The Hindu - Aug 19, 2004
Rajasthan: A favour for Sangh Parivar outfits
By Mohammed Iqbal
JAIPUR, AUG. 18. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government in Rajasthan seems to have yielded to intense pressure from the Sangh Parivar outfits by withdrawing the official notification which had brought trishuls (tridents) within the ambit of the Arms Act. The ruling party has taken the step even at the risk of exposing itself to the charge of showing communal bias.
The Government's decision, coming in the wake of a series of incidents indicating the concessions made to Sangh Parivar constituents, has baffled the Opposition Congress and other organisations claiming allegiance to secularism. No one was expecting the BJP to give free rein to its sister organisations so brazenly within eight months of assuming power here.
The notification bringing the single or multi-bladed sharp edged weapons under the purview of the Arms Act was issued by the previous Congress regime in April 2003. The authorities had taken recourse to the notification to launch a crackdown on the distribution of tridents in the `Trishul Diksha' programmes.
It is an open secret that the main organisers of the Trishul Diksha events -- Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal -- have many sympathisers in the present Government. Ever since the VHP and Bajrang Dal resumed the programme in several towns across the State this past week, there were regular reports of the BJP's MLAs and local leaders participating in them.
While police were waiting for green signal from the Government for taking action, the Government was mulling over the demand for lifting the ban on Trishul Diksha and revoking the cases registered against the VHP and Bajrang Dal activists earlier. The continuance of the notification would have caused a major embarrassment to the ruling party especially with the VHP announcing its plans to distribute trishuls on a large-scale.
The Government's decision has come as the last straw after a series of actions favouring the Sangh Parivar outfits, such as selective withdrawal of 122 riot cases of 2002 against the VHP activists in Banswara, protection to tribals who attacked Muslims in Sarada in Udaipur district recently, and giving a clean chit to the Bajrang Dal activists who attacked the tribal Christians in Chittaurgarh.
The observers feel that the Sangh Parivar has finally succeeded in imposing its agenda on the State Government and would have a free run till the next Assembly elections dictating its terms to the BJP. Conversely, the Chief Minister, Vasundhara Raje, had given a rebuff to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in May this year while carrying out the expansion of her Cabinet.
The timing of the Sangh constituents becoming active and coercing the Government into submission is also not without significance. The BJP, which kept them in check till the Lok Sabha elections, cannot afford to displease them at this stage when the resurgence of `Hindutva' is needed to keep up the political rhetoric for the panchayat and local body elections later this year and afterwards.
The Home Minister, Gulab Chand Kataria, has resorted to technicalities while defending the Government's move to revoke the notification. He has pointed out that the notification had never mentioned trishuls and had not banned the ceremonies for their distribution.
In fact, the VHP has devised trishuls cleverly by keeping their sharpened part slightly shorter than the length laid down for prohibition under the Arms Act. The Arms Act proscribes a weapon with a sharp blade of 10.5 cm length, while the VHP's trishuls have a blade length of 13.5 cm with only 8-cm-long sharpened part. The notification issued by the Congress Government had done away with this anomaly.
The activist groups here fear that the resumption of Trishul Diksha programmes would prepare the ground for communal riots in Rajasthan and provide an opportunity to the Sangh Parivar to replicate the Gujarat model of mayhem and carnage across the State whenever it is politically opportune for the BJP. The People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has pointed out that the regions in Gujarat where trishuls were distributed in large numbers saw the worst killings in 2002.
The VHP launched the distribution of trishuls in the State in 1998, initially targeting Rajsamand district and Kishangarh and Ajmer towns. The programme spread to almost all the major towns till April 2003, when the VHP general secretary, Praveen Togadia, was arrested in Ajmer for flouting the ban and delivering an inflammatory speech.
In its renewed campaign, the VHP has distributed trishuls in Jaipur, Karauli, Kotputli, Bharatpur, Jhunjhunu and Sikar. Emboldened by the Government's move, both the VHP and Bajrang Dal are now planning to extend the programme to other towns and expand their activities.
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