[sacw] [ACT] sacw dispatch (6 Feb 00)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
6 February 2000
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#1. The BJP's not-so-hidden agenda
#2. Film scripts today, books tomorrow
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#1.

The Hindu
6 February 2000
Pg: 14 :: Col: a

The BJP's not-so-hidden agenda has begun unfolding, if not at the
Centre where Mr. Vajpayee presides over a coalition Government,
at least in the States where the party holds political sway,
particularly Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, writes NEENA VYAS with
inputs from MANAS DASGUPTA in Gandhinagar and J. P. SHUKLA in
Lucknow.

THE SAFFRON onslaught on the polity is nothing new - it began in
the Eighties with the Ayodhya agitation, and now in Gujarat, the
only State where the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is not saddled
with allies, the process of saffronisation is beginning to bloom.

The party's not-so-hidden agenda has begun unfolding, if not at
the Centre where Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee presides over a
coalition National Democratic Alliance Government, at least in
the States where the party holds political sway, particularly
Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.

It was the dream of the Union Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, to
make Gujarat ``a model State'' and after the party got rid of
``revisionists'' like Mr. Shankersinh Waghela, the Keshubhai
Government is beginning to show its colours. The systematic
politicisation of the entire State apparatus and saffronisation
of the education system has begun.

If in Uttar Pradesh the Sanskar Bharati, yet another RSS front,
has become the self-appointed guardian of Indian culture even as
the Government looks on approvingly, the Gujarat Government has
made it lawful for its employees to become members of and to
participate in the activities of the RSS. Soon, this new
``liberal'' regime is to be extended to RSS offspring such as the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Sanskar Bharati and the Bajrang Dal.

"What is wrong if Government servants are allowed to participate
in the activities of a patriotic cultural organisation like the
RSS,'' senior BJP leaders such as Mr. M. Venkaiah Naidu and Mr.
Jana Krishnamurthi ask. ``Should one allow those flush with funds
from abroad and working on a commercial project to hurt the
feelings of Hindus,'' they query in relation to the agitation by
Sanskar Bharati against the shooting of the film, Water, by Ms.
Deepa Mehta. ``What was wrong in their demand that she submit her
script to them for approval, and assuage their feelings?'' And,
finally, "did not the communist cadres in West Bengal protest in
the streets against the City of Joy?''

But the real issue is that the RSS is no dance and drama club. It
is political to the core. It set up its political arm, Jana
Sangh, in the Fifties and handpicked half a dozen RSS
"pracharaks'' for the job. After the Jana Sangh was born again
as the BJP, the links remained intimate. Almost the entire top
brass of the BJP belongs to the RSS and were handpicked to lead
the political arm.

The BJP cannot decide who its party president should be without
the concurrence of the RSS - the decision is taken by a few
senior party leaders in consultation with the top office-bearers
of the RSS, and the election becomes a mere formality - and the
leadership of all its fronts, including the VHP, the Bajrang Dal
and the Sanskar Bharati is held by RSS pracharaks.

The RSS continues to have a major say on important policies and
programmes of its political wing, the BJP. In 1998, it was the
RSS which vetoed the Prime Minister and decided that Mr. Jaswant
Singh could not be the Finance Minister. And during every
election, RSS members come out in large numbers to canvass
actively for the BJP. In 1995, well before the central election
committee meeting of the BJP, the Sarsanghchalak of the RSS, Mr.
Rajendra Singh, predicted that around 20 to 25 sitting BJP MLAs
would not be given the ticket, and that is exactly what happened.

With these admitted facts, how can the RSS be considered a non-
political cultural organisation when top BJP leaders confess that
the RSS chief is their ``friend, philosopher and guide''?

As for the controversy on Water, what the communists did in West
Bengal does not make right the actions of the Sanskar Bharati in
Varanasi. No organisation can be allowed to set itself up as the
arbiter of cultural values or as the guardian of Hindu ethics.

The Babri Masjid demolition was justified on the ground that many
temples were destroyed by the Mughals and many temples were
brought down in Pakistan and Bangladesh. But the question
remains, does India want to become a Pakistan, or do we want to
bring back the jizya tax in reverse and penalise the minorities?
Does India want to imitate the Islamic countries?

What the Keshubhai Patel regime did quietly through a Government
Order - withdrawing the ban on Government servants participating
in RSS activities - was a blatant attempt at politicising the
bureaucracy and the police in Gujarat. The ``logical'' next step
would be for the Centre to say that Central Government servants,
including police and armed forces personnel, will be allowed to
participate in the activities of the RSS, which is a ``cultural
organisation''. After all, what is good for Gujarat must
necessarily be good for India. Perhaps only the fear of
opposition from allies prevents the Vajpayee Government from
taking this step. The Government could fall, and even the RSS
does not want that to happen at the moment. The RSS knows that it
was on the dual RSS-BJP membership issue that the Janata Party
Government of 1977 fell apart.

