[sacw] Statement from SAHMAT

[Harsh Kapoor]

18 September 1999
FYI
(South Asia Citizens Web)
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[the following statement has been released by Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust
(SAHMAT), New Delhi]
18 September 1999

A STATEMENT

The electoral campaign during the run up to the present General Election
has so far skirted substantive political issues and future course of
development of the polity and society. The BJP, having ensconced itself as
the dominant partner of a so-called National Democratic Alliance, has been
projecting itself as the future hope for India. As concerned citizens, we
deem it necessary to call this claim into question and bring to public
notice the damage already to the polity and society during the preceding
thirteen months of miss-governance.

The communal character of the BJP had never been in doubt. It is another
matter that for a period people overlooked the dangers this posed to the
nation over both the short and long run. The last seventeen months have
reinforced that despite taking on a moderate mask the Government, far from
seeking to check this virus, fanned communal fire all around Atrocities
against Christians and intimidation of Muslim and other marginalized groups,
whose electoral support the Prime Minister has the audicity to seek, is only
the tip of the iceberg. Above all, it has during this period attempted to
create a mindset that has encouraged and hardened communal antagonisms,
social hatred and a cult of intolerance towards social and cultural
diversities of which the country has justly been proud in the past. Then
there is the all pervasive ISI, which the Vajpayee govt. uses everytime it
wants to cover-up its
failure on the administration front. On this count alone, the ruling
coalitions performance has been most threatening.

Communalism is a camouflage for substantial social inequalities and
economic disparities that continue to characterize this country. Edged by
forces of new economic imperialism, the Atal Behari Government has been
remarkable for a strong anti-poor thrust of public policies. Even the lip
service it earlier paid to 'swadeshi' has been shamelessly abandoned to
create a growing space for foreign capital to enter and take hold of the
country's destiny. Reduction of allocation to education, health, social
welfare and poverty-alleviation programme, and the virtual withdrawl from
the social sector are prime achievements of the ruling coalition in the
seventeen months, besides leading the country to the threshold of a
bankrupt economy. Whichever government is instituted after the elections
will be obliged to come up with a supplementary budget imposing a
taxcum-surcharge hike which will ultimately directly affect the poor besides
putting an additional economic burden on the middle classes.

If the Vajpayee government has impoverished the nation on the one hand, it
has at the same time committed the country, large part sections of whose
population continue to be deprived of a decent livelihood, food, shelter,
drinking water. etc., to a mindless involvement in a nuclear arms race. It
is our understanding that this has been done to appease the acute national
security consciousness of the growing sections of the emerging middle class
which constituted the ruling coalitions support-base in the last elections.
In effect, the promise held out by Prime Minister Vajpayee that India will
be major in the next milleneum is no more than a pipe-dream.

Every democracy requires legitimate political institutions to ensure
stability and a degree of fairness and accountability. The BJP-led coalition
has during the seventeen months of rule systematically undermined the
dignity and legitimacy of the office of the Rashtrapati, judiciary and
Election Commission. Let us also reflect in this connection on how the PMO
itself has functioned. To settle intra-party bickerings within his party,
the PMO issued a statement that the Prime Minister wanted Sahib Singh to be
a cabinet minister. Never was the PMO used in such an unabashed manner to
settle intra-party squabbles. This speaks eloquently of the great virtues of
collective functioning by which the ruling coalition has been swearing
during the present electoral campaign. What is particularly pathetic is that
institutions and constitutional functionaries have been de-legitimised in a
language which Gandhi or other freedom fighters would have shuddered to use
against even the Viocroy. Small wonder, then, that despite taking about
shuchita the standard language of discourse under the present dispensation
has acquired an absolutist orientation which might be fit in the operations
of the underworld but can have no place within a democratic polity committed
to upholding principles of dialogue and public discourse.

A section of liberal-minded Indians were taken in by the amoral
multiple-speak ( double-speak is a misnomer) of the Sangh Parivar. Mr.
Vajpayee's political performance and effectiveness should be judged against
the backdrop of the role, position and hold of Kushubhai Thakres and
Narendra Modis and Bal Thackerey's and where their politics is likely to
lead this country.

Rajni Kothari
Imtiaz Ahmed
Prabhat Patnaik
Utsa Patnaik
Irfan Habib
K.N. Pannikar
Sumit Sarkar
Tanika Sarkar
K.M. Shrimali
Javed Alam
Zoya Hasan
M.K. Raina
Vivan Sundaram
Gita Kapur
Smitu Kothari
Vijay Pratap
Rajendra Prasad
Shabnam Hashmi
Kumkum Sangari
Dalip Swami