[sacw] On the Sangh School of Falsification

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #3
September 24, 1999
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"Frontline",
September 23, 1999
Frontline Column: Beyond the Obvious

The Sangh School of Falsification
By Praful Bidwai

Whenever the sangh parivar is criticised for its sectarian
intolerance and bigotry on the basis of facts, it resorts to
slander and personal attack. Its treatment of the "Communalism
Combat" is the latest example.

However one assesses Vajpayee's record--and this column
admittedly takes a dim view--it is undeniable that the BJP is
pursuing a much larger agenda than contained in the National
Democratic Alliance's shoddily drafted, slogan-oriented,
manifesto, "For a Proud, Prosperous India". As its own leaders
have unabashedly said, the BJP is guided by a certain vision of
India, which goes far, far beyond this or that policy or
programme, this or that tactic or manoeuvre. This vision
encompasses more than the mandir-Article 370-uniform civil code
"trishul", which the BJP says it has for the time being put in
abeyance, but which it also keeps raking up. RSS chieftain
Rajendra Singh is the latest to revive the nasty demand that
Muslims should hand over the Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi "temples"
to Hindus. Parivar leaders have been raising these issues
throughout the past month.

The RSS-BJP vision, with its unique coherence, is that of a
primarily Hindu India, resurgent after centuries of "foreign
domination", an India fiercely nationalistic, strong, in keeping
with a tradition going back, according to its upholders, all the
way to the vedic period. Whether this vision is called "cultural
nationalism", civilisational patriotism, or plain Hindutva, it
radically differs from our liberal, secular,pluralist
Constitution. Its emphasis on hierarchical Hinduism, and on
puritanical interpretation of its texts, provokes understandable
fears about Hindutva attitudes to subjects like Dalits, adivasis,
women, the family, education, morality, knowledge, science and
culture. After all, sanatanism has retrograde positions on all
these matters.

No wonder social activists, as distinct from political leaders,
have voiced such fears and concerns and often warned the larger
public of the Hindutva menace and associated politics. The latest
example of such a civil society or non-governmental initiative is
the public education campaign launched by Communalism Combat, a
Mumbai-based magazine, in the form of a series of 10 newspaper
advertisements. These make a scathing critique of the BJP's claim
to be "normal", tolerant or democratic. The campaign
systematically demolishes a number of myths about Vajpayee, the
RSS and the BJP. It cites unimpeachable facts--mostly their own
quites--to back its contentions. It ruthlessly exposes the BJP to
be a party of bigots, male supremacists, rabid casteists, who are
against non-Hindus, indeed against Hindus at the lower rungs of
the social hierarchy. The BJP emerges as a party that is so
cynical in pursuing power that it can communalise the armed
forces. It lavishes undeserved concessions upon its cronies and
is supremely indifferent to the masses. It is a threat to all
that is healthy and valuable in this society.

The Combat campaign has been effective at least partly because it
fights the BJP on the favourable terrain of the mainstream
national media, with its predilection (for the most part) for
soft Hindutva, and its fear of attacking the BJP, especially
after it has bestowed such favours as FM radio channels upon it,
and used questionable methods to pressure it. Combat does not
hide the fact that the space bought is "sponsored", presumably by
anti-BJP political and business interests. Such sponsorship may
not be to everybody's taste: many NGOs would hesitate to accept
it. But few would deny that the campaign has bite: RSS chief
Rajendra Singh could not have relished being reminded that he
called Gandhi-assassin Godse's intentions "good", and "motivated
by the idea of Akhand Bharat". Nor can Vajpayee deny that he said
"the Sangh is my soul" and that he wrote to the colonial
government denying he played an active role in the 1942 Quit
India Movement.

Combat is especially devastating on the Sangh's vile anti-women
attitudes. It cites BJP vice-president Vijayraje Scindia's
defence of sati (1987), Mahila Morcha president Mridula Sinha's
rationalisation of wife-beating and dowry (1983), and the recent
beating up of an 18 year-old college student for raising a
question during a Vajpayee rally in Muzaffarnagar. Combat
involved a number of women's organisations, such as Forum against
the Oppression of Women, Manushi, Kali for Women, Ankur and
Women's Centre's (Bombay) in this campaign.

The Combat advertisements have stung the parivar hard. But rather
than factually disprove its well-substantiated charges, the
parivar has, characteristically, launched a personal, ad hominem
attack on Combat Communalism's editors and Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat
who, it claims, is on the board of directors of the magazine. The
RSS mouthpiece, Panchajanya, (Sep 12) carries vividly captioned
"interviews" with, or quotations from, senior journalists like
Indian Express's Shekhar Gupta, and The Times of India's Dileep
Padgaonkar, to create the semblance that they agree with the
sangh parivar's tendentious charges against Combat. On close
examination, it turns out that unlike hardline sanghis, e.g.
Chandan Mitra, Kanchan Gupta, and N.K. Trikha, these journalists
have refused to comment on the advertisements.

Panchajanya fails to answer even one of Combat's 20-odd charges
in its two-page feature, but instead maliciously says the
magazine is financed by shady interests. It questions its
credentials: an organisation "without address", etc., But this is
hardly more relevant than the provenance of the parivar's own
finances, some of which remain mired either in mystery or in
North America. Panchajanya's profile of Communalism Combat and
its parent, Sabrang Communications, is that of dark, semi-secret,
"anti-Hindu" and "anti-national" organisations devoted to
destroying communal harmony, and hence deserving of attack. (Such
profiles have been used in the past to provoke parivar fanatics
into attack or abuse.) Remarkably, it is joined in this by the
Samata Party's Jaya Jaitley who adds her own anti-Bhagwat angle
to the slander.

Now,Combat editors Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad are both
seasoned journalists. Anand was a staffer on The Observer group,
and Setalvad broke one infamous story about the Bombay police's
partisan role during the January 1993 riots, publishing
transcripts of a conversation in which an officer asks his men
not to rescue Muslims from a devastating fire started by the Shiv
Sena. According to them, the Panchajanya feature is substantially
wrong. Adm Bhagwat is not a director of Combat or Sabrang. And
the Combat motto is "Hate Hurts, Harmony Works".

Vilification of secularists, based on wilful falsification, is an
old, well-rehearsed, parivar tactic. It has repeatedly used it in
its desperate attempts to muzzle and malign individuals. I speak
from personal experience too. Organiser and Panchjanya have
repeatedly attacked me. An example of this Sangh School of
Falsification is their campaign in 1991, at the height of the
Ramjanmabhoomi movement, when I was a Senior Editor with The
Times of India. On February 9 that year, I participated in a
panel discussion organised by a small cultural organisation, Jana
Sanskriti, in New Delhi, along with Professors K.N. Panikkar,
Gyanendra Pandey and C.P. Bhambri, and Justice Subramaniam Poti.

I sharply criticised the anti-Babri mosque campaign as
majoritarian, hate-driven and against the very foundations of our
secular-democratic-Constitutional order. I said its leaders must
be dealt with firmly in accordance with the law and prevented
from spreading hatred. Several newspapers reported my remarks.
Patriot distorted them, its reporter adding his own twist, saying
parivar leaders must be "disciplined to the point of being
killed". Organiser seized on this, and, without checking with me
or Jana Sanskriti, flashed the front-page headline: "Times
editor's fatwa to kill BJP men."

The story falsely linked the then Times editor Dileep Padgaonkar
(alleging he too had "railed against" the Organiser on
television) to the panel discussion and baselessly alleged that
this was part of a larger plot: "observers wonder whether the
messianic zeal of the `Times' men is goaded... by their...
proprietors' business interests in the Gulf countries and
Pakistan..." It accused me of having "taken to public forums to
preach murder against BJP `obscurantists'...[and demanding] that
BJP should be prevented from contesting elections..." This was a
pure fabrication. The Organiser also equated secularists with
"Islamic fundamentalists".