The RSS has always used its several front organisations to test
the political efficacy of some of its saffron ideas before
letting the BJP take the plunge at the formal political level.
The Ayodhya issue was taken up and the ground prepared by the VHP
before the BJP put it on its formal agenda. The method employed
is always the same. Start an agitation, create a controversy, and
then claim to speak on behalf of the ``people'' and the ``Hindu
sentiment''. The ground is now being tested again on Water.

"Hindu sentiments have been hurt. The people have protested
because their traditions are being denigrated.'' These are
samples of comments from senior BJP leaders on the happenings in
Varanasi where Ms. Deepa Mehta was prevented by Sanskar Bharati
activists from shooting her film. Having demanded pre-censorship
of Water, would the day be far away when these organisations
attack newspapers demanding a reading of news stories or articles
that are to appear the next day? Or demand to see the video
recordings of programmes to be telecast? All in the name of
``people's sentiments'' which were used to whip up the Ayodhya
agitation then, and now it is religious conversions, or Mr. M. F.
Husain's paintings or Ms. Mehta's films.

With Mr. Ram Prakash Gupta, an old RSS hand as Chief Minister in
Uttar Pradesh, the scene has been set for full-scale
saffronisation. The U.P. ``allies'' are only interested in their
Ministerial berths, and are not expected to make much of a noise.

Saffron activists have argued that the script of Water shows the
holy city of Varanasi and the life of Hindu widows there in a bad
light. They damaged the sets, forced Ms. Mehta to get her film
script reviewed a second time by the Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting and accept some changes. And even now it does not
seem to be the end of the story, for the hardliners are demanding
that ``they'' be satisfied.

Besides, Mr. Gupta has on and off made statements saying that
Ayodhya was very much on his Government's agenda or that he would
not come in the way of the VHP or the Bajrang Dal trying to build
a temple on the disputed site. All this on video tape. His later
denials only support the belief that the provocations were
deliberate, that there is method to the madness, that the BJP has
been signalling to its cadre through him that it has not
abandoned its pet plank.

The recent legislation - the Uttar Pradesh Regulation of Public
Religious Places and Buildings Bill - giving enormous powers to
district magistrates to prevent construction of temples, mosques
and churches in rural areas has been justified citing growing ISI
activities on the U.P.- Nepal border. It was a virtual admission
that the law will mostly be used to stop construction of mosques.
National security has become the Government's alibi, and the
recent hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane has given credence
to this. No one trusts the BJP on this count, not even its allies
believe the BJP is secular.

In Gujarat the ``Hindu card'' of the BJP is not its hidden
agenda, it is very much out in the open. Repeated electoral
victories have only emboldened the party to flaunt its communal
card unabashedly. The Government notification withdrawing the ban
on its employees participating in the activities of the RSS and a
similar exemption expected soon for the VHP is part of the
process of saffronisation that began five years ago.

After the 1995 elections, the BJP Government appointed RSS men to
watch over the shoulders of its Ministers. The system of at least
one RSS card-holder being posted in the personal staff of each
Minister has been introduced - in the Chief Minister's office
there are a dozen of them.

Take this example. The BJP was critical of the Congress-supported
Chief Minister, Mr. Waghela's ``Balguru'' scheme to appoint
primary school teachers. The Keshubhai Government renamed it
``Vidyasagar'' and adopted it. Primary school teachers' jobs were
given to 20,000 men drawn mostly from the RSS and the VHP cadre
with the aim of catching them young. At the higher education
level, the Congress-sympathiser Vice-Chancellor of Gujarat
University was removed under the pretext of alleged indiscipline
and the pro-Vice-Chancellor's face smeared with black ink by
activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (student wing
of the RSS) to humiliate him and force him to quit. The courts
struck down an attempt to hand over board examinations vigilance
work to RSS-VHP activists. But, in another decision, the training
of some 6000 Sanskrit teachers to ``teach in Sanskrit'' was
entrusted to the Sanskar Bharati.

No action was taken against a group of hooligans belonging to the
Bajrang Dal and the ABVP for ransacking the reputed Centre for
Environment Planning and Technology or attacking Mr. M. F.
Husain's ``Husain-Doshi Gufa,'' both located on the Gujarat
University campus. Sangh Parivar activists have held at ransom
organisers of numerous beauty pageants in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar,
Surat and elsewhere, all in the name of ``protecting'' Indian
culture, but there has been no ``action'' against Doordarshan
which recently telecast the Miss Femina beauty contest.

A Gujarat Government circular for a census on religious lines,
apparently to browbeat the minorities, had to be withdrawn last
year after intervention by the court. To circumvent this, the
Government has entrusted to a private trust the enumeration of
religious conversions. ``If the Congress in Orissa can ban all
conversions except with the written permission of the local
police, why cannot the BJP in Gujarat ban forced conversions
without being called communal,'' a party activist asked.

Before the September Lok Sabha elections, pro-BJP Government
officials were deputed in the entire tribal belt and they openly
canvassed for BJP candidates during duty hours using Government
vehicles. Part of the saffronisation process.

