ASIF MOAZZAM JAMAI says that BJP is a party wedded to cheap tactics of rousing sentiments of common Hindus and catching votes.
Right before the assembly elections in UP, BJP issued an inflammatory CD entitled Bharat ki Pukar (Call of India), which reportedly contains scenes like those of Babri mosque demolition, Godhra violence, besides projecting the party’s anti-minority stances. It was then followed by an advertisement in newspapers questioning the credibility of madrasas in India. The Hindu, a leading newspaper in India, considers the dialogue and message contained in this CD to be highly communal and offensive.
Here I don’t intend to defend the credibility of Muslims or the madrasa but throw light on the credibility or otherwise of BJP as a national party, so-called champion of the Hindu cause.
BJP’S DOUBLE-STANDARD
One won’t be much surprised if one sees the CD issue as BJP’s clever and cheap election ploy especially during the UP election times. Such communal issues are taken up by them only for their selfish motives. Remember the assembly election in Punjab or in Madhya Pradesh. Uma Bharti, the CM candidate and mass campaigner, did not pick any communal issue, but raised only the issue of road, water and electricity. BJP knew that people of MP were fed up with the misgovernance of Congress party (then ruling) which could be used to uproot them. This was their planned election ploy – communal issue was not required then. Election in UP is different. Finding no other ploy, the BJP planned to communalise the mass vote, thinking this may succeed in polarising Hindu votes.
It was Ayodhya issue that introduced BJP to the Indian masses. But the truth of the matter is that the BJP leadership never had its heart in the Ayodhya campaign. When outside factors and the VHP brought the Ayodhya issue centre-stage in the mid-80s, the BJP joined the movement because of its apparent potential for mass mobilization.
Riding the Rama wave and exploiting the religious sentiments of the masses, the BJP came to the limelight. Later, they started distancing themselves from the Ayodhya issue. By 6 December 1992, many activists had lost patience with the BJP, and a vanguard group organized the infamous instance of direct action, while keeping the BJP leadership in the dark. The BJP leaders never showed any appreciation for the constraints which drove the Kar Sevaks to make possible the construction for which Advani had been campaigning. Contrary to its general stand, on December 17, 1992, A.B. Vajpayee declared in the Lok Sabha: “We are very sad at what happened in Ayodhya on the December 6.” And when BJP came to power, it never made any effort to construct Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
IS BJP A PARTY OF HINDUS?
The BJP gets political support from a limited minority of the Hindus. It managed to get only about 26 per cent of the total votes in Indian parliamentary elections. India is a country where more than 80 per cent of the population is Hindu. It is certainly not the party of choice of most Hindus.
Do you remember the state-sponsored genocide of Muslims in Gujarat, the election soon after, and the subsequent victory of BJP once again? It was said by BJP that Gujarat was a laboratory and the same experience would be repeated elsewhere in India. They were elated with regaining of power and termed it a victory for Hindutva. Soon after, there was state assembly election in Himachal Pradesh, a state largely dominated by Hindus. The BJP was voted out and Congress came to power. This was simply because of misgovernance. Why didn’t Hindutva mantra work? This was a strong message to Chief Minister Modi in particular and BJP in general that Hindus of India are neither communal nor adore the philosophy of Hindutva, often associated with violent physical actions, including the killing and terrorizing of minorities, perpetrated in Bombay in 1992-93 and in Gujarat in 2002, for instance.
DESTROYING THE AGE-OLD HERITAGE
The Hindutva movement has promulgated the politics of sectarianism at the cost of old age fabric of unity in India. The ancientness of the Hindu tradition cannot be disputed. But other religions, too, have had a long history in India. It has been known as a multi-religious country, making room for many different faiths and beliefs. Muslim Arab traders settled in India from the eighth century. India was not a `Hindu country’ even before the arrival of Islam. Buddhism was the dominant religion in India for nearly a millennium. Indeed, Chinese scholars regularly described India as ‘the Buddhist kingdom’.
The Hindutva movement with its ideology of separatism does confront with the idea of India itself. Indians have been proud of its heterodox past and its pluralist present.
Unity in diversity has been India’s strong asset since time immemorial – and to replace it by the stamp of a small India, bundled around a drastically downsized version of Hinduism would be injustice to the very old age character of this grand land. If India has to grow and strengthen, no religious group should be undermined or ignored. Any ideology that talks about separatism and spreads hatred is never in the interest of the country, and such forces should be defeated then and there.
[The writer is Lecturer, Community College, King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia]