[sacw] SACW | 25 Dec. 00

[Harsh Kapoor]

SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WIRE
25 December 2000
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)

#1. Press Release by Pak. India People Forum for Peace & Democracy - Sindh
Chapter
#2. Press Release by Pak. India People Forum for Peace & Democracy - India
Chapter
#3. The Islamist and Hindutva Politics: Identities of Outlook and Objective=
s
#4. India: Prime Minister Vajpayee & his soul mates shift rightwards

--------

#1.

Sun, 24 Dec 2000 18:31:45 +0500
From: "B. M. Kutty - Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace & Democracy -
Sindh Chapter (Pakistan)"

PRESS RELEASE

A meeting of Pakistan India People=92s Forum for Peace and Democracy
(PIPFPD), Sindh Chapter attended by, among 40 others, Dr. Zaki Hasan
(President), B.M.Kutty (Secretary), Baseer Naveed (Secretary, Karachi
Chapter), Dr. Tipu Sultan, Dr. Haroon Ahmed, Rahat Saeed, Naseer Rizvi,
Abrarul Hasan, Sharafat Ali, Kosar Javaid, Mir Sikandar Ali Talpur, Saleha
Athar, Syma Mirza, Sanobar Nazir and Muqtida Ali Khan, welcomed the new
positive developments in Pak-India relations following Indian Prime
Minister Vajpayee=92s declaration of ceasefire in Kashmir during Ramzan and
Pakistan Government=92s reciprocal decision to exercise maximum restraint a=
t
LoC.

Since then, further positive steps have been announced by both the
governments which need to be fully supported by the people of Pakistan and
India. PIPFPD Sindh Chapter fully endorses the press statement issued
yesterday by the General Secretary of the Indian Chapter of the Forum, as
it fully reflects the consensus reached in the Sindh Chapter meeting.

The extension of the unilateral cease-fire in Jammu and Kashmir to January
26, 2001 by the government of India and the government of Pakistan's
decision to pull back its forces from the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu
and Kashmir are significant steps towards the resolution of the Kashmir
dispute. According to the assessments, since the declaration of unilateral
cease-fire by the government of India and Pakistan government's reciprocal
step of ordering its troops to exercise 'maximum restraint' on the LoC in
Jammu and Kashmir, the security environment in the region has substantially
improved. While the militant groups are yet to accept the cease-fire
offered by the Indian government, it is evident that they too have reduced
their hostile activities.

We are further encouraged by the decision of the All Parties Hurriyat
Conference (APHC) of Jammu and Kashmir to send some of its senior leaders
to Pakistan to discuss with the leaders of the militant groups the
modalities of termination of hostile actions in the valley. The government
of Pakistan has already expressed its willingness to allow the delegation
of the APHC to visit Pakistan. We welcome the indications from Delhi that
the Government of India is going to facilitate the travel of the APHC
leaders to Pakistan.

The declaration of unilateral cease-fire by India and its extension, the
responses of the government of Pakistan including its latest decision to
withdraw part of its forces from the LoC, indicate that the two governments
are moving towards a dialogue. The governments need to be encouraged to
find a way out of the deadlock created by their rigid stances and find a
solution to the Kashmir issue. The hope for peace generated by the
cease-fire needs to be given a chance. For the peace process to move
forward the participation of the militant groups in the cease-fire and
future dialogue is essential. This situation of deadlock can to some extent
be resolved if the APHC is able to persuade the leaders of the militant
groups to participate in the cease-fire.
=20
( B. M. Kutty )
Secretary, Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace & Democracy (PIPFPD)
Sindh Chapter

_____

#2.

Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace & Democracy
K-14 Green park Extension (First Floor), New Delhi 110016
Tel: 6196640 Fax: 6198042

PRESS RELEASE

India should allow the Hurriyat leaders to travel to Pakistan

The extension of the unilateral cease-fire in Jammu and Kashmir to
January 26, 2001 by the government of India and the government of
Pakistan's decision to pull back its forces from the Line of Control (LoC)
in Jammu and Kashmir are significant steps towards the resolution of the
Kashmir dispute. According to the assessments, since the declaration of
unilateral cease-fire by the government of India and Pakistan government's
reciprocal step of ordering its troops to exercise =18maximum restraint o=
n
the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir, the security environment in the region has
substantially improved. While the militant groups are yet to accept the
cease-fire offered by the Indian government, it is evident that they too
have reduced their hostile activities.=20

We are further encouraged by the decision of the All Parties Hurriyat
Conference (APHC) of Jammu and Kashmir to send a some of its senior
leaders to Pakistan to discuss with the leaders of the militant groups the
modalities of termination of hostile actions in the valley. The government
of Pakistan has already expressed its willingness to allow the delegation
of the APHC to visit Pakistan.

