The Telegraph, November 4 , 2013
VHP model for BJP yatra with victims’ urn
RADHIKA RAMASESHAN
New Delhi, Nov. 3: When the BJP launched an asthi kalash yatra in Bihar last week, it was taking a leaf out of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s book to try and whip up grief and anger over a tragedy.
Party marchers are carrying urns containing the ashes of those killed in the October 27 blasts ahead of Narendra Modi’s rally in Patna. The public “mourning” will end on November 5 when the ashes are sprinkled over the Ganga.
The earlier asthi kalash yatras in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh had been spearheaded by the VHP, with the BJP playing a bit role from the sidelines. The current one in Bihar, however, is being organised by the BJP alone, with the VHP out of the picture.
Yet every such yatra, held ostensibly to grieve for the dead, has had communal underpinnings.
In October 1990, when the kar sevaks of the VHP and the Bajrang Dal first laid siege to the Babri Masjid, firing by the Uttar Pradesh police had led to an official death toll of 13. The victims included the Kothari brothers of Calcutta, who were enshrined in the Sangh parivar annals as “martyrs”.
The BJP and the VHP initially claimed that “several hundred” had been killed by then chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav’s police. Later, the VHP embarked on an asthi kalash yatra, carrying 22 urns that were dispatched to the states where the BJP had a big presence.
In Uttar Pradesh, the yatra left a trail of riots that mostly claimed Muslim lives and properties, as VHP and Bajrang Dal representatives prefaced their call to mourn with inflammatory speeches.
The ashes were released into the Sangam (the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna) at Allahabad during Makar Sankranti amid a show of “Hindu solidarity” on the banks of the two rivers.
Rameshwar Chaurasia, the party MLA from Nokha in Bihar who is close to Modi, denied that the latest yatra was communally divisive.
“Our workers died in the blasts. Do we not owe their families, and the cadre in general, an assurance that such tragedies will not recur?” Chaurasia said.
“Had we remained indifferent, the message would have gone out that we use them as cannon fodder, literally and metaphorically. They might have stopped showing up at our public meetings. The yatra comes with the message that terrorism is a living reality in Bihar and must be fought collectively. What is so polarising about it?”
Other BJP sources claimed that while green-flagging the yatra, Modi had cautioned party leaders in Bihar to take “great care” that “nothing provocative” was uttered, not even by way of a slogan.
“His advice was that the Congress and the Janata Dal (United) might do their best to instigate communal tension. We must not fall prey to their machinations,” a source said. The BJP has decided to keep the yatra short.
However, when Modi was embroiled in the controversy of the 2002 Gujarat killings, he had virtually surrendered before the VHP.
Led by a militant leadership in Gujarat, the state VHP had drawn up an agenda to parade the ashes of the Godhra train fire victims across the country at a time violence raged against Muslims in the state.
The only “concession” the VHP had made was to exclude Gujarat from its asthi kalash yatra out of “consideration” for the law-and-order situation.
The VHP claimed the country “deserved” to know about the “martyrs” who had died in the “cause” of the Ram temple. The activists had gone to Ayodhya to agitate and reclaim the land on which the Babri Masjid stood, unmindful of the Supreme Court’s order to maintain status quo.
Unlike the 1990-91 yatra, the 2002 clone left even the parivar faithful cold. By then, Modi had appropriated the VHP’s “Hindutva” turf.
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