Misquoting To Save Advani

Indian Express, 12 Otober, 2003

by Manoj Mitta

Anju Gupta, an IPS officer, was barely two months into her job when she was asked to take charge of L K Advani’s security on December 6, 1992. Her testimony to the police, to the CBI and to the Liberhan Commission, is perhaps the most damning against Advani. So much so that the Centre has named her as the main witness against Advani. And BJP lawyers have, on record, pilloried her—even brought up the issue of her marriage to a Muslim IPS officer.

Certainly then, Gupta should have been the last witness any judge would quote to discharge Advani in the Babri Masjid demolition case. But exactly the opposite has happened.


She is, in fact, the first of the six witnesses Rae Bareli Magistrate V K Singh cites in favour of Advani and calls her testimony ‘‘ati mahatwapoorna’’ (crucially important). The other five were journalists, two of them from The Indian Express. But more of that later.

Consider the allegations Gupta, who is currently on a UN assignment in Thailand, made against Advani:

• Accusing Advani of inciting kar sevaks from the dais, Gupta said: ‘‘Advani ke aate hi, mahaul garam ho gaya. Jaise hi Advani bolte gaye, mahaul garam hota gaya. (No sooner had Advani arrived than the situation became tense. And it worsened as he spoke.)

• Asserting that Advani appealed to kar sevaks to come down from the domes since the mosque was being demolished from inside, Gupta said: ‘‘I did not see any of these leaders making any effort to stop the demolition of the disputed structure. Advani was sad only about the fact that people were falling off the domes and dying.’’

• Alleging that Advani himself took part in the celebrations that went on over the demolition, she said: ‘‘When the first, second and third domes fell, Uma Bharti and Sadhvi Rithambara hugged each other and distributed sweets. They also hugged men. Uma Bharti and Sadhvi Rithambara expressed happiness by hugging Advani, Joshi and S C Dixit. After the domes fell, they congratulated each other.’’

Given all this and the fact that these statements are recorded by Rae Bareli magistrate in his 130-page order, how does he still use the same testimony to clear Advani? And rule that the case against him is based on ‘‘keval sandeh’’ (mere suspicion) and not ‘‘ghor sandeh’’ (grave suspicion)? He does that by selectively quoting three sentences from Gupta’s testimony while analysing the evidence. This is how:

• Anju Gupta said: ‘‘I saw some boys near Kuber Tola carrying different implements and moving towards the structure. Then Advani asked me what was happening inside the mosque...’’

The magistrate uses this to conclude that ‘‘Advani was unaware of the demolition of the disputed structure at the time it started.’’

Far from it. Gupta goes on to say in the same statement that Advani was only trying to find out what was happening ‘‘inside’’ the structure as the demolition from the top was anyway visible from the dais where the leaders were sitting.

• ‘‘I want to go to the site and ask people to come down,’’ Advani said so to Gupta, as recorded in her statement. The magistrate says that this ‘‘gives rise to a second view’’ on Advani’s conduct contrary to the prima facie allegation against him.

To buttress this claim, the magistrate selectively quotes the testimony of six journalists, two of them from this newspaper. Both Rakesh Sinha and Ganesh Swaminath (who has since left the newspaper) said that they heard Advani on the loud-speaker telling the kar sewaks to come down.

• What the magistrate glosses over is Gupta’s version of why Advani was doing that. Unlike the journalists, Gupta was on the dais with Advani. She said that he started appealing to kar sevaks to come down from the domes only after he learnt from her that the mosque was being demolished from below and that those on top were falling down and getting injured.

• ‘‘Advani asked me what was happening elsewhere and I told him I did not know anything.’’ The magistrate inferred from this quote of Gupta that Advani was ‘‘in the dark’’ about the demolition.

But Advani’s question appears in Gupta’s testimony immediately after she says that she could see ‘‘fire and smoke all around Ayodhya.’’ This was because kar sevaks had set fire to Muslim houses and other mosques in the holy town.

Advani was then trying to find out from Gupta, who was the ASP, Faizabad, if the violence had spread elsewhere, besides what they could see happening to Babri Masjid.

Why we can't trust them

The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, October 17, 2003

The BJP's long record of extremism & duplicity sits ill with its feigned moderation

Why we can't trust them
By Praful BidwaI

Whatever happens in Ayodhya today, it is plain that the sangh parivar, including the BJP, has decided to milk the Ram temple issue brazenly for political gains. The way the latest, hysterical, mobilisation was launched, led by Central minister Swami Chinmayanand, no less, and the manner in which the RSS-BJP have misinterpreted the Archaeological Survey report on the Ayodhya excavation as if it vindicated 'revenge against history', and decisively established the case for building only a temple and not a mosque, permit no other conclusion.

The BJP and its associates are playing with fire. The last time they sent karsevaks in significant numbers to Ayodhya was February last year. The result˜via the Ramsevaks‚ roguish behaviour on their return journeys, and repeated minor altercations with Muslim vendors in Godhra˜was the barbaric burning alive of 59 people and the reign of terror that followed, with the butchery of 2,000 Muslims with state complicity.

One can only (anxiously) speculate about the consequences of unleashing the same extremist forces once again. But it's clear that VHP and Shiv Sena fanatics cannot be trusted to behave moderately and peacefully.

Their entire agenda is inflammatory and provocative in the first place. It's to compound a horrible wrong˜the Babri demolition˜by visiting yet more vengeance upon the religious minorities, further humiliating them, and disenfranchising them politically and out of public life.

Yet, we have Prime Minister Vajpayee urging us to 'trust' the VHP. This is so counter-intuitive and so violently contradicted by experience and by the VHP's abusive descriptions of him, that it raises another question: can we trust Vajpayee and other 'moderate' BJP leaders?

The short answer, after the 11 year-long charade of investigation and prosecution in the Babri demolition case, is a resounding no. To start with, the government rigged the chargesheet, illegitimately splitting it and dropping the conspiracy charge from that assigned to the Rae Bareli Œspecial court‚. Thus, those guilty of planning, instigating and supervising a crime against the Constitution, would be tried for minor offences˜akin to booking a murderer for a parking offence.

Now it turns out that the Rae Bareli judge's verdict discharging L.K. Advani was based on flagrant misreading and distortion of a key eyewitness˜Anju Gupta, an IPS officer charged with Advani's security on D-Day. According to an Indian Express story, based on the judge's order, Gupta testified that Advani and other leaders provoked the mob with inflammatory speeches and made no effort to stop the demolition. 'Advani was sad only about the fact that people were falling off the domes and dying'.