The declaration of unilateral cease-fire by India and its extension, the
responses of the government of Pakistan including its latest decision to
withdraw part of its forces from the LoC, indicate that the two
governments are moving towards a dialogue. The governments need to be
encouraged to find a way out of the deadlock created by their rigid
stances. The hope for peace generated by the cease-fire needs to be given
a chance. For the peace process to move forward the participation of the
militant groups in the cease-fire and future dialogue is essential. This
situation of deadlock can to some extent be resolved if the APHC is able
to persuade the leaders of the militant groups to participate in the
cease-fire.

We call on the government of India to facilitate the travel of the leaders
of the APHC to Pakistan so that they are able to hold discussions with the
leaders of the militant groups. Not all militant groups have as yet shown
an inclination to accept the cease-fire. The Hurriyat leaders are taking
considerable risks in attempting to go to Pakistan and talk to them. In
this effort for peace the leaders of APHC deserve to be encouraged and
supported. We hope that the government of India will accept the offer of
the APHC and provide them with all the necessary support.

New Delhi: December 22, 2000

Tapan K. Bose
General Secretary
Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy

_____

#3.

[The below paper will be presented at the joint session of Pakistan Council
of Social Sciences, Islamabad Cultural Forum, and Islamabad Social Sciences
Forum on January 5, 2001.]

THE ISLAMIST AND HINDUTVA POLITICS: Identities of Outlook and Objectives

by Hassan N. Gardezi

On the surface it appears that Pakistan's Islamists (the right-wing Islamic
political parties and their followers) and India's Sangh Parivar (a
"family" of right-wing Hindu political organizations) work at
cross-purposes with antithetical ideologies and political objectives. In
reality they complement each other and facilitate the realization of common
goals, with a remarkable coincidence of strategic designs. Their shared
conviction that Hindu-Muslim differences amount to an irreconcilable
civilizational conflict that is to be fought to the end is both an
ideological concurrence and a rationalization for driving the two
communities apart.

At the heart of their common endeavors and identities of outlook lies the
consuming project of maintaining a perpetual state of enmity between India
and Pakistan, the two nation states conceived as embodiments of implacably
hostile forces of Hinduism and Islam. In order to sustain this overriding
project they employ ideological constructs and modes of action which
overlap substantially, differing only in specifics.

Nationalism and Religion :
The ideological consensus of the Islamists and Sangh Parivar centers on
conceptualizing nationhood of their respective states exclusively on the
foundations of religion. Both draw on the partition of the subcontinent in
1947 as a critical event that formally established the separate national
identities of Muslims and Hindus. After independence the Islamists of
Pakistan took the lead in systematically and aggressively constructing an
Islamic national identity and grounding all politics in the consciousness
so generated, whether real or false. They expediently hijacked the
so-called two nation theory of the Muslim League to build around it an
elaborate rationale for transforming Pakistan into a theocratic state.
Maulana Maududi, an erstwhile opponent of a separate state for the Muslims
of India, arrived in Pakistan soon after partition to set himself up as the
chief ideologue of the Islamists and their political agenda. Wielding the
apparatus of his tightly controlled religio-political party, the
Jamat-e-Islami (JI), and a prolific pen quoting Qura'n and Hadith (the
Prophetic tradition), he claimed authority on defining the purely Islamic
brand of Pakistan's nationhood and adjudicating how the affairs of this
nation state shall be run according to Islamic law. The Muslims of
undivided India, he claimed, had "trampled the Congressite one nation
theory under their feet=8A which was intended to veld all the communities
inhabiting Hindustan into one nation" (Abula'la Maududi, Islamic Law and
Constitution, Lahore, 1960). Pakistan, according to the Maulana, had
emerged not as a Muslim state but an Islamic state in which the "ideology
of Islam" is the only criterion of nationhood and full citizenship. There
is no concept of a "territorial state" in Islam where all religious
communities participate equally and enjoy equal rights to form a single
nation. The Islamic state is an "ideological state" in which non-Muslims
have a choice to embrace Islam as ideology in order to become full citizens
or live as "zimmis" with specified rights and privileges (Ibid, pp.
140-141). Needless to say that although all other Islamist parties have
essentially concurred with this conception of Pakistan's nationhood and a
long line of the country's authoritarian regimes have found it expedient to
legitimize their rule by recourse to "Islamic ideology," the people of
Pakistan have never blessed it with their electoral endorsement. On
the other side, the Indian leaders of the independence movement made a
conscious choice in 1947 in favor of a secular, pluralist state and
enshrined the concept of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious nationhood in the
constitution of independent India. But with the weakening of the ruling
Congress party, due mainly to its failure to solve the problem of
persistent poverty and socio-economic inequalities, the marginal Hindu
communal parties began to gain strength and push their exclusionist
political agendas more stridently. The imposition of emergency by Prime
Minister Indra Gandhi in 1975 became a turning point which led to a
situation conducive to the politics of communal mobilization based on
religion.

