(The Tribune
29 December 2006)
Back to basics
Hindutva hotheads dominate the BJP
by Inder Malhotra
NO one need be surprised by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s return to hard Hindutva as its sheet anchor. This is the logical end of the bitter debate in the saffron camp following its “unexpected” defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. For, the ranks had then asserted that the BJP had suffered because, to retain the support of its allies, it had “compromised” on its “basic agenda”.
Even so, the stridency with which the party, at its conclave at Lucknow, reverted to belligerent Hindutva as its creed, was doubtless remarkable. The presidential address of Mr. Rajnath Singh, a former UP Chief Minister, who will head the BJP for the next three years, was particularly provocative, in parts inflammatory. Another former Chief Minister of the state, Mr. Kalyan Singh, outdid him.
Interestingly, Mr. Rajnath Singh tried vigorously to revive the issue of the Ram Mandir, calling it the “essence of Hindutva”, but leaving an escape hatch for himself even in the midst of his overblown rhetoric. Realising that the mandir issue is no longer a horse worth flogging, he pleaded that the construction of the Ram Mandir at the disputed site would be possible only if his party had a clear-cut majority in Parliament on its own. Even he must know that in the current coalition era this would not be possible.
Ayodhya may well have been a sideshow at Lucknow, but the main thrust of the BJP strategy is clear enough. In the fast approaching contest in the key state of UP first and then in the 2009 Lok Sabha poll, the party is determined to pillory the Manmohan Singh government for its “appeasement of Muslims”, “vote bank politics” and “propensity” to cave in to Pakistani pressure on the Jammu and Kashmir issue. Every BJP leader worth the name spoke of the “road to Delhi lying through Lucknow”.
Though the saffron party claims that it opposes the Left-backed Congress policy of “pampering of and pandering to Muslims” because it is divisive and would create two different classes of citizens, it is really the BJP’s campaign that seems designed to widen the existing communal gulf. There was a lot of Muslim bashing at the Lucknow conclave, often in intemperate language that was nothing, however, compared with what BJP activists are propagating across the state. A CD they are distributing widely is known to be hate-filled.
Things have come to such a sorry pass that someone of Mr Advani’s stature talks about the Left-backed Congress policy possibly leading to “second partition”. Have six decades of the success of democracy and pluralism in this country, however flawed, made no difference since 1947?
Misguided and misleading the BJP’s propaganda surely is, but it must be recognised that failings of the secular parties are playing straight into its hands. For instance, the Havana formulation that Pakistan, too, is a “victim” of terrorism, has not gone down well with the public. Also, the opponents of “appeasement” are exploiting secular parties’ proclivity to brush under the carpet the problem of jihadi terrorists getting support from an obviously minuscule section of Muslims. Mr Rajnath Singh did so at Lucknow relentlessly and the party would go on doing so. For their part, the secular parties are falling between two stools. On the one hand, the BJP badgers them for being “soft on terrorism”; on the other, the Muslim minority feels, not without reason, that for the crimes of a few, the entire community is being viewed with unacceptable suspicion and subjected to selective harassment.
Intimately connected with the return to hard Hindutva is the restoration of the hegemony over the BJP of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, better known as the RSS. During the six years of power, Mr. Vajpayee, to uphold the primacy and dignity of the Indian State, had skilfully distanced himself from the RSS, to the fury of its unelected and obscurantist leaders at Nagpur. Mr. Rajnath Singh has taken the earliest opportunity to see to it that only RSS parcharaks run the party organisation henceforth. Nor is it surprising that the RSS chief, Mr. K. S. Sudershan, has been hammering home that the only answer to the challenges India faces —- “Islamic terrorism”, “Christian proselytising”, “consumerism”, born of globalisation et al —- is “consolidation of the Hindu society”.
And this brings me to the pertinent point that if victory in the assembly elections in UP is indeed the steppingstone to the return to 7 Race Course Road in New Delhi, then the principal Opposition party as well as Mr Sudershan may be barking up the wrong tree.
How does anyone consolidate the Hindu society when caste divisions have established a vice-like grip on Indian politics, diversities are bewildering, and regional variations of the political pattern glaring? In any case, when almost all parties are bending over backwards to offer reservations and other benefits to the OBCs, including the “creamy layer”, and the conflict between the OBC elite and the most backward among these castes is on the increase, all talk of Hindu consolidation becomes arid.
Remarkably, those having access to the UP Chief Minister, Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav, during the three-day BJP session in the state capital, found that he was relaxed despite the growing criticism of what Mr Vajpayee called “Mulayam’s jungle raj”. In fact, the Chief Minister is happy that the BJP is stooping “very low” in its anti-Muslim, anti-secular drive. For, he thinks, this would consolidate the Yadav-Muslim alliance, his power base. The BJP can surely stir up communal sentiment. But it has also to reckon with those in the Hindu society that do not look upon the Sachar report on the Muslims’ miserable plight in the same light as do the Hindutva hotheads.
Furthermore, Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav is not the only opponent the BJP has to contend with during the grim struggle in UP. There is also Ms Mayawati, towering Dalit leader in the state who also seems to have won over Brahmins.
In this respect, Mr. Rajnath Singh seems far more sanguine than the man who has been Deputy Prime Minister and hopes to be Prime Minister after the 2009 poll. For, the party president said, during his oration, that the BJP alone could and would “erase” Muslim appeasement from the Indian scene. But he had one condition for this. The people of India would have to give the BJP 10 continuous years in power. The five-year period was not enough for this task.
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