I was appalled. I published a clarification in Patriot on April
3, carried without comment or rebuttal. Padgaonkar sent a letter
to Organiser refuting the malicious allegations against himself
and me, which the journal published with a vile editorial
"Leftist Gunners", which further compounded its error. It refused
to publish a clarification from Prof Panikkar and Justice Poti.
Meanwhile, a number of scholars and writers launched a signature
drive. It said the Organiser's attacks are "irresponsible and
odious", and reminiscent of "witchhunts and campaigns of
character assassination" aimed at muzzling "critical voices".
"Distressingly, Mr Bidwai and others have received several
physical threats and abusive calls too. No one who claims to
believe in democracy and freedom of expression can condone such
intimidation," it said.

The letter was signed by eminent persons, including Professors
Romila Thapar, Rajni Kothari, S. Gopal, Bipan Chandra, Prabhat
Patnaik, L.C. Jain, Justice V.R. Krihna Iyer, Swami Agnivesh, and
Bhisham Sahni, Anil Agarwal, Lotika Sarkar, Madhu Kishwar, Habib
Tanveer, and Vivan Sundaram, and several other teachers and
citizens. Instead of publishing it and apologising, Organiser
maliciously claimed the letter was "a fraudulent document" and
"forgery"--merely because the copy sent to it had some
overlapping signatures, common in repeatedly photocopied circular
letters.

This was exasperating. A manufactured story was published to
malign someone. When 22 people of eminence protest against it,
the letter is declared a "forgery". This would put to shame even
the likes of Goebbels. Against such falsification, there is no
defence--barring perhaps a prolonged criminal case. Such methods
bear testimony to the fanaticism of the parivar, and its paranoia
about independently minded mediapeople and secular scholars.

There is a special edge to the calumny being hurled at
Communalism Combat today. The BJP is no longer sure that it can
pull off a victory in the elections. Its twin tactic of
exploiting Kargil and attacking Sonia Gandhi on "foreign origins"
has not worked. The party is only left with the rather shop-worn
appeal of Vajpayee's "image" which is confined to the upper
middle class, which does not count much for numbers. Campaigns
like Combat's undermine even that appeal. They carry special
weight because they are not directly launched by the BJP's party-
political opponents.

The BJP has a huge stake in the present election. If it performs
worse than it did last year, with say 20 to 40 seats less, its
claim to lead the NDA decisively and hegemonicaly will be
weakened. It is no good if the NDA does better than in 1998. To
call the shots, the BJP itself has to do better. Anything less
would give it the image of a declining force--no longer
unstoppable in its decade-long "forward march". Parties like the
BJP need the upbeat image for the "bandwagon" effect: many people
vote for extreme right-wing forces because they are in the
ascendant. If this changes, the BJP stands to lose more than just
seats.

No wonder the BJP's campaign is a full-throttle, maximalist, no-
holds-barred one. It is leaving nothing to chance. Unlike the
Congress, which for a while fumbled, and made many tactical
mistakes, the BJP has conducted itself in a planned, organised,
purposive, manner. It can accept failure--indeed anything other
than a big victory--only with the greatest of difficulty and with
the least grace. What is on test is not only the party's appeal,
but its will to power.

That's precisely why the BJP has polarised the political
situation, packing educational institutions, breaching electoral
norms, shamelessly trying to politicise the armed forces, and
resorting to slander. In some respects, it has followed a
political scorched-earth policy, doing many things on the
assumption that it might not return to power. The BJP's legacy
translates into a terrible choice for its successor, which will
be called upon to dismantle the damage the communalists have
done--in ways that (wrongly) look like replicating the same
methods. This culture of confrontation is not exactly what India
needs, but there may be no alternative to it if Hindutva's
soldiers battle on in their utterly unscrupulous ways.

The choice that confronts the Indian voter is in some ways
simple, even stark: either a politics based on paranoia, calumny,
half-truths and lies--necessary to sustain a hateful exclusivism-
-, or an inclusive, pluralist, secular and democratic politics
that believes in healing social rifts, in caring and sharing, in
building a humane future for our people.--end--

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