The 1980s and 1990s saw the rapid growth of Hindu nationalism on lines
similar to the Islamic nationalism of Pakistan as the Sangh Parivar combine
stepped up its activities to an unprecedented level. Endorsing the view of
the Islamists that Hindus and Muslims living in the subcontinent were not
just two religious communities, among others, but two distinct nations,
they intensified their campaign to transform India into the Hindu rashtra
(nation) of their vision. They too rejected the concept of a
multi-religious, multi-ethnic state as a Congressite folly to be replaced
by majoritarian Hindu rule.

Sangh Parivar, like its Pakistani counterpart, is bent upon converting
India into an "ideological state." Hindutva or Hinduness, as the ideology
of the Indian state is to determine who is an authentic citizen and who in
not. With some semantic juggling Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs are included in
the Hindutva fold but Muslims and Christians remain outsiders with their
loyalties to the Indian state ever so suspect. At the same time there is no
end to ingenious suggestions floated to resolve the problematic national
identity of so many "outsiders" who have inhabited India for ages, there
being as many Muslims in India as in Pakistan. A particularly imaginative
Hindutva advocate has recently suggested that in order to acquire a
homogenized Hindu national identity, Indian Christians and Muslims should
be reclassified as Christi Hindus and Ahmedia Hindus. In their zeal to
tarnish the allegiance of Indian Muslims to their state, the Hindu
nationalists are delighted to hear from Pakistan's Islamists that "Muslims
in India are forced to serve kufr (infidelity) for their livelihood" (Brig.
Retd. Usman Khalid, Frontier Post, Peshawar, March 10, 2000). Such
statements unmistakably find resonance in the chants of "Baber ki santan,
jao Pakistan (the children of Baber, go to Pakistan)," whenever the Sangh
Parivar fanatics go on frenzied communal riots.

The Rewriting of History :
The denial by Hindutva ideologues and their Islamist counterparts of the
multi-religious, multi-ethnic roots of their respective national formations
inevitably calls for a great deal of distortion and falsification of
history.The Islamists must sanitize the history of Pakistan of its
non-Muslim heritage, and the Sangh Parivar must likewise purge their Hindu
rashtra of its non-Hindu antecedents. Here again the Islamists have a lead
over their Indian counterparts. In alliance with the authoritarian regimes
of Pakistan they have acquired a firm hold on devising of syllabi and
teaching of history, and other cognate subjects, at all levels of
education. Thus a student receiving formal education in Pakistan learns
that the history of Pakistan's nationhood begins with the conquest of Sindh
and southern Punjab by Muhammad bin Qasim in 711 A.D. which inaugurated the
spread of Islam in the region through a heroic war against the infidels.
Thereafter, Muslim invaders from the northwest such as Mahmud of Ghazni,
the great destroyer of Hindu temples, and kings such as Aurangzeb, a devout
Muslim who tried to rule India by shari'a laws, loom large in the pages of
Pakistan's history books. Centuries of the region's ancient history covered
by the Harrapan-Indus Valley civilization as well as long periods of
Buddhist and Hindu rule are obscured by a strategy of silence. When it
comes to the post-independence history of Pakistan, the Islamist version
takes a more bizarre turn. Maulana Maududi figures among the founders of
Pakistan, Hindus of East Pakistan are blamed for engineering the anti-Urdu
demonstrations and sowing the seeds of hatred, Pakistan is credited with
defeating the Indians on every front during the 1971 war, Gen. Ziaul Haq is
said to have been chosen by destiny to start an Islamic revolution, and so
on (K. K. Aziz, The Murder of History, Lahore, 1999).

