Crime, Politics & Hypocrisy: The BJP’s comeuppance (Praful Bidwai)

Crime, Politics & Hypocrisy

The BJP’s comeuppance

By Praful Bidwai

[August 30, 2004]

There is more than poetic justice in the way in which the law caught up with Ms Uma Bharati through a Karnataka arrest warrant, forcing her resignation as Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister. That this should have happened bang in the middle of the BJP’s high-decibel campaign against “tainted” ministers in Dr Manmohan Singh’s Cabinet only lends a comically ironic edge to the unfolding drama. The BJP’s campaign is a strained attempt to occupy the moral high ground just when it had no issues on which to prove its political relevance or provide a half-way coherent opposition to the UPA.

The BJP should have known better—quite simply because many of its top leaders, including Messrs L.K. Advani and M. M. Joshi, face serious criminal charges. Its own former president was caught accepting a bribe on camera in the Tehelka “sting” operation. Its campaign against “tainted” ministers was likely to boomerang sooner or later, whether in Uttar Pradesh (where its ranks include proportionally more people with criminal charges and convictions than perhaps any other party), or elsewhere. Only two years ago, Mr Vajpayee re-inducted Mr George Fernandes into his Cabinet although he hadn’t been cleared of Tehelka-related charges of serious corruption in defence deals.

The BJP is trying to make light of the criminal charges against Ms Bharati, by equating her case with that of Coal Minister Shibu Soren’s. It also claims the charges are politically motivated and frivolous. This will not wash. Mr Soren has already resigned from the Cabinet. If he exited as a villain, Ms Bharati hasn’t emerged a martyr. The indictment against Ms Bharati is serious: rioting, instigating a mob to violence, and attempt to murder during a 1994 agitation to forcibly dislodge a Muslim organisation (Anjuman-i-Islam) from the Idgah maidan in Hubli, which it baselessly claimed was a public ground. The incident led to 6 deaths.

Ms Bharati chose to ignore more than 100 court summons and bailable warrants and as many 18 non-bailable warrants. The S.M. Krishna government in 2002 tried to withdraw the cases against her because a “compromise” had been reached through former Prime Minister H.D. Deva Gowda’s intervention. But now, Karnataka’s Congress-JD(S) government has in its discretion decided to restore the cases. It’s ludicrous to claim that the first discretionary move was right but the second one was wrong. In any case, Ms Bharati has no right to evade trial which will establish her guilt or innocence.

Underpinning the BJP’s rhetoric is the distinction it makes between “political” and “criminal” cases. It says its opponents violate laws, or are dacoits, murderers, etc., but its own leaders are charged with “political” offences—like causing the razing of the Babri mosque. This distinction is utterly and perniciously spurious. The demolition was a horrible act driven by communal hatred, a vile crime, whose gravity was compounded by the orgy of mass lynchings that followed, causing hundreds of deaths, especially in Mumbai. Such hate acts are far more reprehensible than individual crimes. They must be more severely punished.

Ms Bharati’s offence in Hubli falls exactly within that category. It was part of the BJP’s hate campaign, launched to establish a political toehold in Karnataka. Hubli and Baba Budhangiri in Chikmagalur district were the two planks on which it incited anti-Muslim emotions through fiery rhetoric. In Hubli, it dangerously polarised opinion by trying to forcibly occupy the Idgah maidan. In the second case, the BJP-VHP tried to “capture” the shrine of a Muslim saint also worshipped by the Hindus. In both places, it played with fire.

The most despicable part of this political mobilisation was the abuse of the National Flag as a Hindutva symbol. Hindu communalists increasingly use this tactic to falsely equate the religious majority with the nation itself. They challenge the minorities to prove their “loyalty” to the nation—by subordinating themselves to the majority. As Sumit and Tanika Sarkar and other historians argue in their Saffron Flags, Khaki Shorts (Orient Longman, 1993), this equation is characteristic of majoritarianism, itself akin to fascism. It distorts the true nature of the national community, comprised of equal citizens, by privileging one religious group. It is profoundly anti-democratic.

