From: The Hindu, January 19, 2012
Playing the communal card
In the age of Baba Ramdev and countless other copycat dispensers of yogasanas, it will hardly be seen as an aberration if school and college administrations decide to promote yoga among students. However, when yoga as a popular trend becomes yoga by diktat, as happened recently in Madhya Pradesh where the Bharatiya Janata Party government mobilised support for mass surya namaskar camps, the exercise does acquire a divisive subtext. The ostensible purpose of these camps, which saw heavy participation by schools, colleges, and other organisations — many of them privately run and obviously feeling compelled to go along — was to get into the record books. Yet questions do arise when the entire State Cabinet led by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan makes a fetish of performing a particular asana that is known to cause unease among Muslims, including secular sections otherwise supportive of yoga. The surya namaskar carries with it a suggestion of sun worship, which is anathema to orthodox Muslims. Indeed, the pattern was set in 2007 when the State government sought to make yoga — and surya namaskar — compulsory in schools.
The pressure eased only after the Madhya Pradesh High Court ruled against compulsory enlisting for yoga. Earlier in 2007, the State government had controversially made the singing of Vande Mataram compulsory. Ahead of the surya namaskar mobilisation this year, the government secured presidential assent for a draconian law against cow slaughter, which was followed by reports of attacks on Muslims. Clearly, a stint in power and more than a decade of coalitional leadership have not changed the BJP, whose single preoccupation is Hindu sectarian politics. Matters have been made worse by the Congress' emulation of the BJP's communal politics — in reverse. With just a day to go for the announcement of the February-March 2011 State elections, the party blatantly unveiled a 4.5 per cent sub-quota for minorities. Subsequently, Law and Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khursheed offered a further blandishment to the U.P. Muslims in the form of a promise to carve out a nine per cent quota for minorities within the 27 per cent reserved for the OBCs. The move earned the Minister a well-deserved rap on the knuckles from the Election Commission. But it also provided a handle to a combative Uma Bharti who seized it to raise the bogey of “a second partition.” As long as the BJP and the Congress feed off each other, India cannot hope to shed its debilitating communal baggage.
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