The Indian Historians, among them a number of eminent Muslims, have been
able to maintain a long and robust tradition of objective, critical
historiography, affirming the composite nature of India's culture and
national heritage. But over the last few decades this tradition has come
under siege by Sangh Parivar's Hindutva ideologues who have made the
writing and teaching of history a battleground for defining India's
national identity. They tend to particularize the same historical events
and figures that their Islamist counterparts constantly dwell upon, with
the difference that the heroes of the one are villains of the other. While
the Islamists lionize Mahmud of Ghazni as the fabled destroyer of the great
temple of Somnath, the Parivar historians invoke his memory as the
archetype of evil Muslim invaders persecuting the "native" Hindus. The
intent is the same, i. e., to raise consciousness of religious identities
and collective selfhood through revival of historical memories, whether
flattering or traumatic. Such was the case when in 1999 L. K. Advani, then
President of the BJP, chose Somnath, the symbol of Hindu persecution by
Muslim invaders, as the starting point of his rath yatra (chariot march),
to Ayodhiya where a medieval mosque was to be destroyed and replaced with a
temple. Although stopped short of his destination, Advani succeeded well in
arousing Hindu religious fervor as evidenced from the trail of bloody
communal riots left behind by his caravan.

The Harrapan-Indus valley civilization also fares no better in the
historical schemes of the Parivar Hindu nationalists. While the Islamists
negate the distinct character and existence of this ancient civilization
through a strategy of silence, their counterparts use the strategy of
appropriation to achieve a similar objective. They take pains to substitute
the widely accepted theory of the Vedic Aryan migration into India around
1500 B. C. with accounts of their native origins traceable as far back as
3000 B. C. Accordingly, they claim, that the Harrapan-Indus valley
civilization was not a Dravidian creation, but simply a precursor of more
recent Hindu culture, complete with prototypical Sanskrit script,
sacrificial alters, Vedic hyms and domesticated horse. These excursions
into history and archeology enable the Parivar's leading lights to
authoritatively categorize all Indians as outside invader except the Aryan
Hindu "race" or those absorbed into the Hindutva fold.

The most elaborate piece of history fabricated by the Parivar chroniclers
has to do with the existence of a 84 pillar Ram temple under the Babri
Mosque in Ayodhiya. It is claimed that 340,000 devotees of god Rama lost
their lives in their attempts to restore the temple since it was destroyed
by Baber, the founder of the Moghal empire and replaced by the mosque
bearing his name. After several attempts the Moqsue was finally demolished
by the Sangh Parivar mobs in 1992 touching off massive communal riots
throughout the subcontinent. Not to be outdone by their counterparts in
India, Pakistan's Islamists set out immediately to demolish any Hindu
temple they could lay their hands on. In Multan, the hometown of this
writer, the famous Parahalad Mandir, standing in its quiet greying majesty
was razzed to the ground by mobs belonging to Maulana Noorani's JUI. Little
did these zealots know or care that enshrined in the inner solitude of this
temple was a great historical legend that had given birth to the universal
Hindu festival of lights, devali.

Institutional Control Another identical strategic asset at the disposal
of the two sides of soulless religious politics is the vast infrastructure
of organized religion. In addition to the Temples and Mosques, both the
Parivar and Islamist parties run thousands of religious schools in India
and Pakistan under different denominations which serve the purpose of
ideological indoctrination and promotion of hatred against internal
minorities and external "enemies." Both control networks of vernacular
newspapers and specialize in vituperative journalism. However, Sangh
Parivar controls a much wider diversity of cultural institutions, drama and
music clubs, literary associations, study circles, audio and video
productions, publishing houses and service organizations. This versatility
has enabled the Parivar combine to translate its activities into political
support and electoral votes far beyond the reach of their counterpart
across the border.

