Media In India/elsewhere -2

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<b>Hindutva negates India’s ethos </b>
<i>By <b>Kuldip Nayar</b> </i>

The BJP has gone back to Hindutva. This is the only ideology it knows, and follows overtly when it is on its own, and covertly when it is part of the NDA. The party was no different, nibbling from within, when it was part of the Janata from 1977 to 1980 and got relevance. It betrayed Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan who had been given an undertaking that the members of the erstwhile Jana Sangh would break their links with the RSS.

It was more than a coincidence that the BJP’s national council met last week on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the martyrdom of Mahatma Gandhi who was killed by a Hindu fanatic projecting then the same thesis that the BJP is expounding today. True, the party’s rhetoric was not as loud as before. But Narendra Modi riding to power by playing the Hindu card has once again set the BJP’s tone. The party sang the same tune of Hindutva as his victory in Gujarat had proved.

With L.K. Advani in the forefront, the hard line of the party was expected. What surprised me was the presence of Jaswant Singh on the high table at the meeting. He was so unhappy over the demolition of the Babri Masjid that he even thought of leaving the party. Probably, the idea of staying in the wilderness made him change his mind. I had imagined that Atal Behari Vajpayee would appear at the session at some stage, even if unwell. He did not even send a message.

It is apparent that he has not liked Advani’s antics, first to push him into the background and then to anoint himself as shadow Prime Minister. Even otherwise, Vajpayee has never liked Advani’s hard line. I was disappointed to see Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and JD(U)’s Sharad Yadav at the NDA meeting where Advani’s candidature for prime ministership was endorsed. Both should know that he led the rath which killed thousands of Muslims. Advani is anti-minority and considers even an affirmative action in their favour as “appeasement.”

The biggest challenge the BJP poses is, however, to the liberal elements in the country. Wherever they are and however occupied, their priority has to be to fight Hindutva which nullifies our ethos of pluralism. The BJP is out to divide society and disintegrate the country in the name of religion. Secularism, always a principle of the nation, is now rendered more urgent because of Hindutva.

The party is also trying to destroy the dignity of India and the philosophy of Gandhi which had inspired the struggle for freedom. Jawaharlal Nehru had once said, “The battle of our political freedom is fought and won. But another battle, no less important than what we have won, still faces us. It is a battle with no outside enemy… It is a battle with our own selves.”

The BJP has thrown down the gauntlet. When Rajnath Singh of Hindutva-CD fame tells his party chief ministers to emulate Modi, he is extolling the latter’s anti-Muslim policy in Gujarat. He is threatening democracy and strengthening the forces of fascism. The yardstick to measure Modi’s much-hyped development is the economic progress Muslims and other minorities have made in the state. Gujarat continues to be in the grip of the Hindu Taliban.

The sainiks destroyed the NDTV office at Ahmedabad a few days ago because the channel reported that M.F. Husain, a world-famous painter, was one of the personalities chosen by the people for Bharat Ratna. The land of Modi has such a pathological hatred for Muslims that there is no question of taking action against the culprits because they are the warp and woof of the Hindutva apparatus. There has been no word of explanation, much less condemnation, from the BJP spokesman, Ravi Shankar Prasad, otherwise an urbane person. When the entire structure of his party, the BJP, has been built on anti-Muslim sentiments, its young followers, the sainiks, are but naturally the instruments of terror and tyranny at the beck and call of the party.

The Muslims accused in the Godhra train arson case have been denied a fair hearing and deprived of basic freedom. In all, there were 135 accused in the incident. The last bail order was granted by the Gujarat high court on October 30, 2004. The court has simply not heard any bail application since. Many serious discrepancies in the arrests and some glaring inconsistencies have been pointed out to the state. But it simply refuses to address the concerns. The example of the police getting away with “false testimony” has come to the fore in the Bilkis Bano case in Gujarat. Eleven people who raped her and killed 14 of her relatives, including her three-year-old daughter, have been sentenced to life imprisonment. At last some persons have been punished thanks to the persistence of Bilkis Bano and Teesta Setalvad, a human rights activist, supported by the media. Yet, five policemen have been acquitted. Bilkis wants to pursue their case of “false testimony.”

I have been following practically all the meetings and discussions of the BJP and the erstwhile Jan Sangh for the last four decades. Why has the party of Hindus never tried to raise the question of untouchability? The caste system among Hindus is a most oppressive order. That the RSS which controls the BJP is a pantheon of Brahmins may be one of the reasons. I do not think that the party has ever contemplated reform. In fact, any act which could suggest economic equality, was never to the liking of the BJP. It is a party of the upper classes. What appealed to it from day one was running down the minorities, particularly Muslims.

Compared to the Hindu Taliban, the Muslim Taliban may be less active in India, but they are very much there. They demonstrated against the Godrejs, a house of industrialists, a few days ago because the latter had hosted Salman Rushdie, the author of Satanic Verses. The demonstrators demanded a boycott of goods produced by them. Not many Muslims were associated with the hooligans. But then nobody in the community dared to speak against them. People were simply afraid of what the fundamentalists might do to them. The fear they can instil in the heart of the general public is their weapon.

They have already silenced the government of India on Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi author. The government has made her stay in Delhi, isolating her from the outside world. She has protested against her “house arrest”, but neither the government nor the Muslim community is sensitive about her freedom. She was summoned by the minister of external affairs the other day to tell her to go to Europe. What a treatment meted out by Incredible India!