According to Gupta, Advani appealed to the karsevaks to descend from the domes, but only because the mosque was being demolished from the inside. He fully participated in the celebrations that followed the fall of three domes. Uma Bharati and Ritambhara hugged him in ecstasy.

Gupta's account is fully corroborated not just by countless other eyewitnesses, including TV crew and print journalists, but above all, by the highly reliable, accurate reports of the Citizens‚ Commission on Ayodhya, comprised of Justices O. Chinappa Reddy, D.A. Desai and D.S. Tewatia, themselves based on the examination of 90 witnesses and cross-checking of numerous accounts.

Advani, say the reports, was pivotal to the well-planned conspiracy that led to the Babri demolition˜right through periodic mobilisations of the mid-1980s (he became BJP president in 1986), his Toyota rath-yatra of 1990, which left a bloody trail, to the nuts-and-bolts planning for December 6, which took place at a crucial closed-door meeting at Vinay Katiyar's Faizabad house the previous day, attended by, among others, the RSS's H.V. Seshadri and K.S. Sudarshan, VHP's Ashok Singhal and Vinay Katiyar, Shiv Sena's Moreshwar Save, and BJP's Pramod Mahajan.

Advani was the star speaker on December 6. At 11:45 a.m. he announced: "'We don't need bulldozers to pull down the mosque; [we can do it manually]" The assault on the mosque began. Advani ensured it would be completed without interruption by Central paramilitary forces whose entry he urged the karsevaks to block. (3:15 p.m.)

It's not so much VHP, but BJP leaders, who are being egregiously, disgracefully, duplicitous about the demolition˜to evade fair trial for a grievous crime against Indian democracy, and the wave of violence that followed it in 1993. The same Advani now declares that the Babri demolition, like the Gujarat pogrom, was an 'aberration'.

Even more disingenuously, Advani says there is nothing wrong in VHP and RSS members being appointed public prosecutors to try Gujarat's Hindutva culprits˜as part of a massive plan to shield them and subvert justice.

It is our collective shame that we have a Home Minister who has not heard of conflict of interest and who blithely ignores the appointment of countless VHP office-bearers, including general secretary Dilip Trivedi and Chetan Shah (who was asked to handle the Naroda-Patiya massacre, of a hundred people). He is equally blind to the filing of defective First Information Reports, in which the accused are unnamed, which are calculated to exonerate the guilty. Half the culprits in the Gujarat violence have already been acquitted.

To erase the truth from public memory, Advani resorts to blaming 'the system' and to mystifying the human/social agencies at work, and making them disappear! Thus, says Advani, the Gujarat pogrom 'should not have happened, but at the same time, the government or the ruling party cannot be blamed'. The pogrom could not have happened without Narendra Milosevic Modi's planning, coordination, encouragement and execution!

The psychopathology at work here suggests a huge disconnect from reality, now a Hindutva trademark. Take the series of self-congratulatory half- and full-page advertisements issued daily by the government since September 9 at public expense: 'ringing in the good times‚ about the economy (read, stockmarkets) being 'on a roll', when the 'flowers are blooming', 'expenses are settling', 'our country is prospering', 'our lives are changing', 'our tomorrow is promising', 'India Shining'!

These slogans are outrageously partisan and based on purely elite upper-class perceptions. They have nothing to do with the many problems that plague India: rising joblessness, acute power and drinking water shortages, collapse of public services (especially healthcare and primary education), increasing casualisation of labour, persistent deprivation, growing social discontent, rising personal insecurity, and disempowerment of vast numbers.

Nothing illustrates this better than three recent developments/events: the self-immolation in Mumbai by a long-unemployed former Tata contract employee; starvation deaths in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Bihar and above all in Jharkhand, now being reported and seriously investigated by Jean Dreze, Ramesh Sharan and the PUCL; and the rape of a Swiss diplomat in Delhi. These all reflect the iron in our soul, the rot and the sickness in our disgustingly hierarchical society, with its apathetic elite.

Rather than hysterically call for the death penalty for rape, as our loh-purush Home Minister is prone to do after the third incident, we should reflect soberly on what's going wrong: the coarsening of our public discourse; spread of Rambo-style Mera-Bharat-Mahan hypernationalism and viciously male-supremacist ideas; growing xenophobia, demonisation of 'the Other', and an obsession to 'get even' with them through violence; rampant corruption in the police which makes it complicit in crime; and a culture of impunity for the gravest of human rights violations. This is visible in Ayodhya, Mumbai, Delhi and Gujarat.

After all, was it a mere 'aberration' that Gujarat's Hindu nationalists used horrendous sexual violence and mass rape against Muslim women as instruments of vengeance and genocidal warfare? Was it only a joke that after Pokharan-II, the VHP wanted India declared a Hindu state, which had globally 'arrived'? Can Hindutva's malign, violent content and its contribution to social pathologies vanish merely by calling it 'cultural nationalism'?˜

Devil’s workshop

The Hindustan Times, October 18, 2003 | Op-Ed.

Devil’s workshop
Jan Breman

In a recent study on the socio-political context of communal violence in India, Ashutosh Varshney has focused on the importance of civic networks for binding Hindus and Muslims together.

He argues that in the case of Ahmedabad, a truly impressive level of civic activity was built up during the national movement, to a large extent initiated by Gandhi.

The main pillars of civil engagement that emerged were the Congress Party, which brought people of all communities together; a wide variety of social and educational agencies, set up by Gandhi and his associates, which later became known as non-governmental organisations; business associations, which had a long tradition of inter-communal interaction in the framework of artisan and mercantile guilds; and the Textile Labour Association (TLA) as a working class organisation which had both Hindu and Muslim mill hands in its fold and a programme that preached unity.

In Varshney’s opinion, these institutions were together crucial for producing a social climate characterised by harmony. Once these pillars started to crumble, and the collapse of the textile industry happened to be a major turning point, communal violence became ferocious. The author himself modifies his thesis of a strong Hindu-Muslim engagement which prevailed until a few decades ago. Congress leaders were never able, nor did they aim to, mobilise a large number of Muslims in the city during the anti-colonial struggle; only few Gandhian institutions reached out to either urban or rural segments of the main religious minority, the business associations in the city had an in-group character and did not promote civic interaction.