In addition Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the mother organization of
Sangh Parivar has for long run drill camps to regiment thousands of Hindu
youth in every corner of India. Some Islamist parties, on the other hand,
have organized armed commando training camps since the 1980s when they got
involved in the US-Pakistan sponsored jihad or holy war against the Soviet
army in Afghanistan, shifting their sphere of action to the Kashmir front
in due course. More recently, Shiv Sena, the ultra-militant ally of the
Parivar has also started armed training camps by the name of "Hindu
Rashtriya Mukti Army" to fight "terrorism" in Kashmir (The Times of India,
29 September, 2000).

Fascination With Power :
Nothing harmonizes the politics of Islamist and Parivar camps more than the
display and use of sheer physical power against internal and external
"enemies." Internally, verbal and physical assault on minorities has been
the common practice on both sides. Pakistan lost almost all of its
non-Muslim population through emigration and secession of Bangladesh as a
result of which one would have expected a future free from communal
violence. But that was not to be the case. The Islamists have never ceased
to pick on existing Muslim sects to brand them non-Muslims and kafirs. As
self-appointed guardians of the purity of Islamic beliefs, they are not
just content with instigating sectarian violence. Gen. Zia's dictatorial
regime put another powerful weapon in their hands in the form of an
expanded and ill defined blasphemy law which they have used with increasing
frequency to destroy the lives of individual members of religious
minorities and dissenting intellectuals in general. A simple procedure of
registering a police report on flimsiest of grounds can throw their targets
at the mercy of fanatic lynch mobs.

When it comes to their perspective on external relations, the Islamists
picture their state as the citadel of Islam, in conflict not only with
"Hindu" India but the entire world of non-believers, alam-e-kufr. That
explains their obsession with extolling the martial image of their nation
and virtues of amassing modern armaments, including that ultimate weapon of
mass destruction, the atom bomb. They were in the forefront of euphoric
street celebrations when Pakistan detonated its nuclear devices in reaction
to India's May 1998 atomic blasts, and now they are the main force against
the signing of any test ban treaties.

The Sangh Parivar and its followers are equally thrilled by sensations of
raw physical power over their perceived internal and external enemies. But
unlike their Islamist counterparts prone to revel in the virile imagery of
a distant past, they start by recovering from the long and checkered
history of the subcontinent, narratives of persecution and humiliation
suffered by Hindus as a religious community at the hands of "outsiders."
This brings an element of self-righteousness to the project of defining
their enemies who must atone for the sins of their forefathers. It is
therefore not surprising that a quantum jump in the political fortunes of
the Sangh Parivar during the closing decades of the 20th century coincided
with a sharp escalation of violence against religious minorities. By the
1990s the intensity of this violence reached levels unseen since the
partition riots of 1947, first targeting the Muslims and then Christians
held accountable for the downfall of the great Hindu rashtra.

Consistent with re-cultivating the image of a powerful and aggressive Hindu
nation is the obsession of Hindutva ideologues with exorcizing all signs of
"weakness" and pacifism from India's body politic. Vishva Hindu Parishad
(World Hindu Council), operating internationally on behalf of the Parivar,
has been valiantly engaged in erasing the non-violent, pacifist image of
India projected abroad by post-independence leaders such as Gandhi and
Nehru. Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence or ahimsa was indeed
assassinated by one of the RSS fanatics for demeaning the manliness of the
Hindu rashtra by preaching the gospel of peace.

The ascendant dogma of Sangh Parivar is that only the strong command
respect in the arena of world politics and only powerful weapons empower
nations. It therefore should not have come as a surprise that the BJP
coalition government wasted little time after its inauguration in 1998 to
declare India a defacto nuclear weapons state by commissioning the atomic
tests that sent shock waves around the world. If there was any ambiguity
about the motives behind these tests, it soon became pitifully clear in
their aftermath. The VHP announced plans to erect a monument to national
virility at Pokhran, the site of the atomic blasts and consecrate the rest
of India with the sands from the ground zero. Others boasted of India's
elevation to the status of a big power. With BJP still in office, there is
little hope that CTBT, a test ban treaty that India itself had proposed in
its earlier gentler, kindlier incarnation, is going to be signed in the
foreseeable future.

