Congress Undemocratic Ideology - 3

[acharya]

The Moving Fingers

The mocking of an India resurgent
By M.V. Kamath

Presently, there is a civil war in Sonia Gandhi’s durbar. This tamasha has to stop. India’s march to progress should not be held up because of the weakness of a leaderless, visionless party that has long lost its bearings.

Who is ruling this country? Sonia Gandhi? Dr Manmohan Singh? Prakash Karat? Sitaram Yechury? M. Karunanidhi? Or is it Ronen Sen, the loud-mouthed Indian Ambassador in Washington?

The United Progressive Alliance is showing itself as neither united nor progressive nor much of an alliance. Bureaucrats are turning out to be an indisciplined lot. No Sen would have dared to insult Members of Parliament—or even journalists accustomed to be run down by petty officials—when Jawaharlal Nehru or even Indira Gandhi was in power. Ronen Sen is showing calculated arrogance by saying that he would not resign after a show of bad manners and worse culture. And the UPA government maintains an undignified silence. One can’t blame the BJP if it says that mid-term elections have become inevitable. The public is getting increasingly sick of the disorder prevailing in the country.

Instead of going to the people, Congress leaders are manipulating the media to propagate its views. The manner in which the media is still being used to defend the freedom-limiting 123 Agreement is an eloquent example. The truth is that Congress has no national leaders. For that matter not even good regional ones like a Govind Vallabh Pant or a B.G. Kher. Good man though he is, Dr Manmohan Singh can hardly be expected to travel throughout the length and breadth of the country as Nehru or Indira Gandhi did to speak for his party. Worse, the government is run by proxy. The power behind the shaky throne hardly represents India.

Ronen Sen might as well have described the Congress in his expressive language and he would have been more to the point. A most pathetic character is M. Karunanidhi. To call Shri Ram a drunkard and to justify it by saying that he was only quoting Valmiki is adding insult to injury. Would it be more appropriate to say—considering that his provocative utterances are attributed to his sense of humour—that he is showing a growing senility?

Karunanidhi perhaps doesn’t know that during Rama’s time there was no Nestle’s coffee or Darjeeling tea in the kitchen shelf. Soma ras must have been the standard drink then available. If the BJP objects to Karunanidhi’s reckless and abusive comments, it is neither showing “diabolical opportunism” as Sitaram Yechury remarked the other day, nor “disastrous communal polarisation”. The words “communal” and “secularism” are two of the most prostituted words used by our so-called ‘liberal’ intellectuals that have ceased to have any meaning except as terms of abuse. It is, to say the least, juvenile.

Yechury is a young man. He should remember how treacherously his party sold out to the British during the 1942 Quit India movement. And how his party under the questionable leadership of Comrade B.T. Ranadive set the cornerstone of terrorism in Telangana. The CPM obviously suffers from loss of memory. Insulting Hindu gods because Hindus are so accommodative and can even laugh at their own gods has become the touchstone of secularism.

This is not the 16th century when Hindus were disunited and disorganised and the concept of national unity was still a dream. Resurgent Hinduism is today on the march in every field of human activity whether it is Information Technology, Satellite Communication, Higher Education or other fields. Hindus are standing up to bullying whether by the United States or any other power. This is an entirely new world, in which we are living and which the CPM and their likes would do well to remember. Hindus in India are catching up with the world again to become, what once they were, leaders in the spheres of science, commerce, banking or technology. And nobody can stop them. Not George Bush, not the International Atomic Energy Agency dominated by White nations led by the United States, not by the NSG, not by anybody.

It is not Hindu chauvinism that is revolting but an entire civilisation that has long been suppressed but now is fighting back to recover its former glory. To say it is communal is to misuse the English language and be self-deprecatory. India is not out to humiliate any nation. Hinduism is the most catholic religion in the world and is faith-tolerant. But when it is insulted as it has been for centuries by invaders of all faiths and had to swallow slights silently, it had to react. And it is now reacting, firmly but with increasing self-confidence. What we are witnessing is not communalism but a self-reliant, self-confident people, tolerant of all religions and no longer apologetic about their faith as our secularists would want them to be—and as they were in the colonial and post-colonial period.

Hindus are not aggressors. They are not vengeful. There is no record of their having invaded alien lands. They do not claim to have exclusive rights to define divinity. But when they are mocked at whether by atheists or by people of other faiths, they are not going to sit back as in centuries past and keep their anger to themselves. The Yechurys and Karunanidhis would do well to kindly remember that. Neither the Congress nor the CPM truly represents India. The BJP does. It represents the soul of India, long suppressed. That is not communalism. Even when Hindus go abroad in their millions they pose no threat to the natives. There are as many Hindus in Britain as there possibly are Muslims but they pose no threat to the Britons.

If Guardian is to be believed: “Britons are now more suspicious of Muslims than are Americans or citizens of any other major western European country, including France.” According to the London-based Financial Times, “38 per cent (of the British) think the presence of Muslims in the UK is a threat to national security compared with 21 per cent in the US.” Hindus are no threat. They are invariably accommodative. The BJP is more secular because Hindus, by definition, are secular and tolerant. The not-so-subtle ways in which the Congress seeks to gain the support of Muslims is evidence of its own brand of disguised communalism. The party would do well to indulge in some honest self-introspection before it charges the BJP with its own sins.

What is now becoming increasingly evident is that the time for general elections has come and the issue cannot be brushed aside any longer. Presently there is a civil war in Sonia Gandhi’s durbar with Jairam Ramesh and R.K. Dhawan opposed to Ambika Soni. At the same time Kapil Sibal and Prakash Karat are at loggerheads and Congress is trying to distance itself from Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on the wheat import issue even when Karunanidhi of the DMK, another partner in the UPA government, is demanding Cabinet posting to his daughter on terms laid down by him. This tamasha has to stop. India’s march to progress should not be held up because of the weakness of a leaderless, visionless party that has long lost its bearings.