People's Democracy

FINALLY, the ruling of the Deputy Speaker has come, ending the impasse in parliament. He has permitted a discussion on the Gujarat genocide under rule 184 which will end with a vote.

The prime minister has thundered that even if some NDA allies desert the government, he still commands a majority in the Lok Sabha. That may well be the case. However, the discussion is bound to expose those parties who, while mouthing allegiance to secularism, will prop up a government which is soaked in the blood of innocent people and brazenly patronises the worst communal genocide that independent India is going through. Further, this discussion should also expose the fascist mindset of Vajpayee and Co.

Prime Minister Vajpayee appears to have adopted the Gobellisian technique with fascist precision. Hitler's propaganda minister Gobelles put to lethal use during Nazi pogroms his famous dictum: tell a big enough lie frequently enough to make it the truth.

Speaking at the 75th birthday function of former prime minister Chandrasekhar on April 17, Vajpayee repeated what he said in his by now infamous speech at Goa. Endorsing Narendra Modi's action - reaction theory, Vajpayee said that the Gujarat violence would not have happened if the parliament had condemned the Godhra carnage forcefully. The implication that the country and its political parties did not effectively condemn the Godhra carnage is a brazen lie. All national parties had condemned the incident strongly. The CPI(M) while doing so on February 27 had said that "it is absolutely essential that peace be maintained and steps taken to see that violence does not spread anywhere else." Little did we know at that time that the Narendra Modi led administration was already planning a large-scale communal genocide in Gujarat.

If Vajpayee is sincere, (he is, of course, loath to be so) he needs to explain as to why, as the leader of the parliament, he did not discharge his elementary responsibility by moving a strong condemnation on the floor of the house the next morning. In fact, it is his government which urged the opposition parties on the morning of February 28th, by which time the ghastly news from Godhra had arrived, not to raise any other issue and to allow the budget to be presented as usual. It was the Vajpayee government who gave precedence to maintaining the sanctity of the budget tradition above a universal condemnation of the Godhra carnage. It is simply perfidious to now try and seek to tar the opposition on this score.

By blatantly backing Narendra Modi and his pogroms that continue in Gujarat till date, the BJP and the saffron brigade seems to be calculating that the electoral benefits they seek through the blood of innocents need not be confined only to the state of Gujarat. Clearly, the prime minister is seeking to sharpen the communal polarisation all over the country for the sake of petty electoral gains. Vajpayee government’s obdurate refusal to accept a discussion under rule 184 and consequent paralysis of parliament for a week was to keep the communal cauldron boiling. The grave consequences are inescapable: the destruction of the secular democratic foundations of the modern Indian republic.

This however, is the precise objective of the saffron brigade: to convert this modern republic into what they call a "Hindu Rashtra". This objective was articulated by none less than the former long serving RSS supremo M S Golwalkar way back in 1939. His chilling fascist articulation of the RSS agenda continues to be the inspiration for the saffron brigade today. He says: "there are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race….From this standpoint, sanctioned by the experience of shrewd old nations, the foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment -- not even citizen's rights. There is, at least should be, no other course for them to adopt. We are an old nation; let us deal, as old nations ought to and do deal, with the foreign races, who have chosen to live in our country."

And how should `old nations' deal? "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by."

It is the same Golwalkar who, while making many deceitful compromises seeking the removal of the ban on the RSS following Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, had assured the then home minister Sardar Patel that the RSS will confine itself as a "cultural organisation". In search for a political outfit, Golwalkar had sent some pracharaks to assist Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, who fell out with Nehru and resigned from the union cabinet, to found a political party in 1951. Amongst those sent were the present prime minister and the home minister to found the Jana Sangh, the earlier incarnate of the present BJP. One would be living in a fool's paradise if one were to consider the BJP as anything else but the political arm of the RSS.

The prime minister's speeches both at Goa and later in Delhi only carry forward this agenda. And this is the danger that is lurking at our door steps. Can a country with such immense diversity, in all aspects not only religious, remain united with such an agenda?

The unity of India can be maintained only by strengthening the bonds of commonality that run through this diversity. Any attempt to impose a uniformity upon this diversity, like the communal forces seek to do, will only destroy the unity and integrity of our country. It is this RSS agenda that has to be defeated if we wish to retain India as we know of it today.

Through this gory violence, the prime minister's utmost concern has been his image abroad. On this score he would do well to read the editorial of the Financial Times , London on April 16, 2002 titled "Gandhi's Horror". It says: "His (Vajpayee's) remarks threaten to shred the vision of a tolerant and multi- cultural society articulated by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. They have alarmed all those in India who believe the country should celebrate - rather than be divided by - its diversity.

It is indeed an irony that those who perfected the policy of divide and rule to keep India as its colony today have grown to make such sane remarks. Recollect the fact that during the first war of Independence the British chronicler Thomas Lowe, bemoaned that "cow killer and cow worshipper, pig eater and the pig hater had joined together in revolt!" Following this experience, the British perfected the communal divide and rule policy to rule India for nearly a century longer. They simultaneously encouraged the Muslim League and accepted the mercy petition of Sarvakar and set him free from the Andaman cellular jail. Subsequently, Savarkar authored his seminal vicious work "Hindutva", which serves as the beacon light of Hindu communalism. The subsequent cruel partition of India on communal lines is now part of history. However, by the standards of today’s "civilized world" it is the leading British daily that unequivocally condemns Vajpayee’s ‘rhetoric’.

The tragedy of India today is that we have a government headed by Vajpayee which instead of advancing India’s civilization keeps harping back to medieval times taking recourse to barbaric inhumanity.