So it’s abominably dishonest for Ms Bharati to claim she’s being arrested for hoisting the Tricolour, when the Flag served as a mere cover or mask for her cynically communal politics. If anything, such abuse makes Ms Bharati’s offence graver. It also bears recalling that the BJP’s top leaders owe their primary loyalty not to the Tricolour but to the RSS’s triangular saffron flag. For decades, the RSS rejected the National Flag, in particular its green (read, “Islamic”) colour-band and the Ashoka Chakra (a Buddhist symbol).

The BJP seems to have cunningly made a threefold calculation in asking Ms Bharati to resign and launch her Tiranga Yatra from Hubli to Jallianwala Bagh. First, it reckons, this will help boost its demand that “tainted” RJD leaders like Mr Laloo Prasad and Mr Taslimuddin should quit. Second, the Yatra may gather momentum and strengthen the claim that Ms Bharati is being “victimised” for a cause at least as noble as the Jharkhand movement. Third, it would help it be rid of Ms Bharati herself! She has become a source of embarrassment for the BJP because of her family’s antics. (Her brother went on a dharna against tainted ministers in her own Cabinet and her nephews have been messing around with civil servants.)

The first two stratagems are a big gamble. It’s unclear that many people will be taken in by the “tainted ministers” campaign and the “flag-hoisting” argument. They know how to demarcate “flag-hoisting” from communal incitement. Ironically, the only certainty is Ms Bharati’s own dislodging from power!

The law, assuringly, may be catching up with Mr Narendra Milosevic Modi too. The Supreme Court has ordered Gujarat to reopen 2,100 cases of violence—or half the total—which were summarily closed on the pretext that the accused could not be traced. New evidence is emerging from the Nanavati-Shah commission hearings of Mr Modi’s culpability. Police officers’ and senior bureaucrats’ testimonies confirm that Mr Modi personally decided to stir up emotions on February 27, 2002 by bringing the Godhra victims’ bodies to Ahmedabad. Former state police chief K. Chakravarthi has revealed that he ordered his officers to investigate the “conspiracy angle” to the post-Godhra violence—an implicit admission that the violence was pre-planned.

A specific allegation was made before the Concerned Citizens’ Tribunal by a “highly placed source” that a meeting was held on the evening of Feb 27 by Mr Modi with some other senior ministers and police officials. “The meeting had a singular purpose: The senior-most police officials were told that they should expect a Hindu reaction after Godhra. They were told that they should not do anything to contain this reaction”. This source was killed in mysterious circumstances. One can only hope his version will get further corroborated.

Other evidence is emerging too, especially from the Ahmedabad police commissioner P.C. Pande, joint commissioner M.K. Tandon, and additional director-general (intelligence) R.B. Sreekumar. This shows that the police reporting system and law-and-order machinery completely broke down from February 27 onwards. Thus, top police officials got to know about the Naroda-Patia and Gulberg Society incidents (where former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was burnt alive) many hours after they occurred.

The local policemen were ordered not to report these incidents to the headquarters by wireless as the communications system might get clogged! Even more eloquent is Mr Sreekumar’s 172-page affidavit, based on intelligence reports, which details the complicity of police officials in the violence. For instance, it says: “Officers at the decisive rung … ignored the specific instructions from the official hierarchy on account of their getting direct verbal instructions from the senior political leaders of the ruling party.”

This evidence should be systematically collated and used not just in the Nanavati-Shah commission, but also in the trial courts to pin down the culprits. The Modi government cannot be expected to do this. It is the greatest culprit of all. The Centre must step in—by setting up a new commission to inquire into the causes of and course of the post-Godhra violence and by impleading itself as a party in all the relevant litigation. The UPA owes this to the people of Gujarat and of India, and to our Constitution.

The UPA’s Common Minimum Programme promised to “to preserve, protect and promote social harmony and to enforce the law… to deal with all obscurantist and fundamentalist elements who seek to disturb social amity and peace”. Barring the announcement by Railway Minister Laloo Prasad of an inquiry into the Godhra incident, it has done little to bring justice to the people of Gujarat. Gujarat, the greatest state-aided pogrom of a religious minority since Independence, did not even find a mention in Dr Manmohan Singh’s first address to the nation. Nor did the word “secularism”.

This void must be filled without delay. Gujarat wasn’t just another communal riot. It was a case of genocidal violence. No society can even aspire to be civilised if it cannot prevent and punish genocide of its own citizens.