Consequences and Prospects:
To conclude, a few words on the consequences of the ascendence of religious
politics in Pakistan and India, and the prospects that lie ahead. In
Pakistan where the dominance of Islamist parties and their control of the
national political agenda has a longer and continuous history, the ideal of
a tolerant, liberal, progressive and peaceful society has become merely a
dream. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than General Musharraf's quick
back-tracking after displaying his preference for liberal reforms at the
time of his October 1999 military coup.

The collapse of democracy and increasing economic hardship has left the
masses of working poor too alienated to resist the power of the divine
conglomerate. Although the middle class aspires for a prosperous, secure
and progressive social system and would like to live in peace with India
and rest of the world, it feels too intimidated to raise its voice against
the stranglehold of the mullas on civil society. Psychologists in Pakistan
speak of an epidemic of clinical depression and rising suicide rates among
sections of this class, specially women and persons in the prime ages of 15
to 40. Most discouraging for the prospect of progressive change is the
denigration of the liberal and secular-minded intelligentsia. With the
exception of a few brave souls in the English media, higher education and
legal profession, they have been silenced, coopted or driven into exile
voluntarily or otherwise.

The religious minorities, of course, bear the greatest brunt of the tide of
Islamist intolerance and persecution, irrespective of class affiliation.
Far from being the equal and full citizens of Jinnah's vision, they have
been virtually disfranchised by the system of separate electorates and
persecuted by blasphemy laws. The Ahmedias, once a vibrant and highly
educated community, capable of contributing significantly to the cultural,
economic and scientific development of Pakistan, are reduced to an
anguished and demoralized entity since being legislated out of the pale of
Islam and legally prohibited from observing such religious rites that may
suggest that they are Muslims. The Shia community seems to be next in line
to suffer a similar dispensation. Venting their wrath on an ever widening
circle of designated non-Muslims is the tonic on which the monolithic
nationalism and patriotism of the Islamists is nourished.

There is an interesting difference on this last point between the Islamists
and the Sangh Parivar. The Hindutva ideology of the latter is at its core a
Brahman faith with a hagiology which is not shared by a large section of
Hindus, particularly the masses of Dalits. Yet, the Hindutva ideologues go
out of their way to claim not only the Dalits, but also Jains, Buddhists,
Sikhs and tribal people with animistic faiths into their in-group. Only the
Muslims and Christians are strictly defined as the out-group.

>From an overall perspective, India is still better placed to reconstruct a
socially progressive and peaceful society. It has a constitution that
recognizes the cultural diversity of the nation, and affirms explicitly
that the state by itself shall not espouse or establish or practice any
religion. The Sangh Parivar fanatics no doubt use their street power to
unleash terror against the minorities. But their ascendency in the long run
depends on their success in holding on to state power through the
constitutionally sanctioned electoral process. No one knows this better
than the BJP Prime Minister Vajpayee who heads a minority coalition
government. The reality of electoral politics has forced him to tone down
his communal rhetoric and to vacilate on his party's insistence to build
the Ram temple at the site of the demolished Babri Mosque. The BJP has even
elected a Dalit, Bangaru Laxman, as its president who took office by
announcing that "Muslims are our flesh of flesh and blood of blood."

The BJP's Hindutva agenda also faces a stiff and increasingly organized
resistance from a secular cultural intelligentsia which has a strong
presence in the institutional structure of the Indian society and functions
in an environment relatively free from intimidation. The main challenge
before this intelligentsia is to re-appropriate the public space lost to
Hindutva ideologues under the patronage of the BJP government, and to
reassert India's secular, richly multi-cultural, democratic and pacifist
identity.

Paradoxically, the parallels in the retrogressive politics of religion in
India and Pakistan have also generated a new silver lining. People in both
countries have become aware as never before of the destructiveness of
internal bloodshed and senseless enmity between the two countries. Recent
dramatic increase in the cross-border contacts between civilian individuals
and groups representing social movements of peace, justice and human rights
has opened up new possibilities of wresting the agenda of nation building
and international relations from the hands of those who have kept the great
people of South Asian subcontinent shackled to primordial conflicts and
prejudices, ignorance and poverty. But this is no doubt a task that will
require a great deal of perseverance and moral courage.

______

#4.