As for the TLA, Varshney concedes that a large proportion of Muslim mill workers decided to stay away from this union. I beg to differ from his main argument suggesting that political Hinduism is an altogether new phenomenon in Ahmedabad which has brought to an end the climate of tolerance and harmony built up by Gandhi and his disciples. A.M. Shah, among others, has critically questioned the suggestion that Gandhi’s message of non-violence had penetrated deeply in Gujarati society and culture during his lifetime. Whatever social relevance it then had, it certainly did not survive him.

My own opinion is that the communal divide which already existed in the past was strengthened by the segmentary, though not confrontational, politics adopted by the Congress before and after Independence. This parochial strategy, the KHAM coalition consisting of Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims, contained the underclasses in their own and separate identities as convenient vote banks. This electoral design was successful for a short span of time only because it provoked a vigorous and vicious backlash from those higher up in society. Their pent-up resentment was the momentum which the Hindutva forces capitalised to come to power...

...The recurrent riots in Ahmedabad towards the end of the 20th century cannot be understood merely as an upsurge of Hindu nationalism under high-caste leadership, planned and organised from a Hindutva perspective. The high tide of communalism is engineered by the promotion of a political economy which seeks to keep the working classes fragmented and in a state of dependency in order to reduce the price of their labour to the lowest possible level. At the end of February and in early March 2002, violence once again erupted in Ahmedabad — on a scale and intensity that far surpassed that of previous years. It is much too facile to suggest a direct causation between the looting, burning, a kill, which reached its climax in the industrial localities of the city, and massive impoverishment due to the collapse of the textile mills in the preceding quarter of a century.

A major difference with the earlier communal riots was that this time the search and destroy operation was not a spontaneous outburst of discontent and rivalry among people living at the bottom of the urban economy but well planned in advance and carried out with brutal precision...

...The residents of the slum localities were not only the victims of communal rage and hatred, but also responded en masse to the call to eliminate the members of the opposing group. The main targets of the violence were Muslims, many hundred of whom — men, women and children — were killed, often

in the most horrific ways. The pogrom made it clear that the Sangh parivar organisations had succeeded in inciting the lumpen army of unemployed and semi-unemployed youth in the industrial district to murder, looting and arson. In an early report on these events, I made a link between the mass redundancies that accompanied the closure of the mills, the impoverishment and degradation of the industrial neighbourhoods and the pogroms which took place largely in this milieu. The social cohesion that once existed has gone...

...This close-knit community feeling which used to exist, lives on in the narratives about what has been lost. They are memories of visits to one’s neighbour, to take part in the joys and sorrows of family life, to pay their respects or to show each other hospitality on festive occasions, to share the burden of everyday problems. This mesh of social cohesion that transcended the separate identify niches broke down once the mill had closed, the TLA started to fade away, and municipal agencies, due to lack of funding, ceased or drastically curtailed their welfare activities, which were also meeting points.

The climate of Social Darwinism that replaced it not only established the right of the survival of the fittest, but meant that the weakest

at the base of society are forced to compete with each other as hunter and hunted. In the course of my own stay in Ahmedabad during these fateful days in March 2002, I met with the secretary general of the TLA. He told me about his despair when he failed to get through to the police commissioner or to politicians of the ruling party once the pogrom had started. The lack of response to his incessant calls from his office on February 28, 2002, made him realise that the State machinery deliberately refused to end the rampage and that his union now really had become a spent force...

...When I left Ahmedabad at the end of March, order and peace had not yet been restored. The curfew was lifted in some parts of the city, only to be re-imposed the next day in the same or other localities because of few incidents. There has been hardly any discussion of what all this meant for the large number of working class households who fully depend on the erratic and meagre yield of their labour power.

Even under so-called normal circumstances, steady employment is difficult to come by, but for more than three weeks at a stretch they had not able to move around in their cumbersome search for gainful work. For many of them, the regular state of deprivation in which they live has further deteriorated into destitution. Without any food left and bereft of all creditworthiness, they have to survive on whatever private charities are willing to dole out to them. What does deserve attention is that, with a few exceptions, the institutions that represent civil society took no action at all when the communal riots and the horrific violence that accompanied them broke out.

Ahmedabad is proud of the large number of non-governmental agencies located in the city. In the past, commentators have widely praised their role in tackling poverty. This generated a hugely exaggerated picture, which included the glorification of NGO initiatives to which the private sector and the local government also contributed. These efforts have, however, reaped few benefits for the poorer sections of the population, and for the large number of Muslims among them in particular. For collective action, the city’s excluded minority has always been, and remain, dependent on charity from their own community. In the pauperised industrial districts of Ahmedabad ‘the righteous struggle’, which did succeed in generating a certain amount of inter-communal solidarity, lives on only in the memory of a better past.

The writer is Professor of Comparative Sociology, University of Amsterdam.

This is an edited extract from the book, The Making and Unmaking of An Industrial Working Class, Oxford University Press

Temple versus terror

The Indian Express
Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Temple versus terror
October 17 is not a climactic point. VHP is in it for the long haul

ASHOK MALIK

As the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Ram readies to take on the regime of RAM — Rajput-Ahir-Muslim, the social coalition underpinning Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government in Uttar Pradesh — a sense of deja vu is inescapable.

Once again the VHP is demanding its temple. Once again the BJP is trapped in the silence of ambiguity, unsure of what it thinks the prime minister wants it to say and what its instincts tell it to say. Once again Ayodhya has been converted into a garrison town.

Identifying the villain is facile business. The prevailing intellectual wisdom over the past few years has been straightforward: Vajpayee, good; BJP, tolerable; VHP, terrible. The Ashok Singhal-Pravin Togadia group, by this reckoning, is a bunch of religious crazies, completely at the margins of Indian society. The Ram issue is politically dead.

From the cosy confines of drawing room Delhi, this logic appears perfectly tenable. It doesn’t square up, however, with two niggling bits of reality.

One, why is the VHP attracting substantially larger crowds than it ever has? Admittedly, these are not always huge, revolution-inducing throngs; but they are significantly larger than those in, say, the late 1990s.

To cite stray examples from 2003 itself, Togadia gathered over 100,000 people at a Mangalore rally, another 60,000 in Aurangabad and addressed 11 meetings in Madhya Pradesh, with crowds in even small centres rarely falling below 20,000-25,000. In short, the threshold of VHP mobilisation autonomous of the BJP has gone up.

Two, there is a creeping fear in the BJP that the VHP is rhetorically divorcing it from a certain aggressive positioning in the politics of Hindu nationalism. This will not sink the BJP but, in an election without an overriding emotive issue, could do some damage.

There is a disinclination, born partly of hostility and partly of sheer laziness, to recognise just how — and how much — the VHP has grown, in numbers and in terms of appropriation of ideas. For instance, while focused on the Ram mandir, the VHP has sought to exploit the hard mood against terrorism.

