Godhra

[Bhootnath]

Godhra ‘whitewash’ to Muslim count, quotas to Qureishi: For BJP, iron’s hot
Hindutva II: 20 yrs after Shah Bano, united saffron front prepares to take on
UPA’s ‘blatant minority appeasement’

MANINI CHATTERJEE
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
The Indian Express

NEW DELHI, MARCH 6: As their backbenchers vociferously shouted slogans to
counter the entire non-NDA contingent’s demand for the resignation of Narendra
Modi, top BJP leaders exuded a quiet sense of glee. They had more than one
reason.

Their calculation: the Justice Banerjee Committee report that calls the
Sabarmati Express attack an accident together with a series of ‘‘blatant
minority appeasement’’ measures by the UPA government could well provide the
ideal environment for the revival of Hindutva, 20 years after it burst forth on
the Indian political scene.

Linking the Banerjee report to ‘‘pure votebank politics,’’ BJP deputy leader in
the Lok Sabha V K Malhotra said: ‘‘The Banerjee report being made public when
the Supreme Court is monitoring the probe and Nanavati-Shah Commission is
investigating the matter shows the race for minority votes, particularly in the
wake of large scale protests by Muslims against the Bush visit.’’

That ‘‘race’’ was only too visible in the Lok Sabha today when members of the
BSP, SP, RJD, Congress and Left—seldom on the same side of the fence these
days—vied with one another to demand the tabling of the report and Modi’s
resignation.

The BJP stood more or less isolated in the House. Only Shiv Sena MPs joined
them
to protest against Justice Banerjee’s conclusion that the Godhra fire had been
an accident.

But it is an isolation that BJP leaders, guided by L K Advani, are beginning to
relish. There is, they admit, a delicious sense of deja vu. In 1986, the Rajiv
Gandhi government’s decision to overturn the Shah Bano verdict provided the
spark to the BJP’s campaign against ‘‘pseudo secularism.’’

The party leadership managed to convince large numbers of middle-class Indians
that the Congress was ‘‘unjust to Hindus’’ and ‘‘pampered’’ obscurantist
minority sentiments only to garner votes. The success of the p movement that
propelled BJP to centre-stage was built on the anti ‘‘pseudo secular’’
campaign.

Compared to the Shah Bano spark in 1986, the UPA government has lit a veritable
prairie fire of ‘‘minority appeasement’’, BJP leaders claim. In closed-door
meetings, Advani has been telling his colleagues that they must seize the
moment—just as he did in the late 1980s.

The UPA government’s record of ‘‘minorityism’’, Advani & co. feel, is far worse
than that of Rajiv Gandhi’s. The five per cent job reservation quota for
Muslims by the Andhra Pradesh government, the decision to bring an ordinance to
grant minority status to Aligarh Muslim University, the stated intention to
overturn the Supreme Court order on the IMDT Act, the formation of a Ministry
for Minority Affairs for the first time since Independence, and the setting up
of the Rajinder Sachar committee to do a ‘‘headcount’’ of Muslims in all
sectors of government (including, initially, the armed forces) are being cited
as examples of the government’s ‘‘appeasement psychosis.’’

But it is the latest twist of events—the growing anti-Congress sentiment among
large sections of the Muslims following what they see as the government’s
‘‘pro-US’’ tilt—that has bolstered BJP leaders.

“The Congress is now in a dilemma. At Sonia Gandhi’s behest, the party and
government have gone out of their way to appease Muslims. But the Bush visit
and the Iran issue are turning the Muslims away from the Congress towards
parties such as the SP,’’ a senior BJP leader said.

The Congress, therefore, is likely to make more ‘‘blatant’’ efforts to woo the
Muslims (the Banerjee report is cited as a case in point) but that will only
help the BJP secure its erstwhile status of being the sole spokesman of the
majority community.

The Congress’s entire strategy, BJP ideologues feel, was based on a wrong
premise. ‘‘Congress believes that it lost its pre-eminent status because the
Muslims abandoned the party. But the Muslims never came to us, they went to
Third Front parties. However, the Congress’s appeasement policies created anger
among the Hindu middle class and that is what helped us grow,’’ a BJP insider
explained.

A similar story, the party hopes, could once again be unfolding. Now that the
intra-Sangh Parivar differences have been sorted out, a united saffron
offensive against ‘‘minorityism’’ is on the cards in a fervent attempt to bring
about Hindutva’s second coming.