Saffron Brigade At Its Game Again

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

AT a time our people are facing one of the toughest periods in their life, the Sangh Parivar has moved one more pawn on the political chessboard to rescue the BJP from the predicament of its own creation.

WHAT BJP MEANS BY GUJARAT

IT is a well-known fact that the BJP has miserably failed on all fronts. Take the case of Gujarat where the BJP recently registered a big victory. Only on January 31 did The Indian Express report how the five-year BJP rule in the state has emptied the coffers of the state government, so much so that the second Modi government was compelled to send a long SOS to the centre for additional funds. In terms of per capita state GDP, the state has slipped from the second to seventh or eighth place. A large number of villages are in the grip of a severe drought, but relief is either absent or paltry at the best. Large tracts of this prosperous state are still crying for potable water. This is no new situation, however. Now and again media have been reporting about the worsening situation in the state, but the earlier BJP governments, under Keshubhai Patel or under Narendra Modi, cared a hoot about it.

However, a far worse situation is facing the country as a whole, thanks to the anti-people, anti-national policies the BJP-led regime at the centre is pursuing. The economy has fallen as though into a bottomless pit; the last few years have seen a dismal growth. The peasantry was never before in such a miserable situation as it is today; already more than a thousand peasants have committed suicide. The working class is facing a massive attack in the form of closures, retrenchment and layoffs. Even navratna public sector units are being sold to private parties for a song. Unemployment is growing by leaps and bounds. The situation of poverty at the ground level is giving a lie to all statistics-mongering. On February 3, the prime minister shamelessly claimed that his regime did not allow a single person to die of starvation. Which means that he has even lost his memory and (not to talk of other parts of the country) forgotten the famine-stricken people in Orissa who had to eat mango kennels and several dozens died of hunger. At the same time, the regime has proved to be the most shamelessly pro-imperialist regime in independent India. And to cap it all this, the BJP is busy capturing all the educational and cultural bodies. It is out to saffronise the whole education system with a view to producing a generation of bigots and fanatics who can serve as cannonfodders in its battle for a theocratic state. As all these aspects have already been dealt with in these columns, no detailed reiteration is needed.

It is in such a situation that the BJP has but one hope --- to sidetrack the real issues facing the people and to rouse the worst possible passions in a bid to mislead the people. Its victory in Gujarat assembly elections has also made the BJP believe that it can still cross the hurdle in the coming assembly polls and then in the Lok Sabha poll if only it runs a strident communal drive all over the country. This gives an idea of what the real meaning of the tall talks of replicating Gujarat is.

SAFFRON BRIGADE  IN POLL MODE

THE BJP and the rest of the saffron brigade have already swung into action and geared themselves into the poll mode. Even though the so-called National Agenda for Governance has in actuality been nothing more than a piece of paper all these four-odd years, the BJP is trying to dump it midway. It has already made clear to its allies that it won’t be bound by this agenda in the state assembly elections. This is a plain enough indication that the BJP won’t hesitate to raise the contentious issues --- the temple issue, article 370 and common civil code --- that it had had to put on the backburner in order to grab power at the centre.

At the same time, the BJP has already effected no-insignificant changes in the union cabinet as well as in party organisation --- all in view of the communal campaign that it wants to run anew. Its desperation is evident from the fact, for example, that in order to placate the Bhumihar caste it had to re-induct into the union cabinet the same C P Thakur whom it had not very long ago dumped after dubbing as “inefficient.”

The BJP’s desperation is also growing with various sections of the toiling people beginning to rise in protest. The depth of their discontent is evident from just one example, among scores. Even though the RSS-controlled BMS kept aloof from the coal workers’ strike a few months ago, a large number of BMS members among coal workers spontaneously joined the action. Students and youth are agitated, and so are women who are directly feeling the pinch of the worsening economic situation as it is they who run the household. Employees and other sections of the middle class are also facing a bleak future, some for themselves immediately and some for their wards. Even though the regime has assured (!) the serving employees about not implementing the retrograde Kelkar committee recommendations, and the pensioners about not slashing the interest rates on their savings any further, clearly these assurances are to last only till the next Lok Sabha polls. (On the BJP’s real intentions in this regard, see the lead item in The Economic Times of January 31.) Workers of the HPCL and BPCL, companies that are the latest to be put on auction, are going to launch a strike soon. NALCO workers in Orissa have so far prevented any private bidders from entering the company’s premises. 

True, the actions of all these sections have been uncoordinated so far. But they are bound to get coordinated sooner or later. The opening day of the coming budget session of parliament is set to witness a united protest march by working class and others, to be followed by a powerful industrial action.

To come out of such a predicament, the BJP has but two options. Either it has to give up its present set of policies or it must do something to divert the mass discontent into wrong directions. As the first option is out of question in view of the party’s own class character and no less because of the pressure of its masters abroad, it is the second course the BJP is seeking to follow, more so after its initial success in Gujarat.

