(The News
April 14, 2007)
Back to BJP's anti-Muslim roots
The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights activist based in Delhi
By Praful Bidwai
Three years after sending the Bharatiya Janata Party packing, India again faces a fresh communal challenge to its democracy and electoral system. Nothing symbolises the emerging contention over this better than a despicably foul, rabidly anti-Muslim compact disc (CD) commissioned and distributed by the BJP for the Uttar Pradesh elections.
The CD was released with fanfare by senior UP party leader Lalji Tandon and state unit president Kesri Nath Tripathi four days before the first round of polling in the seven-phase election. So obnoxious was its content that the BJP hastily withdrew it. But it has since "disowned" it and tried to pretend that it knows nothing about it.
Yet, faced with a First Information Report filed by the Election Commission for using communal means to canvass support, party president Rajnath Singh melodramatically offered to be arrested. Lest it be thought that the rustic, crude and pugnacious Singh was solely responsible for this, the BJP's "urbane" veterans Atal Behari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani went along with the tactic.
The BJP's stand on the CD is egregiously contradictory. On the one hand, its leadership wants to dissociate itself from it while blaming low-level "party workers" for adding "undesirable elements to it." On the other hand, it has behaved as if it owned the CD and was wrongly punished for producing it. That's why the feigning of injured innocence.
Duplicity comes naturally to the BJP and is integral to its politics. After the Babri mosque's razing, Advani said December 6 was "the saddest day" of his life. But he quickly proceeded to defend the ideology that led to the removal of this "ocular insult" to "Hindu India". After Gujarat, Vajpayee "hung his head in shame". But within days, he was asking: "Lekin aag kisne lagayee", thus blaming Muslims for the pogrom. The BJP has seamlessly vacillated between expressions of shame and achievement/pride for the same act!
However, BJP leaders can't pretend they weren't consulted during the CD's production. According to the Bulandshehr-based Fakira Films, which produced the CD: "At every stage of writing the CD, the leadership of the state BJP was consulted, the script modified, (words) added and fine-tuned."
'Withdrawing' the CD doesn't mean much. Its copies are in unrestricted circulation. Excerpts have been aired on television channels. The CD's potential to vitiate the election process remains unmitigated.
The EC is thus perfectly right to treat the CD as an unfair electoral practice under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which pertain to "inflammatory material capable of creating enmity/hatred among different communities", and the EC's Model Code of Conduct.
The CD pours hatred upon Muslims as treacherous "anti-Hindu" citizens who will again divide India. It's designed to provoke a strong reaction from Muslims -- and a Hindu backlash. It says Muslims are duplicitous: they kidnap, forcibly marry and convert Hindu women; they kill cows while offering to look after them; they run "anti-national" madressahs.
The pivotal message is: "This time if you don't vote for the BJP, disaster will strike this country. The BJP is a party that thinks about [India]. It thinks about the Hindu religion. All other parties are agents of the Muslims."
The CD contains false, malicious allegations about Mulayam Singh Yadav having organised iftaar parties on the ghats of the Ganga, and new textbooks being published under the United Progressive Alliance saying that Goddess Durga is fond of liquor and that Emperor Aurangazeb was a saint. Its purpose is to hurt, arouse hatred, and turn hatred into votes.
The BJP routinely distributes obnoxious propaganda material during its election campaigns and organisational meetings. During its national executive meeting last December, it distributed a similar CD as part of its press kit, duly stamped with the lotus symbol.
In content, the December CD is no different from the present one. The BJP's intent to use religious identities as political instruments is well established. It mobilises votes by spreading religious hatred, often wrapped in "nationalist" attire. Such communal practices should be altogether banished from India's public discourse. Unfortunately, they aren't effectively banned. Hate-speech and many hate-acts directed at religious-ethnic minorities go unpunished. A sordid example of such concession to majoritarianism is the questioning of the patriotic credentials of the minorities, especially when terrorist incidents take place.
But India does have an electoral law developed under an independent and assertive Election Commission, which explicitly prohibits the use of inflammatory means - on pain of disqualification of candidates. Such disqualifications have indeed taken place. Shiv Sena leaders had to quit their seats because they used communal means during the elections. But such disqualification isn't enough to deter abuse. India needs a far more explicit code of conduct, and solemn commitments by political leaders that they won't resort to innuendo, vulgar slang, or indirect references to particular communities while canvassing electoral support. The present case offers an opportunity for such reform. The Election Commission must seriously consider de-recognising the BJP as a political party if its FIR's charges are established.
The EC must supplement this by extracting from BJP leaders serious pledges that they won't use religion as "a loyalty test", that they won't exploit the Ayodhya temple for electoral gains, nor depict the Babri mosque's razing in triumphant colours, as the present CD does. Should the BJP violate these assurances, it should be automatically de-recognised.Such reform is imperative. Secularism is not an option in India. It's a categorical imperative. It's part of the "basic structure" of India's Constitution and a precondition for India's survival as a pluralist, vibrant democracy which respects diversity and minority rights.
As two Supreme Court judges put it in a trend-setting (Bommai) case (1994), the Constitution requires not just the Indian state, but "political parties as well", to be secular in "thought and action". The BJP -- with the Shiv Sena -- stands apart from all other parties in India insofar as it seeks to transform India into a Hindu-majoritarian entity. Like its predecessor, the Jana Sangh, the BJP has often incited communal passions to win votes. It must be prevented from doing so. The BJP must be watched very closely in UP, where it's desperate to prevent its already narrow base from fragmenting. According to two major opinion polls, the BJP and its allies are likely to do much worse in these assembly elections than in 2002.
The BJP's upper-caste support in UP has shrunk from 72 per cent to 50 per cent. Extremist, illiberal parties like the BJP act waywardly when faced with defeat. They must not be allowed to damage India's secular fabric and shift the goalposts of democratic politics.
The Election Commission deserves the unstinting support of the citizenry in its efforts to impose a modicum of discipline on the BJP. The party has got away with murder, and worse, in its cynical pursuit of communalism, thanks to the reluctance of the Establishment to bring it to heel -- witness the Babri demolition and the Gujarat carnage.
The BJP must be legally punished and politically isolated for the CD. This can only happen if the EC and enlightened public opinion remains unshaken by the BJP's bullying tactics.
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