In the VHP’s dream scenario, the Ram mandir issue will become an adjunct to India’s war against jihad. Ram, a sort of Hindu St George, will become what he already is to the faithful, a symbol of national identity and security.

All this may appear far-fetched but the VHP’s thought process is not quite random. It is based, to some degree, on an April 2002 document available to only the Parishad’s upper echelons. A survey of public opinion, the document was, for lack of a better expression, a SWOT analysis for the VHP.

Respondents were asked to identify the number one issue of concern for India from a given universe. Poverty — under which category were subsumed worries about income and subsistence — was right on top with 45 per cent. Terrorism came second with 25 per cent.

What did this mean for the Ram movement?

Economic issues, unfortunately or otherwise, have never dominated Indian public life. Historically, opinion poll after opinion poll, pre-election survey after pre-election survey has shown a sharp differential between the questions ‘‘What is the biggest problem facing the country?’’ and ‘‘Which issues will determine your vote?’’ The answer to the first is usually defined by economic perennials, to the second by prevailing emotions.

As such, terrorism was more likely to work a mob, especially at a time when the Indian government’s policy on Pakistan tended to oscillate between tepid and ambivalent. In their public meetings, VHP leaders now speak of only two issues: temple and terrorism.

The 2002 document was educative in terms of the social base of VHP religio-nationalism. While support was relatively high among lower income groups and the rich, the big city middle class was seen as fickle. Its support was influenced by immediate provocations — such as Godhra — and not consistent. Among caste groups, the VHP found it had not made substantial inroads into the Dalit community.

The geographical spread of the VHP also presents a contrast from the mandir agitation of the early 1990s. Support, insiders admit, has peaked if not declined in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The boom areas are Gujarat and Maharashtra, parts of Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, north Karnataka and odd areas in Andhra Pradesh.

A whole generation of political analysts has come of age convincing itself of secret, election-eve deals between the VHP and the BJP. It is difficult to make them believe that the top leadership of the sangh twins is barely on talking terms.

In part, this is a personality clash. To the VHP, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and, increasingly, L.K. Advani, are snarl words, crypto-secularists if you like, who sought to use the Kanchi Shankaracharya to split the Ram constituency.

To the BJP, Singhal is an irascible character, cussed and unwilling to see reason. The second generation senses it will have to do business with the VHP some day, maybe after the 2004 election, but is unwilling to oppose the party elders right now.

To the VHP, the October 17 gathering in Ayodhya is not a climactic point. It is only the beginning of a long haul, one in which it will have to pressure enough MPs to agree to parliamentary legislation on Ayodhya.

For the moment, that seems a forlorn hope. What is decidedly more real, is the fear that the VHP may just launch a new political party — ‘‘the H Party’’, as some put it — committed to the Hindu cause. An ultimatum to the BJP is expected after the assembly elections in December. The VHP has even identified two possible leaders from the BJP’s second generation, though it is far from obvious that they will jump ship.

What will this new party, if it arrives, achieve? VHP strategists say it could win 30-40 Lok Sabha seats and play a role in a future coalition. A more sober assessment suggests it may win nothing — but still slice away, say, a fifth of the BJP vote in a number of constituences.

In the Ramayan, when Ram sent Sita to the forest, the vitality of his existence vanished too. Is the BJP set to repeat that tragedy?

Stirring the hornet’s nest | Letters To the Editor - Hindustan Times

Letters To the Editor - Hindustan Times, October 15, 2003
 
Stirring the hornet’s nest

Atal Bihari Vajpayee implying that the prohibitory orders from Ayodhya and Faizabad should be withdrawn by the Mulayam Singh Yadav government, is arbitrary (We should trust VHP: PM, October 13). There are many instances where VHP leaders have broken their promises. Praveen Togadia never kept the promise he made to the court in Rajasthan in April that he would not give hate speeches anymore. And Ashok Singhal has recently been charge-sheeted for his alleged role in the Babri masjid demolition.

Vishal Arora, Delhi

II

Every time people seem to be settling down to a life free from communal tension and of socio-economic progress, the VHP and its allied organisations whip up communal tension by declaring some puja or darshan at Ayodhya (Treading choppy waters, October 14). And when elections are round the corner, their love for Ram increases even at the cost of national interest. The temple issue has earned India a bad image in the world.

Because of a communal polarisation encouraged by the so-called perpetrators of Hindutva, mutual suspicion and hostility have increased manifold. Silence and inaction on the part of saner elements will encourage animosity, resulting in destabilisation.

Ved Guliani, via e-mail

TV Spirituality: Bhakti Button

Outlook Magazine, October 20, 2003

Bhakti Button

God rides the ether as his angels, in many flavours, reach
for sofa-bound souls

[by] Harsh Kabra

Preaching was never so lucrative. With salvation outsourced,
the boob tube now wants to be your drawing-room deliverer,
promising armchair enlightenment and remote-controlled
emancipation.

What started with good old Doordarshan‚s pioneering daybreak
discourses was fleetly espoused by almost all satellite channels,
culminating in Maharishi Veda Vision, Sanskar, Aastha and,
most recently, Sadhna, all with an overtly Hindu bent, much
like the Christian agenda of God TV, the Syro-Malabar
Church-promoted Jeevan TV, MiracleNet, Eternal World
Television‚s Global Catholic Network and Human Upliftment
Organisation‚s Golden Age Television. And as Muslims
appropriated specks of Pakistan TV and Arabic channels, the
Sikhs have leaned towards Alpha Punjabi, Lashkara and ETC
Punjabi for their feed of telly spirituality˜the latter prized
by expats for Gurbani beamed from Amritsar‚s Golden temple.
And this plethora hasn't kept more players from sallying into
the fray. ATN International's bilingual Ahimsaa TV debuted
on Gandhi Jayanti this year, and Sanskriti and Sudarshan TV
are in the works.

Eyeball dynamics bear out the enthusiasm. At least 50 per
cent of the 40-plus age group, accounting for over 60 per cent
of the estimated 150 million viewers in the 24 million cable
homes in India, are believed to have taken to spirituality on
the tube. A share that's poised to surge with higher cable and
satellite TV penetration in India, which, reports Media Partners,
stood at 53 per cent in 2002 and will scale up to 65 per cent
by 2015 astride a subscriber base of 96 million. The overall
current share of religious channels may be a scrimpy 1 per
cent, but it still translates into an average weekly reach of
15 million (TAM Media Research) for the five major channels
in July ‚03 (see chart).