Praful Bidwai Column
25 December 2000

VAJPAYEE'S RAM DHUN: PARIVAR SHIFTS RIGHTWARDS

By Praful Bidwai

Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee could not have dealt a greater blow to his
manufactured image of a "moderate" or "liberal" than he did by espousing
the building of a Ram temple at Ayodhya on the rubble of the Babri mosque.
Nor could he have acted more irresponsibly as India's Prime Minister who is
Constitutionally, legally and morally enjoined to defend all citizens'
basic rights irrespective of their religion and to hold the scales evenly
between them. The events that have been triggered off by his statements of
December 6, 7 and 14 highlight a dangerous shift towards the Right driven
by rank communalism--witness Mr Bal Thackeray's remarks demanding the
wholesale disenfranchisement of Muslims and Mr L.K. Advani's aggressive
assertion of Hindutva and disparagement of the CBI which has filed charges
against him in the Ayodhya case.

To begin with, Mr Vajpayee's statement about the Ayodhya agitation being a
"nationalist movement" and about the "unfinished" temple agenda was a
deliberate, carefully crafted suo moto remark, unprovoked by the Opposition
or the media. His later "clarification" that the temple construction demand
represents the "national sentiment" only reinforces this assessment. This
is, of course, fully in keeping with some of his previous statements,
especially the one in September at an RSS-BJP Staten Island meeting that he
would always "remain a swayamsevak" and that this "right" could never "be
taken away" from him. His obnoxious defence of the anti-Christian violence
in Gujarat in December 1998 too was of a piece with the same approach. It
formed the prelude to Graham Staines' killing in Orissa.

Mr Vajpayee, despite appearances, has never once moderated his commitment
to the core of Hindutva and "cultural nationalism" nor diluted his
foundational loyalty to the RSS. It always was wishful and fanciful
thinking to imagine that Mr Vajpayee is the "right man in the wrong party",
and that he is not quite communal, although is not fully secular. Even more
delusory is the manufactured "soft" image of Mr Vajpayee as a
"statesmanlike" leader who has "decisively" distanced the BJP from the RSS.
As this column has consistently argued, this reflected softness in the
heads of Vajpayee apologists rather than a softening of his politics. What
distinguishes Mr Vajpayee from the Ashok Singhals and the K.S. Sudarshans
of the world is not ideology or politics, but form or style--abrasive and
strident in the case of the RSS and VHP, but subdued in Mr Vajpayee's.

The pertinent question is why Mr Vajpayee chose this point of time to make
a strident remark which surprised even Mr Advani who had then just made a
visit to the Ajmer dargah. The only straightforward explanation is that Mr
Vajpayee believes the time has come for the BJP to reaffirm its hardline
Hindutva moorings even at the expense of the NDA. This has a great deal to
do with the coming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, which must take
place by October, but which could be advanced. However, more broadly, there
is probably a larger combination of calculations, as well as serious RSS
pressure, behind his December 6 statement, which signifies a change of
political stance, even strategy. At their core is the view that without
RSS-VHP backing, the BJP can't overcome the political setbacks it has
recently suffered--in Uttar Pradesh, its vote fell by nine percentage
points between 1998 and 1999--nor mollify the large numbers of people who
have suffered under the government's policy of mindless economic
deregulation, privatisation and trade liberalisation.
=20=20
Mr Vajpayee probably reckons that falling back upon the RSS will help the
BJP enlist swayamsevaks--indispensable for mobilising votes. In return, the
RSS will let him carry on with market-fundamentalist policies as well as
give him leeway on Kashmir. Secondarily, his statements may have been
prompted by the inner-party power struggle in which Mr Vajpayee has been
trying to outmanoeuvre Mr Advani. In all probability, the RSS read the Riot
Act to Mr Vajpayee and asked him to stop promoting Mr Jaswant Singh and
strongly defend Mr Advani who has been chargesheeted by the CBI, and also
found (along with Mr MM Joshi and Ms Uma Bharati) prima facie guilty by a
sessions judge in the Ayodhya epsisode.

Mr Vajpayee's Ram dhun is deplorable on legal, moral and political
grounds. It is ludicrous to claim that the temple demand represents the
"national sentiment". Indeed, it does not even reflect Hindu sentiment.
According to the shastras--important for orthodox Hindus--temples should
not be built on contested sites or amidst strife. For most Hindus, Ram
temples are a rarity. In U.P., there are more temples to Hanuman than to
Ram. The vast majority of Hindus see the Ayodhya agitation as an extreme,
inflammatory movement inspired by communal hatred.