Not all Government officials have fallen in line and many of them
are resisting political interference in educational and
administrative matters, but riding high on one electoral success
after another, the political bosses are having their way.

________

#2.
The Hindustan Times
Sunday, February 6, 2000, New Delhi
=46eatures

=46ilm scripts today, books tomorrow

(The real issue in the Water controversy is the Sangh mindset, says Akshaya
Mukul)

Bhagwati: Narayan, don't you know Brahmin and God can sleep with whomever
they want, and the women they sleep with are blessed. It's written.

Madhumati: You should understand well that there is no difference between a
widow and a prostitute. Both are soiled goods.

Shakuntala: Panditji, you have studied the shastras very carefully. Do they
all tell us to treat our widows so harshly?

Mansaram: According to our shastras, widows have only two options: they may
renounce the world, or burn with their husbands.

These are snatches from the script of Water, Deepa Mehta's so-far aborted
third film on the elements of nature. The 170-page script, now virtually
public property, is relentless in its expose of the sad plight of upper
caste widows in the ancient city. It doesn't spare Varanasi either, linking
it with plague, corrupt priests and half-burnt, floating corpses in the
Ganga.

Commentators have deliberated on the predictable questions: was Mehta
offensive and provocative? And even if she was, can violence and vandalism
be justified?

But an equally relevant question is, why does the Hindutva brigade react
with such outrage when a truthful picture of Hindu women is brought out of
the closet? When it is unmoved by the day-to-day reality of abandoned
widows begging and selling their bodies, why such indignation at seeing it
on celluloid?

Amir Chand, a senior functionary of Samskar Bharati, disputes that Indian
women, including widows, lead a pitiable life.

So let's clear the historical doubt. Of the many mid-19th century records
which challenge Amir Chand, the most prominent is Bhartendu Harischandra=EDs
attack on Varanasi's Brahmin priests.

He wrote on 2 September, 1872: "Even virtuous women lose character once
they go there (temples). It is astonishing that they look on those very
women with an evil eye, whom they address as daughter, who are decisive for
their life beyond, and to whom they themselves give diksha."

Then there is the celebrated case of an upper caste, 20-year-old Gujarati
woman in Varanasi, reported in a Calcutta journal, Uchitvakta, on 22
October, 1881. This Krishna devotee fell prey to the priest of a local
temple, she complained, at the behest of
her husband.
In both cases, conservative Hindu elements took to the streets and
protested about the scandal coming out of the closet. Neither has the
condition of widows nor the style of protest changed.

Historian Tanika Sarkar analyses the Sangh Parivar's attitude: "They
believe women should surrender and never ask for rights. Their surrender
ensures domestic peace and pleasure for men." In the present social and
political situation, the Parivar cannot overtly contest women=EDs rights so
it attacks marginal issues like lesbianism and the condition of Hindu
widows, whipping up popular sentiment.

At one level, the Parivar gives upper middleclass women, a strong
constituency for the BJP, a certain amount of power; but they do not share
parity with men. This is evident even in the hierarchy of the Rashtrasevika
Samiti, the RSS women=EDs wing, which ensures that the family=EDs power to m=
ake
decisions about its female members is preserved.

This contradictory attitude, fears historian Romila Thapar, will lead to
"more attacks on those exposing the impoverishment of women in our
society." She says the Sangh Parivar and similar groups fear the
empowerment of women, since "this changes social attitudes."

Indeed, so strong is the ire of 'the people' at the depiction of widows
that they overlook the possibly more provocative passage in the script,
where a parallel is drawn between Gandhi and the character Bhupindernath
who sexually exploits widows.

Political scientist Neera Chandhoke says the Sangh Parivar reacts violently
to a true depiction of women because it sees them as partners in the
Hindutva project. Films like Water and Fire can put a brake on this.
Related to this, she observes, "is the conscious attempt by Hindus to paint
themselves as victims. It immediately gels with the masses.=EE

Amir Chand proves her right. He splutters, "Why doesn't Deepa Mehta make a
film on divorced Muslim women?"

Thapar points out that this is the standard right-wing Hindu argument:
"When the Sangh Parivar attacks anything to do with Muslims, it justifies
it in the name of setting right the wrongs of history. But when Hindu
tradition is criticised, it says this is history, why rake it up."

Thapar and Sarkar are certain that such attacks will recur in future.
Sarkar laments that society will remain passive for two reasons: "The
attacks are on marginal issues, and aimed at eliminating negative
representation. Second, by acting in the name of
'the people', the Parivar pre-empts debate, insidiously undermining
constitutional rights."

Worries Thapar: "Will all film scripts now be submitted for pre-censorship?
One can foresee that the next attack will come on books, with the demand
that some be banned. Authors will have to submit their manuscripts to the
government just in case there is
a comment on supposedly sensitive subject."

The day doesn't seem too far away.

__________________________________________
SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WEB DISPATCH (SACW) is an informal, independent &
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