Spiritual channels, like the rest of their free-to-air clan, survive
on airtime sales and sponsorships (God TV also receives
donations). Their modest tariff cards have steadily drawn
advertisers looking to improve niche exposure and campaign
frequency. "The advertiser finds that our viewer is patient and
doesn‚t surf channels," asserts Dilip Kabra of Sanskar.

On their part, the Hindu channels are just waking up to the
idea of content being the key differentiator. But as Ashish Bhasin,
director, Integrated Marketing Action Group, Lowe India, avers:
"As of now, all channels look the same. The content begs
improvement." Kabra is more realistic: "A lot needs to be done,
but issues of financial viability stifle costly projects...."

Which is where usps atrophy. Like in real-world spirituality,
those who believe in nothing can be seen lapping up virtually
anything. One sees celebrity speakers like Sudhanshuji Maharaj
trailed by a growing breed of self-appointed masters claiming
to interpret ancient esoteric knowledge, chivvying nebulous
notions of inner peace. Souls materialistic are lambasted for
their ever-growing possessions by ever-more expensive gurus.
One wonders if the speakers and audiences are animated as
much by the ideas at hand as by the presence of a TV camera;
or if cant is a natty shortcut to social acclaim.

It‚s the swelling throngs at gala discourses that inspired
channels like Sanskar in the first place. Says Kabra: "The
country is imbued with spirituality...there existed a ready
audience." Rakesh Gupta, MD, Sadhna TV, was spurred by
the tightening tentacles of the soap culture: "Sadhna was
envisaged as a medium to extricate viewers from the
imaginary world of fiction, where vices are shown in the
name of Indian culture and producers play with the
emotions of viewers."

Passion is all right. But it can't offset tentative production
standards, poor execution. How can content like home
videos of devotional songs and congregations ever poach
upon the audiences of chic soaps and film shows? Kabra
insists it‚s a myth that home videos do not amount to quality
content. "Not only would you find high levels of devotion
in them, they also showcase promising singers," he explains.

The channels are also changing tack, to claim the attentions
of diverse age groups. Some like the Kochi-based
Jeevan TV have become entertainment channels with
spirituality confined to daily slots. Others are zooming in on
younger age groups with programmes on yoga, Art of Living.

A flip through Aastha and Sadhna unleashes a slew of
astrologers and Vaastushastra or Feng Shui experts
bombarding you with contact details and rate cards for
various 'services'. Aren't these channels becoming ready
vehicles of promotion for some? Gupta concedes they
are, but adds: "These subjects are closely related to our
culture, scientifically proven and popular. Even the
government is approving full-fledged courses in astrology
and vaastu."

The political abuse of the medium is another apprehension.
Political analyst A.S. Ojha recently told a news agency:
"These channels may not be party to poll pandering but
our right-wing parties will discover ways to use them to
legitimise their ideologies." TV producer Kiran Mittal trod
a step ahead. "They have a political slant," he declared.
"When they talk of promoting Indian heritage, why do
they only promote Hinduism and no other religion?"
Gupta spars: "We are only spreading the message of
peace and harmony enshrined in Hinduism...to talk
about India without Hinduism is like talking about a
person without a conscience." Iqbal Malhotra, director
of Delhi-based aim Television, concurs: "The channels
are not purveying a militant Hindu line. There is no
evidence of a party or ideological line. They are tapping
into a niche, a lucrative market thirsting for a blend of
eastern spiritualism, western precepts."

Which way do you then look at the likes of God TV?
Reveals Thomas Robinson, channel director for Asia
and Middle East: "Our channel is about spreading the
love of God, helping people find God. It‚s not about a
religion but about the person Jesus who brings joy
and peace into our lives." Are such Christian channels
stabs at countering the Hindu movement? Robinson
denies it: "We respect the varied culture and beliefs
of everyone and have nothing to do with the Hindu
movement."

So is all this marking a waypost in the evolution of a
certain genre, undecided about distinctions between
institutional religion and bona fide spirituality. Says
Santosh Kumar Jain, MD, ATN International: "Ahimsaa
believes in a multi-religious platform, a new market in
the area of social TV aimed at all age groups and faiths.
(But) I don‚t think there‚s anything wrong with
channels focusing on one faith, like MTV focuses on the
youth." Says Suresh Chavanke, COO, Sudarshan TV:
"We want to blend socialism and spiritualism and replace
the political bent of social activities with a philosophical
bent."

All in all, the concepts seem worthy, pronounces Bhasin,
but "they‚ll succeed only through a mix of entertainment
and education.And in the long run, only one or two
players will survive in every genre."

So talk of commercialisation of spirituality be damned, is
it time to give in to the spiel? As Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says,
"The mind has become commercial and can only be
captured commercially." Amen.

Habib Tanvir: In the eye of a storm

Magazine / The Hindu
Oct 12, 2003
URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mag/2003/10/12/stories/2003101200230400.htm

THEATRE

In the eye of a storm

Veteran theatre person Habib Tanvir has been at the receiving end for staging two plays that deal with issues like untouchability, casteism and communal harmony. He speaks to SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY about the controversy.


IF William Shakespeare had been a 21st Century Indian dramatist, his "Hamlet" would not have had the line, `What's in a name?' And, if the bard had persisted with it, he would have got a sharp retort: "Everything!"

At least, that is what theatre thespian Habib Tanvir would have said.

Suddenly after being on the road for 60 years, the second-generation migrant from Pakistan finds that his name has become a baggage these days. After all, how can a Muslim stage plays that laughs at the tyranny of upper caste Brahmins? So what if he has been showing "Ponga Pandit" for decades in every corner of the country, and abroad.

Tanvir admits he has been wedged in the maelstrom of politics. Touring through Madhya Pradesh with the plays, "Ponga Pandit" and "Jisse Lahore Nahin Dekhya" last month sponsored by MP Sanskriti Parishad, the 80-year-old veteran had to face the fury of militant Sangh Parivar groups for what they called "playing with religious feelings".

"The series of attacks on my plays, particularly `Ponga Pandit', have nothing to do with religious sentiment. With state elections coming, it is mere play of politics between the ruling party and the Opposition. And, I have a name that suits them," says the veteran, somewhat fractious at the way "things are becoming anti-art".

"Theatre, for that matter any art, is not just supposed to entertain but to stimulate thinking. It should ironically laugh at life, question our rituals, lacks, social evils," he says.