The Babri demolition remains a deeply embarrassing and disgraceful episode
for most Hindus. That's precisely why many parivar leaders disown it and
even Mr Sudarshan concocts "theories" about a government-inspired
"explosion" rather than kar sevaks razing the mosque, and Mr K.R. Malkani
talks of a CIA "plot"! To demand a temple at the Babri site is to espouse a
shamelessly sectarian, majoritarian, and communal agenda. If anything,
there is a stronger moral and political claim on the part of the Muslims
for restitution of the status quo ante--i.e. prior to the illegal
demolition.

Mr Vajpayee, as Prime Minister of India, is Constitutionally enjoined to
abide by a major Supreme Court ruling which upheld the Ayodhya Land
Acquisition Act, 1993, authorising the Centre to intervene in the land
dispute precisely because the dispute had "affected the maintenance of
public order and harmony" between different communities. The Court ordered
the government to preserve the status quo, observe strict neutrality
between rival claims and "maintain public order and promote communal
harmony". Mr Vajpayee is disastrously irresponsible in threatening a breach
of this obligation.

Mr Vajpayee has a thoroughly reprehensible notion of "getting even with
history". Even assuming a Ram temple had been demolished to make way for
the Babri mosque in 1528 AD--which is probably untrue--it is profoundly
wrong to wreak "revenge" 450 years later to "undo" the wrong. Civilised
societies do not legitimise such violent retributive "justice". Modern
nations--or those aspiring to modernity--do not settle medieval wrongs with
medieval methods. At Independence, India signed a social compact between
all communities and citizens, which involved leaving behind past wrongs and
iniquities and starting on new foundation of democracy and pluralism. Mr
Vajpayee, revanchistically, wants to undo that compact.

The consequences of Mr Vajpayee's new stance are there for all to see. Mr
Advani has been quick to rubbish the CBI for the Ayodhya chargesheet. It is
absolutely grotesque for the Home Minister to make disparaging remarks
about a major official agency which filed charges after examining 850
witnesses and 700 documents. When ministers make such remarks, they
undermine the legitimacy of their own government. Even worse is Mr
Thackeray's demand that all Muslims must be disenfranchised. His uniquely
vicious December 17/18 diatribe against Gandhi, Nehru, secularism and
democracy is the clearest expression of a fascist mindset practising hate
speech. Clearly, Mr Thackeray felt emboldened to do this only because of Mr
Vajpayee's own remarks.

A distinctive orchestrated logic is at work here. As the Staines murder
showed, intemperate remarks from people in high places serve as a signal
for street-level thugs to go on the rampage. This in turn shifts the larger
political terrain further to the right. It also ratchets up the political
temperature leading to a scorching communal impact. Once this logic comes
into play, it is hard to regulate it. The "moderates" within the Far Right
themselves become its victims.

Mr Vajpayee has achieved another thing: the evisceration of the NDA. The
coalition's "secular" parties haven't had the guts to confront him for
violating the NDA's stated agenda. To their eternal shame, they swallowed
the insult and voted to defend Mr Vajpayee in the Lok Sabha. In the Rajya
Sabha too, where the PM was formally reprimanded, they did not cover
themselves with glory. Crude considerations of power have prevailed over
secular principles, especially for the likes of Mr George Fernandes.

This could spell trouble and discord among the NDA's constituents, who
have been told by their favourite leader that Hindutva comes before them.
Even for the BJP, a hardened right-wing stance may not yield dividends. The
Ayodhya issue has been flogged to death. After 1992, it has lost much of
its appeal. The BJP-VHP may go ahead with the temple construction: furious
preparations are under way, with three-fourths of the work completed. But
the construction may not help mobilise the kind of negative energies that
the demolition--a destructive act--did. The BJP may thus only end up
consolidating its hardline upper-caste Hindu base. But that doesn't need
much consolidation. The party may find that the ordinary, non-upper caste
people, whose votes it needs, are repelled by the temple move. But through
its temple gamble, the BJP has communalised and vitiated the national
climate--to its perpetual disgrace. -end---

______________________________________________
SACW is an informal, independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since 1996.
Dispatch archive from 1998 can be accessed
at http://www.egroups.com/messages/act/
////////////////////////////////////
Disclaimer: opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily correspond to views of SACW compilers.