The Statesman, October 7, 2008
Desperate political overtures
by Patricia Mukhim
UNLIKE other political visitors to this North-eastern state, who usually address public rallies in spaces that are least confined, LK Advani, the crown prince of the BJP, decided to meet the leaders of faith-based institutions at a Shillong hotel, the premises of which are owned by a local BJP legislator, who happens to be the sole representative of the party in the Meghalaya legislative assembly. After that, Advani attended a public function where BJP functionaries organised a felicitation for two outstanding sportspersons from the state.
Why would a political leader of Advani’s stature address a group of religious leaders if not to reassure them that the BJP was not responsible for the current spate of attacks against Christians in different parts of this country? If Advani is sure that the BJP and its soul mates in the Sangh Parivar are indeed faultless, then he need not have gone out of his way to address the religious heads separately. By any definition, Advani is a crowd-puller. But the BJP in Meghalaya decided to play it by ear. Instead of organising a public rally where many more people would have benefited from Advani’s political speeches, the party held a public meeting at a nondescript hall which could seat barely 200 people.
This visit, therefore, was rife with conjecture. Did Advani come to Shillong only to bail out his colleague AL Hek, a Christian who has been greatly discomfited by the recent attacks on churches and Christians in Orissa, Karnataka and elsewhere? Hek has had to battle it out with his co-religionists here that the outrage is not attributable to the BJP but to the lunatic fringe among the Hindus. His arguments have, however, not cut much ice. Christians in the North-east dread the prospect of the BJP coming back to power at the Centre. While they are unsure whether the Congress or any other party can actually protect them from the onslaught of Hindu fundamentalism which rears its ugly head in this country from time to time, they are equally uncertain as to what would be their fate should the BJP come back to power.
As a religious minority, Christians are neither strident nor belligerent. For the most part, Christian missionaries have dedicated their lives to serving the scum of the earth and providing them with two essential services ~ healthcare and education. The people of the North-east would have perhaps continued to languish in ignorance and deprivation had Christian missionaries not ventured into what was then known as the “excluded areas”, too dangerous for the faint-hearted to step in. While the missionaries have been accused by their detractors of coming here to tame the wild tribals, the same critics do not point towards anyone else who was willing to take a chance. If there were Hindu philanthropists ready to stake their all to educate the tribes of the North-east, they would perhaps have been Hindus today.
Alas, the Ramakrishna Mission came in rather late in the day. By then, Christian missionaries had set up several educational institutions and health care centres, not just in the state capitals but also in remote villages. They continue to selflessly serve many of the unreached villages that even the government health care system has left untouched. To punish those who serve the poor and needy is by any yardstick a grave sin. But fundamentalists cannot be credited with a rational mind. They, therefore, are in no position to judge whether the leader of their pack is simply using them as instruments for perpetuating the greatest deception ~ that conversion is a man-ordained activity. Christians believe that anyone who accepts the Gospel of Christ does so out of a spiritual conviction which has nothing to do with human intervention.
In a secular country, why should anyone be apologetic about his/her faith? Can we not adopt the faith of our personal choice if that helps us be better human beings? Is that not the ultimate aim of all religions? What is it that makes people of one faith decry or demean those who worship differently from them? This is religious arrogance at its worst. It is anathema for a country as diverse as India. Equal treatment to people of all faiths is how secularism should be defined. It is not indifference or apathy towards any religion. Several Hindu friends have expressed their feelings of regret at the inability of the state to contain the flames of Hindu fundamentalism at its nascent stage. They also feel “small” that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should be rebuked by President Sarkozy of France for apparently failing to contain the crazy hoodlums who continue to desecrate places of worship.
The timing of all this religious uprising is uncanny. Seven months from now the country is headed for the Lok Sabha polls. The BJP and the NDA combine are hungry for votes. They have been out in the cold for five long years. The ambitions of the Sangh Parivar to establish a Hindu Rashtra have been thwarted during these five years of vanvas. Their desperation to return to power is barely concealed. The shenanigans of the BJP during the recent vote of confidence over the nuclear deal said it all. Advani is a man in a hurry. And while he may appear to be a statesman of fortitude, it is difficult to forget the image of the man who rode the “rath yatra” with the obvious design of hastening the demolition of the Babari Masjid ~ a dark chapter of Indian history.
At that time Advani rode the juggernaut of religious populism and the BJP succeeded to come to power at the Centre. But wresting political power through the instrumentality of religion exacts its own cost. The fringe elements that were used to fuel religious sentimentalism cannot be discarded at will. Indeed, Advani’s predicament, if that is what he experiences today, can be likened to this quote of Charles Caleb Colton (1825). He says, “It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and improve them is a work fraught with difficulty and teeming with danger.” Neither Advani nor the articulate, rational elements in the BJP have any control over the Sangh Parivar. Yet both have a symbiotic relation and feed from the same umbilical cord.
Advani’s Meghalaya visit was a landmark of sorts. He is the first VIP to have been threatened by a crank e-mail attributed to the Indian Mujahideen. Many other VIPs criss-cross this state unperturbed and are least noticed by the populace who go about their work with equanimity. What was rather unusual was Advani’s diffidence to hold a press conference and his reticence to brief the media about the purpose of his visit. Is the Prime Minister-in-waiting perturbed about being cornered on the issue of attacks against Christians? Was he briefed by the local apparatchiks to steer clear of the media? Whatever it was, Advani clearly was out of sync. He made it worse when he said that he would brief the media in Guwahati. Does this crown prince of the BJP not realise that Meghalaya and Assam are two different states? Bad politics indeed!
|