Art, to him, is all about asking questions. "Ponga Pandit" too asks questions. "It is a deeply religious play and shows that to reach God you do not need a via media," argues the Padma Shree dramatist.

But who would argue with a band of self-declared custodians of Hinduism swearing to "even take the bullets" to prevent the play from being performed.

Interestingly, this is not the first time Tanvir has been on the right-wingers' hit list. Soon after the Babri Masjid demolition, his plays were targeted too. "There were protests in Gwalior. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad also demonstrated in the United Kingdom when I took my plays there," he says.

This time, what upset the members of Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharatiya Janata Party were scenes showing a character entering the village temple with shoes, a sweeper carrying an idol in her basket and a pundit lighting an incense stick with a bidi. But the director of the Naya Theatre argues, "The character shown entering the temple with his slippers is a village simpleton. When the priest tells him to leave his shoes outside because God lives in a temple, he asks, `does that mean God is not everywhere'.

"Also, it shows the sweeper genuinely interested in listening to the Satya Narayan Katha, but with the pandit coming in between with endless rituals, she decides not to have medium to reach God."

While the play pokes fun at upper-caste Hindus, what is not true is the Sangh Parivar's campaign that Tanvir has written the play. It was actually penned by two Dalit writers way back in 1930s, which explains the constant reference to the upper caste oppression.

"I chose `Ponga Pandit' because it speaks for social equality and justice.

"`Jisse Lahore Nahin Dekhya' is a superb play to show people the strength of communal harmony, an issue most important in present-day India, especially after the genocide in Gujarat," says Tanvir.

And therein lies another irony. "Jisse Lahore Nahin Dekhya" is fine with the right-wingers, for it shows a fanatical gang of Muslims trying to chase away Hindus from Lahore. It suits their political agenda but social evils like untouchability, caste-system and hollow rituals are shown in "Ponga Pandit", it angers them.

"It is a pity that politicians are rapidly bringing the country into a situation that do not permit art to flourish," says the Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee.

Responding to the Sangh Parivar observation that he should set his eyes on Muslim religious atrocities too, Tanvir comments, "If someone does come out with a play which criticises oppression of the weak in the name of any religion, I would be the last person to protest".

He says the Valmiki Samaj performed a puja organised by the BJP to protest against his plays. "But interestingly, it was not allowed to be held inside the temple but just outside it. And, this inequality is what `Ponga Pandit' laughs at," he adds.

Though, according to a local newspaper, none of the state BJP office bearers had seen "Ponga Pandit", Tanvir says, "Two BJP MLAs turned up with a big posse of supporters at Baghpat on the Janamastami night. Since the play is basically a comedy, it has dialogues and situations, which can surely tickle your senses.

"The leaders too were seen laughing at the discourse but as they came with a decided plan of action, slogan shouting, pelting of stones and eggs soon started. After much pleading to carry on the play, both by the cast and the genuine theatregoers, we had to leave the stage fearing violence."

But none of all this actually scares Tanvir. After a brief visit to Delhi, he is eager to get back to Bhopal and hit the road with "Ponga Pandit" and "Jisse Lahore Nahin Dekhya" again.

THE RIOT ECONOMY: The Ganj Basoda case

South Asia Citizen's Wire Special
October 4, 2003
URL: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sacw/new/CommunalMPOct2003.html

THE RIOT ECONOMY:
The Ganj Basoda case

Produced by The Bhopal Group on Communalism

On the 14th of January, 2003 "riots erupted" in Ganj Basoda, a small town of Madhya Pradesh -the first tremors of a post Gujarat Hindutva. The incident was swiftly attributed to the slaughter of a cow. This article following the incident and its surroundings inverts this modality to argue that the alleged ‘cow-slaughter’, far from being a reason of the riots could only have been a necessary appendage of the economy of the riot itself.

"The incident happened at around nine in the morning. Near 11:30 the shops were on fire. Within an hour, 132 out of the 144 muslim-owned shops in the town had been gutted and burnt down. Soon the ash settled and the administration took charge "
Janpad panchayat president, Ganj Basoda

"According to the police, the trouble began on Tuesday morning when the word spread across the town that a cow was being slaughtered in the house of a rickshaw puller, identified as Salim, 33, a resident of Choori mohalla. As the word spread across the town, an angry mob gathered in the area and went on the rampage, indulging in arson and stone pelting………. Though the accused managed to escape, two carcass and 12 hides were reportedly recovered from his house…. Police later arrested the accused………..The accused was involved in such activities in the past also and a similar incident was reported in 1999, a senior state police official said"
Hindustan Times, Wednesday, January 15, 2003

"It was an assemblage of about five hundred people, who divided into smaller groups of 70-80. Each group responsible for a location and consisting largely of people from that particular locality." An observer

Ganj Basoda, the town that witnessed the ‘riots’ -a classification, we shall challenge in this article- on the 14th of january in which almost all the muslim owned shops were selectively gutted and put on fire is a small town of about eighty thousand people of whom a very small fraction (about 5-6 percent) are muslims. The town is apparently not one of those afflicted sites, where communal violence erupts habitually, echoing the faintest, distant howls; like a mourning in which continence itself may bear violent overtones, a mourning for which a violence had to be self-inflicted.

"The trouble began on Tuesday morning when the word spread around that a cow was being slaughtered in the house of a rickshaw puller, Salim " [1]. What does the word ‘trouble’ allude to here? What is the expanse of ‘events’ that it circumscribes? Is it a uniform sequence of events to be put into a single box, engendered by a single event- the first disturbance of a peace; the first disturbance on a still surface. Let us broach the subject further. This ‘disturbing’ event, the alleged ‘genesis’ of the trouble was: A cow had been killed. To use a hackneyed phrase -which however on that account, should only be more seriously taken, leave alone, trivialised- ‘this hurt the sensibilities of the majority community’. The rest, was the revenge of ‘the hurt’.

All empirical evidence, as we will argue in this article, suggests that this alleged sparking point -the slaughter of a cow- could only have been a fictional point created as a lump to which reason is made to fall back upon - the sinful, illegitimate, matricidal lump. But how could reason rest there. This lump will need to be broken into minute parts, the ‘event’ into its component ‘events’. Where exactly did the ruckus begin? Did somebody see a cow being slaughtered? Or did somebody see a cow being taken inside a house, where the lone purpose could have been to slaughter it? How did the news travel; who were the harbingers? None of these and many such questions, the just demands of a logical coherence, were followed. Logic, once it reached (leaping over obstacles) to a comfortable end - the Event- was stubbed. These aspersions of fiction on the Event are however not meant to make a positivistic statement claiming an umbrella inculpability for Salim and his family. This is only to say that there is little evidence to support the particular charge against Salim’s family of having slaughtered a cow on that particular moment, the trigger to the ‘riots’-The Event. In fact, as the imbricated facts and interests are gradually unfolded, one effortlessly shifts to the point, where one can see it strip into an astute plot carefully timed and placed. That however does not mean that this plot excluded every element of spontaneity. Far from it, it harvested -a harvest perhaps provided for in its modality- deeply sown seeds of hatred, a structurally misdirected organicity; an organicity which is more akin to a malignant tumour than to a growth of life.

