Daily Times, November 21, 2008
BJP’s true face
by J Sri Raman
The BJP is ready to reveal its true face on terrorism. If Advani persists with his stand, he will present the Indian voters an opportunity to pronounce their verdict on the unvarnished ideology and message of the Parivar
“It is outrageous that this has happened in a country that is known to respect sadhus (Hindu monks) and prides itself on rule of law and democracy.”
Thus spake Lal Krishna Advani the other day in a public meeting in New Delhi. More striking than the strong language of the self-styled Shadow Prime Minister of India was the unexpected abruptness of his outrage over the allegedly savage treatment meted out to a sadhvi (female monk of the “Parivar” — the Far Right “family”).
The former deputy prime minister was talking about Sadhvi Pragnya Singh Thakur, who had been arrested in the case of the Malegaon bomb blasts and was facing interrogation by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). He refrained from making any remarks about the arrest of a serving army officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Srikanth Purohit in the same case, though that has caused more ripples in circles outside the Parivar.
Advani’s offensive attracted nationwide attention because he was breaking his silence on the subject. The ATS detained the sadhvi originally on October 11 and, for nearly a month after that, his Bharatiya Janata Party, the political front of the Parivar, refused to react. “Let the law take its course” was the line adopted by him and the rest of the party leadership. The standard response was an eloquent expression of acute embarrassment.
The case had taken this curious turn at a particularly inopportune time for the party. The serial blasts of September 2006 shook Malegaon, a town in the Nashik district of the state of Maharashtra, not far from Mumbai, the country’s financial capital and a stronghold of the Far Right. The blasts, which took a toll of at least 37 lives, took place in a Muslim cemetery adjacent to a mosque, after Friday prayers on the Shab-e-Baraat day. Most of the victims were Muslim pilgrims.
The state police hastened, without waiting for wearisomely long investigations, to pronounce the blasts as the “handiwork” of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), a banned organisation. Matters may have rested there but for fresh evidence the ATS claims to have unearthed.
When the needle of suspicion was reported to point to the sadhvi and the lieutenant-colonel, besides others, the rest of the Parivar was quick to react with indignation. Praveen Togadia of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the man associated with the massacre of 2002 in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, for example, screamed: “They have committed a sin by arresting a sadhvi. They will now face the backlash,” There was no immediate sign, however, of a backlash from the BJP.
The party was in the thick of a campaign for polls to six state Assemblies over two months, and these were seen as a dress rehearsal for the general election due next year. It had adopted anti-terrorism as an important part of its electoral platform. It had made no secret of the fact that it identified terrorism with Islamism. Its attempt, once again, was to cash in on cases of terrorism in order to give the majority community a minority complex and a sense of victimhood, and thus vitiate the pre-poll atmosphere in the hope of reaping a rich harvest of votes.
The talk of “Hindutva terror” did not exactly tally with the party’s chosen tactic. The party had sought to make a distinction between Islamic terror and the “hooligan violence” of Hindutva groups such as the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, which have gone on a virulent anti-Christian offensive in the states of Orissa, Karnataka and elsewhere. To equate the two, an eminent Parivar intellectual has seriously argued, would be to equate an AK-47 with a stick. And now, they were faced with a case of bombings with Hindutva groups as alleged culprits.
The BJP’s initial effort was to disown the sadhvi and dissociate itself from the case. It kept up the efforts even after reports recalling the sadhvi’s past as a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, popularly recognised as the party’s student wing. The BJP continued to do so, even after publication of a photograph of her at a function along with Shivraj Singh Chauhan, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh (her base) and stories about her as a familiar figure in the state’s party circles. Even taunts from another sadhvi, expelled BJP leader Uma Bharati, failed to move the party.
Pundits then saw this as the sign of yet another power struggle in the Parivar. They had a point. Even Modi has been subjected to more than mere pinpricks from the VHP and Togadia in his own fiefdom. The “family” quarrel, however, seems to have been sorted out and the Far Right has firmly closed its ranks.
Advani’s excuse for the shift is the court affidavit filed by the sadhvi, alleging torture during interrogation. Agencies like the ATS are, of course, not widely seen as sticklers for impeccable propriety in their means and methods of investigation. It is also true that the agency itself has admitted subjecting the sadhvi to a narco-analysis, not seen as either enlightened or even efficient.
All the same, onlookers can only be amused at the sight of Advani and others working themselves up into a white heat over violations of human rights, especially where the issue of terrorism is involved. They have even opposed consideration of a petition from Afzal Guru, convicted in the parliament attack case, for a presidential commutation of death sentence as permitted under the constitution. The BJP has demanded action against the authorities of the Jamia University for offering legal assistance to students charged with terrorism. The party has defended “encounter killings” in Gujarat and of course, the pogrom that Modi presided over.
There is hardly any dearth of proof of the BJP’s patriotic campaign against human rights. These rights, according to it, must be sacrificed by the state and the society at the alter of anti-terrorism.
The campaign has now been carried significantly forward. BJP president Rajnath Singh has not fought shy of coming out with the formulation that “Hindus cannot be terrorists”. The other party luminaries have also begun to endorse and echo Togadia about “a backlash” — especially in the electoral battles head.
Tarun Vijay, a veteran Parivar propagandist with a column in a leading national daily puts it trenchantly: “Not a single Hindu will ever condone terrorism. It’s not in our genes. Our blood group in this matter is different.” He adds: “The way Pragnya has suddenly become a hero must make sane people sit up and take note of the wave passing through the Hindu heartland. Tsunamis don’t send advance emails before they strike.”
No, they don’t. But the BJP has given India an advance notice of the unprecedented tactic it is going to try. In no other election has it depended on so brazen a display of communal double standards. When it took electoral advantage of the Ayodhya issue, it did so with its refrain on righting an alleged historical wrong. It has invoked “cultural nationalism” whenever it has sought to make similar use of communal strife.
The party, however, is ready to reveal its true face on terrorism. If Advani persists with his stand, he will present the Indian voters an opportunity to pronounce their verdict on the unvarnished ideology and message of the Parivar.
The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint
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