unless and until your people know the meaning of democracy and freedom, you are not supposed to give the people what they demand and ask.” Yet for the BJP, the Shiv Sena is its staunchest ally that (it hopes) will help it catapult to power in Delhi!
The BJP and the Saffron Brigade have exposed all their wares, ranging from duplicity, crass opportunism, double-speak and corruption to the spread of communal poison. Its lust for power inspires it to abandon all principles and decency in politics. The 1998 midterm elections would mark a watershed in Indian politics. The country and the people cannot afford to allow such a planned destruction of the gains of the Indian people and the foundations of a modern Indian nation based on the pillars of secularism, democracy, social justice and federalism.
Myth 11 : The BJP is today reconciled to the vision of a Secular India and shall not go out of its way to change this.
Nothing could really be farther from the truth. The record of BJP ruled states provide ample evidence that the BJP is bent upon tearing apart the secular fabric of the country. Towards this end the BJP has stepped up its ideological and cultural onslaught on all fronts.
The BJP Govt. in Delhi plans to add a new chapter, “Religious Policies of Babar”, in the sixth standard history book. It will explain that Babar, a Muslim ruler of the 16th century, built a mosque over the Ram temple at Ayodhya after demolishing it. The BJP government also plans to delete or condense chapters on Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln in the 9th and 10th standards and instead add chapters on Keshavrao Baliram Hedgewar, the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Disseminating ideology through textbooks was a phenomenon initiated by the BJP government headed by Kalyan Singh in Uttar Pradesh in 1991. Singh altered history books in UP schools to help children understand the “real Hindutva truth.”
The BJP’s hatred towards Muslims is clearly spelt out in a series of articles by Deen Dayal Upadhyaya that have been reproduced in the BJP’s web site on the Internet under the title “BJP’s guiding Philosophy”. At one point the article says. “No particular socie¬ty has a monopoly of goodness. However, it is observed that Hindus even if they are rascals individual life, when they come together in a group, they always think of good things. On the other hand when two Muslims come together, they propose and approve of things which they themselves in their individual capacity would not even think of. They start thinking in an altogether different way. This is an everyday experience.” If the BJP’s guiding philosophy says that muslims are inherently incap¬able of “thinking good things”, their attitude to the whole Muslim community will clearly, for all times to come, be steeped in hatred and hostility.
Myth 12: The record of BJP ruled states is better than those ruled by other parties.
It may be recalled that the BJP faced a severe setback in the assembly elections in north India in November 1993. It lost in UP, MP, Himachal Pradesh and did not get a majority on its own in Rajasthan. It is important to study the record of the BJP state governments because it reveals the wide gap between its rhetoric and practice. One reason for the defeat in the assembly elections was that the party state units, carried away by the leadership’s total obsession with the Ayodhya issue, had neglected the functioning of their state governments. But at a more fundamental level, the BJP had-failed to come out with any policies that could address the deep malaise in the socioeconomic system. Leave alone offering any solution to the misery of the people, the BJP state governments, without exception, pursued policies that were virulently anti-working class, pro-big business, and against the dalits and tribal sections of society.
In Madhya Pradesh, the Sundarlal Patwa government failed to keep its promise of reopening closed textile mills and instead resorted to brutal repression in every industrial dispute. The high point of the Patwa government’s attitude towards labour was the brutal pre-planned murder of Shankar Guha Neogi, leader of the contract workers in the mines of Chhattisgarh region, by the gangsters of the management on September 28, 1991. His murderers were never apprehended and even when the protests of the entire trade union movement forced the arrest of the owner of the factory, he was allowed to escape from police custody from hospital. On July 1, 1992, 25 workers including women were brutally killed while demonstrating in support of their demand for a wage rise, improvement in working conditions and punishment to the killers of Shankar Neogi. A year later, in September 1992, the workers of JC Mills at Gwalior were attacked by the management’s goondas, with the connivance of the state government and its police force. The houses of the workers’ were set on fire and shops looted.
In Himachal Pradesh, the Shanta Kumar government invoked the, obnoxious “no work, no pay” clause to crush the prolonged strike by state government, electricity board and corporation employees. Though this clause can only be invoked when a strike has been declared illegal, the state Government resorted to the measure to break a legitimate strike. With the whole of Shimla placed under curfew, workers were not allowed to hold rallies or carry out other forms of protests. A large number of workers were arrested, thousands given transfer orders and the services of 200 employees terminated. The Shanta Kumar government’s policy of privatisation and closures led to the termination of services of 35,000 casual workers.
In Rajasthan, the Shekawat government similarly showed its anti- working class attitude by resorting to ESMA and the National Security Act to ban the strike of the Rajasthan State Electricity Board engineers against privatisation. In Uttar Pradesh, Kalyan Singh went in for a wholesale privatisation drive despite the protests of the workers. The BJP governments did not enact a single piece of labour legislation during their tenure, did not raise the minimum wages of the unorganised workers and unleashed repression to crush workers’ struggles.
The upper caste orientation of the BJP was also evident from its policies towards the oppressed sections of society. In MP, atrocities against scheduled castes and tribes continued unabated under BJP rule. For instance, in Salaiya village Harijan women were stripped and forced to dance, in Papreru village a dalit woman was gang-raped by alleged BJP activists while in Nichrauli village, dalits were forced to eat excreta. In Dhar district, with the backing of local BJP men, a family of 17 adivasis was burnt alive. Statistics furnished in the state assembly revealed that between March 1990 and December 1991, 465 adivasi women were raped, 9903 cases of atrocities against harijans were recorded and 4577 atrocities against adivasis.
Similarly in Rajasthan, scheduled caste jatavs in Kumher village of Bharatpur district were attacked and their village burnt down. It was under the Shekhawat regime that the infamous rape of the sathin (community worker), Bhanwari Devi took place because she dared to challenge the vested interests by campaigning against the rampant practice of child marriage.
In Gujarat too the BJP has remained a champion of the upper caste dominated social order. Attacks on dalits increased after the BJP assumed power in the state. The dalits were attacked in Kadi village by upper caste gangs, followed by yet another incident in Kankrol village in Sabarkantha district where eight lower caste persons were attacked when they drank water from a tap reserved for upper castes.
The BJP governments in states did their utmost to communalise the minds of the people. This was done most effectively through school education and all the BJP governments set up committees to change the school syllabus to breed communal poison. In all the BJP run states, the textbooks were changed to accommodate the RSS viewpoint of history and RSS functionaries were appointed vice chancellors of important universities.
Myth 13: BJP’s vision of “Hindutva” is directed at cleansing Hindu society of the ill-effects of the caste system.
The BJP has never unequivocally criticised the caste system. After all, M. S. Golwalkar, the most important ideological figure in the pantheon of the RSS noted in 1966 (in his book _ A Bunch of Thoughts) “Brahmin is the head, King the hands, Vaishya the thighs and Shudra the feet.”
The BJP still stands by this “definition” of the four castes as is illustrated by a reproduction of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya’s articles on its official web site on the Internet. At one point the article says, “…but we had never accepted, conflict between one caste and another as fundamental concept behind it. In our concept of four castes, they are thought of as analogous to the different limbs of Virat-purusha. It was suggested that from the head of the Virat-Purusha Bhrahmins were created, Kshatriyas from hands, Vaishyas from his abdomen and Shudras from legs. … The origin of the caste system was on the above basis. If this idea is not kept alive; the castes, instead of being complementary, can produce conflict. But then this is distortion.” In other words the caste system has no inherent flaws, what needs correction are only distortions in the system! Can there be a clearer enunciation of the essential upper caste bias in the BJP’s philosophy?