Salim’s family of three included his wife and an adolescent daughter. They lived in a rented house, a small kutcha house with a polythene sheet for a roof with the landlords’ double storey building providing the backdrop. Salim: a rickshaw-puller (what economy for a person’s description!); his wife: a housewife and by many accounts, an industrious woman who used to trade in animal flesh, bringing it from Sagar and Sironj towns which house licensed butcher houses; his daughter: a girl-child entering that age (of marriage) when parents in many parts of the country anxiously start scrambling for the tiniest bits of resources. In this poor family’s struggle for a living, the petty trade in animal flesh was an important aspect.

Animal flesh is an expensive commodity, often beyond the means of the working classes. Among the different types of animal flesh, beef - meat of the buffalo and cow family- for the simple demand-supply equation costs only a fraction of the cost of meat and poultry. While beef, as most who have eaten it say, has no particular palatal advantage -except may be the advantage of difference, no mean advantage- it is no gross disadvantage either. This skew, largely a creation of the partial ban on beef in the state, carves a niche in the market for beef. Surprisingly, contrary to expectations where a ban should have hopped up prices, beef rates remained more or less stable -a clear indicator that the prices were being determined not by discerning palates but the hungry needs of the masses, from whom there was little to gain by bargain; the risk element could not be converted into money, for there was just no surplus to appropriate; a cornered dealer can do nothing but squirm. It was this market that Salim’s wife, eager for avenues to augment the family income, was battling in. Commuting to Sagar every few days by a local train, surreptitiously carrying flesh in it, regularly bribing the railway police personnel and the ticket checker, secretly bringing it home and selling it from there -no mean labour for a small amount of money. And for all this labour, Salim remained a rickshaw puller, pulling people twice his body weight; his house, the rented shanty it was. This destitute family, breaking its back in the struggle for life was however not even to be spared to live its lot; after all, it had hurt ‘sensibilities’, venomous sensibilities which like flying snakes in waiting, would hover from all around to bite it.

While Salim’s wife used to trade in animal flesh and also beef, there is little evidence to suggest that she traded in cow-beef and none which points towards their ‘slaughtering of cows’. Besides, even if for a moment we were to disregard this dearth of evidence, a backward logical movement from the embellished, smooth structure of the larger events (which are blamed to have been engendered by the cow slaughter, The Event) that followed, proves that The Event -or rather its fiction- fits in too well, comfortably and organically with this structure to have been exterior to it -and the structure too well laid out to be precariously built on this tenuous foundation. It could only have been this structure’s creation, its own necessary appendage. We need to discerningly follow and disentangle these events, which left entwined are fiddles for the dominants.

"The incident happened at around nine in the morning. Near 11:30 the shops were on fire. Within an hour, 132 out of the 144 muslim-owned shops in the town had been gutted and burnt down". There are no hiccups between the first and the second sentence, for those two and half hours. This is the interregnum when the Event (whatever be its form) is transformed into a riot: stone pelting, plundering and finally, burning of shops -the culmination, the final vengeance, complete annihilation of the symbol in the shop- after which the revenge, the thirst quenched, it settles down. This is the period of the spreading of the word, the swarming of people, the incitement of passions, the formation of the frenzy. This period of transformation is the main culprit for which the tenuous beginning (the Event) is a poor alibi. That beginning could only have been the necessary elongation of this interregnum, the initiation of the elements of the interregnum -a holy initiation.

This interregnum is the breathing space that ideas shocked with the first brush of reality need, to gather their appurtenances, reorganise their senses, to cast one last look to see that everything is settled for the launch. As the events to follow it would tell, it was during this interregnum that the Basoda ‘riots’ were infused with the rational core that determined their fine method -an exacting strategy, precise targets and a limit.

"Within an hour, 132 out of the 144 muslim-owned shops in the town had been gutted and burnt down". Ganj Basoda has a fairly spread market, in which there is little to distinguish shops on the basis of their ownership. There is no spatial or functional segregation -no concentration of muslim shops. But for some convenient cases, it is difficult to make appellate distinctions -identifications of shops are more often than not secular. How then does it become possible to segregate every single of these scattered muslim-owned shops -they constitute no more than 5-6% of the total number of shops- plunder them and set them to fire, all within an hour or a little more. Let us not forget that this is as precise an exercise as any, an error of less than ten percent, that too not human, but solely due to the swigs of fire. The few muslim shops that remained, by most accounts belong to members of one or the other factions of the right -the BJP, the RSS, the Bajrang dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

What informed this method? Were they catalogues that had been astutely prepared, discerningly studied, mnemonically memorised. Probably, yes. But that would still be insufficient and not unfold itself as full-proof as the real act suggests. It needed the aid of a method, organic and structurally located; harnessing a raw and alive information.

"It was an assemblage of about five hundred people, who divided into smaller groups of 70-80. Each group responsible for a location and consisting largely of people from that particular locality." The division of the mass on neighbourhood lines, clusters of local people carrying minute details -If the shop was rented by a muslim, only the ware had to be destroyed; if it belonged to a muslim, the shop was to be put to flame- also perfect foil to settle old scores, vengeance that may have long forgotten its roots. Spreading over the town, these groups break into identified shops, plunder and set fire. Within a period of about an hour, the project- benefiting from the economy of decentralisation- is completed. These groups never move to the residential areas or indulge in further damage. The commotion ends at its very peak, when it has tasted ‘victory’, a surrender of the adversary. Would a rabid crowd be satisfied with a symbolic end -burnt shops? Would it not push itself straight into the adversary’s den -the residential areas- to lay the enemy prostrate physically, in the ‘real’ sense? Would it not at least, cross the limit somewhere, for a moment, may be?