CALCULATED GAME

THE farce of a threat doled out by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) to the union government is but a part of this very calculated game. From the earlier unspecific threat that the centre must clear the ground for temple construction in Ayodhya, the VHP has now graduated to a specific threat. Its demand is that the centre must hand it over about 40 out of the 67 acres of land the union government acquired in 1994, before February 22 when the VHP is to hold a so-called “Dharma Sansad” at New Delhi.    

Three points are noteworthy here. Firstly, the VHP’s claim is that this part of the acquired land is undisputed and hence the centre must not have any problem in handing it over to the VHP. This is a bogus argument, to say the least. For, in case this land is handed over to the VHP, there would not remain any passage to the site where the demolished Babri Masjid once stood. This means an outright, even if unjustified, victory for the VHP.

Secondly, the VHP has put forth this demand while knowing very well the Supreme Court’s opinion about the acquired land. The apex court has specifically restrained the centre from transferring any part of the acquired land to any party till the final decision of the case. Moreover, the court has also disallowed any puja, construction and other such activities on this piece of land till the case is pending. Thus, as a matter of fact, the VHP’s demand is tantamount to a deliberate contempt of the court. But this is nothing surprising. The VHP has already --- ridiculously and at the same time ominously --- declared that it would abide by the court verdict only if it is in its favour.    

Finally, one will have to ask: why is it that the VHP holds a Dharma (!) Sansad or some such drama only when an election is around the corner? The last such drama took place at Allahabad in 2000 when assembly elections, especially in Uttar Pradesh but also in Uttaranchal, Punjab, Manipur and Pondicherry, were approaching fast. 

The latest visit of Swami Jayendra Saraswati, the Shankracharya of Kanchi, to the capital is to be seen in this very light. Though the swami’s meeting with the prime minister was officially described as a “courtesy call,” the Ayodhya issue was very much in the centre of their discussion. A gamut of BJP leaders, including union ministers, as well as RSS leaders also met the swami for the same purpose.

What transpired in the prime minister’s meeting with the swami is still not very clear. Yet, going by press reports, one guesses that the Supreme Court’s injunction about the said 67 acres of land very much weighed on their minds. This gives credence to the news, already afloat, that behind the back of the people the centre is trying to devise some or other method to bypass the court injunction. There is also floating the news that Arun Jaitley has been re-inducted into the union cabinet as law minister precisely to clear the legal hurdles in way of temple construction.

To remind the readers, this Swami Jayendra Saraswati is precisely the person who had made a similar attempt last year also. At that time, after meeting a delegation of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), the swami had unilaterally announced to the media that a solution to the Ayodhya dispute had been reached with the concurrence of the AIMPLB. It is another thing that very soon the said announcement proved to be a hoax. At that time, the AIMPLB came out with a clarification that it was only given a set of proposals for consideration and that no agreement had been reached during its meeting with the swami. Then within two days of the episode, a full meeting of the AIMPLB had rejected the proposals it had received. It was natural, as the so-called proposals were nothing but a rehash of the VHP demands.

And now the same godman is out to play nobody knows what mischief!

Be that as it may, one thing is certain. The Sangh Parivar has absolutely no regard for the rule of law, and has tried to bypass the judicial process whenever it could. How it did not allow the law to take its course, is evident also from the way it used the UP chief minister, Ms Mayawati, to withdraw the notification regarding the constitution of a special court in regard to the Babri demolition case. The purpose was as clear as daylight: to get L K Advani, M M Joshi and 46 other luminaries of the saffron brigade off the hook.

It appears a similar game of circumventing the law is again under way. At a function of Anganwadi workers on February 4 morning, the prime minister is reported to have said that the Ayodhya dispute could be solved either through talks or through a court verdict. That is so far so good. But the same prime minister met the Kanchi Shankaracharya in the evening on the same day to discuss with him the Ayodhya issue, and this gives rise to apprehensions about his government’s real intentions. It was in this backdrop that the AIMPLB came out with a categorical statement. It said: if any negotiation is to take place, “the prime minister’s office (PMO) should get involved directly, in a transparent manner, instead of through individuals claiming to be working in their own capacity when in fact the PMO is very much involved” (The Hindu, February 5).   

But it is also certain that if the government goes out of its way to placate the VHP hawks who are out to destroy the very secular fabric of our body-politic, if the judicial process is circumvented in the case, it will have serious repercussions for our national unity and civilised existence. History is replete with episodes in which attempts to appease the blood-thirsty demonic forces were made and yet such forces grew to become a menace to humanity itself. The way Britain and France tried to appease Hitler and Hitler then become a threat to them is just one case in point. 

Needless to say, such attempts need to be nipped in the bud. Regardless of their differences in other spheres, all the secular forces in the country have to rise to the occasion, and these include the forces that are at the moment on the other side of the fence. Against this threat, secular forces have to unitedly mobilise the masses of our great country who are eminently secular. The situation brooks no complacency, nor any delay.