This divided mass instead stops abruptly after the commercial areas, without a single leap towards the residential areas, nor towards any other object. Its consummate economy -precisely marked shops looted and burnt to order, a finely defined finitude, an absolute lack of transgression- never betrays the lack of a central rational control. There is no ‘mass’ here, no traces of disorder, no madness -no ‘riots’. This was a project that had met its objective and its objective successfully completed, it vanished living behind haunting traces. We however do not mean that this project was devoid of all organic appendages, a glossy ball that collected no dust. Far from it, it gained profusely from these organic wastes. But its core, the movement defining element remained till the end, in the anterior, the programmed instrumental rationality which it inherited from the moment of conception. To understand the conceptual constitution of this project, we need to cast a glance at the surroundings, from where the seed was cast, or at least from where it got the orders to finally erupt out of its shell -the portentous shadows of which the teratogen’s actual birth was only a concretisation, a cold condensation.

If Salim’s family traded in beef (of any kind) there was nothing extra about the 14th of January. If it had exceeded legal limits, the excess continued from years before and the VHP, Bajrang Dal etc. -by all accounts, the executors of the project- with their extensive ruffian network could not have been oblivious of it. Salim’s landlord (Soni) as also the household opposite of the street (Yadav) are both active VHP and Bajrang Dal activists (respectively). It is worth noting here that two years back, the muslim community had disallowed Salim, a rented house in their locality for his alleged indulgence in beef-like trade. For whatever legal transgression Salim may be exposed to blame, he can not be tried for making that moment, the moment of the Event (or rather, the fiction of the Event) possible. And what dubious logical leap is made to account for the transformation of this fiction into a violent display in which the property of a particular community is selectively put to fire, the hard-earned savings of a lifetime’s labour reduced to ash, a people converted into illegitimates in their own land -the religious identity of the fictitious transgressor!

It was not Salim’s excess that marked the 14th of January. The project -or its timing- was a necessary congealing of the surroundings, the filling of a void, the exuberant overbrimming of the void; a reckoning to be finally counted, to be at last rewarded. A sign of the surroundings that hovered about the project, anterior to its actualization, can be found in the events that followed the project. The hoverings themselves came into overt lustrous forms -public declarations, speeches with much fanfare, statements of intent- culminating in threats of carry-over to the elections, the final front. It is at this end, this constantly alluded final point that this economy finally bares the aetiology of its projects, of the project. It is the economy of the front i.e., the election-market, which insinuates itself, back and forth, in all its projects.

We would do well to take a view of some ‘significant’ moments that surround the events in Godhra. In February 2002, the Godhra carnage takes place which, irrespective of its cause, is efficaciously used by the BJP regime in Gujarat to allow a violent deluge against the muslim community. A delirium is created. A delirium strong enough to wipe away the formations of political rancour against the BJP, which had been steadily building up for more than a year, and tenacious enough to yield a bumper harvest, nine months later. The consummate economy of the frenzy could not but vehemently push the case for its own repetition -even if a ‘riot’ had to be manufactured.

Following the Gujarat results, members of the BJP and the VHP openly assumed menacing tones, threatening repeats over the country: Hindutva had finally come of age; the instrument had passed the acid test, it waited eagerly for another prey -writhing against the tether to jump on the next passersby. It could not have laid low long. Madhya Pradesh seemed to be the most convenient and potentially rewarding spot to give it its bite of flesh. In late December itself, Uma Bharati -Madhya Pradesh’s potential Narendra Modi - was handed over the reins and Narendra Modi -the beast himself-, the stewardship. By early January, she had started camping in Bhopal, travelling into the hinterland and building the ‘tempo’ of the party cadres. Not to be left behind, an upbeat VHP, asserted itself in the form of a rally in Bhopal chaperoned by its version of Narendra (Milosevic) Modi, Praveen Togadia. And there were many more marches of the exuberant ‘victors of Gujarat’, uninitiated into restrain.

Togadia on the 11th of January declared in a press conference in Bhopal [2.], "Not only Madhya Pradesh but also other states would be painted in saffron colours by the time the next assembly elections are held here". There are no interludes in this exposition. The particular is precisely located in the general, it is the later from which it derives its substantiality. The period is defined by the ‘given’ -project end. The instrument is clear by its colour and the act clear in the continuity of its expanse -paint. This statement however reflects a position that has moved far ahead of its vacillating countenance a decade back. The ‘Saffron’ had dropped from being a supposedly ideological position to its real place in the squalor of the election-market. It is this squalor, which determines its forms and its moments of assertion.

It of course requires no digging to locate the roots of the discourse on cow slaughter -or the event of cow slaughter- in the election ground. And as cows are everywhere, temples are everywhere too -scattered ready-to-harvest sacrednesses. Be it the Ayodhya site or the recent case of Bhojshala in Dhar, the archaeology of ‘Hindu religious sites’ is well synchronised with the movement of the election machine. So are other aspects of the BJP (and its allies’) propaganda: Swadeshi, Islamic terrorism, Muslim population burst, Pakistan bashing etc.

But these phenomenon are obvious enough not to warrant a reiteration. The relation that the BJP has helped congeal between genocide and electoral fortunes in a liberal democratic setup, the possibility of a (necessary) relation between gross violence and a democratic sham, is finally on a vulgar display. This forthrightness is obviously a result of the substantial power and resources edifice that it has structurally established for itself, specially in the last decade or so. While symbols like temple, cow etc. have undoubtedly played an important role in its rise, it was only a matter of time before the organisation outgrew these symbols. It obviously still progresses stepping on symbols, but then with the growth and establishment of the organisation, the scarcity of symbols ceases to be a limiting factor. There it is important that the resistance movement too move beyond a ‘symbolic’ to a real contest; from a contestation of symbols to a battle of organisation; from tolerating a democratic chimera to a movement for substantive democracy.

In the cow, temple etc. were traces that the sangh parivar fed, cultivated and harvested. The selection was a shrewd one not only in terms of the potential of their appeal but also in the inherent proclivities of the tendencies so galvanised. In such a situation, the congress strategy of attempting to appropriate the BJP’s symbols, and therefore of feeding the same tendencies is characteristic of its vulgar opportunism. While the possibility of this providing a temporary strut to the congress cannot be theoretically dismissed, it is more probable that in the sloughs of the last vestiges of liberalism -once its very raison d’etre- may finally be the appearance of its own disintegration. Cows and temples, the BJP’s steps of ascendance may well be the steps that the congress uses to descend.


Endnotes:

1. Extract from HT, quoted above
2. Press Trust of India, 11th January, 2003

Dissent (Summer 2003)
Genocide in Gujarat
The International Community Looks Away

by Martha C. Nussbaum

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/su03/nussbaum.htm