If leaders with secular face like Karpoori Thakur and Navin Patnaik have failed and if an entire agitation in retaliation to Mumbai incidents could be given a new twist, will Nitish Kumar really succeed? wonders SOROOR AHMED
Large scale anti-Christian violence in Orissa, the state ruled by ‘secular’ Navin Patnaik, is a challenge for all the chief ministers, who claim that the Sangh Parivar can be kept on a tight leash with the BJP as a junior alliance partner in power.
This is not the first time that the Sangh Parivar goons have gone berserk in the state. In January 1999 they torched a jeep killing missionary Graham Staines and his two little sons. They repeated the act in August 1999 when they burnt alive a Muslim trader, Rahman. If Orissa, a state with relatively small history of communal violence, can be held at ransom by the Sangh Parivar goons, the less said is better for other states. Apart from these incidents Orissa witnessed big Hindu-Muslim riots in Rourkela a long time back.
Navin Patnaik, no doubt, comes from a secular background. He is son of Biju Patnaik, two-time state chief minister, a former Royal Air Force pilot whom the British arrested during World War-II for his nationalistic activities. Navin’s sister, Geeta Mehta, is a renowned English writer and lives in New York. Navin too has spent years abroad. When he became the chief minister, he could hardly speak his own language, Oriya.
It was after his father’s death in April 1997 that Navin plunged into the state politics and formed Biju Janata Dal. He was new to politics yet in the name of the popularity of his father and alliance with the BJP managed to come to power.
Apart from Navin Patnaik the other chief minister running the government with the BJP as a junior alliance partner is Nitish Kumar of Bihar. Nitish’s is the socialist background, but his party, the then Samata Party was the first ‘secular’ party to join hands with the BJP and give it a political legitimacy way back in 1997. Earlier, Shiv Sena and Akali Dal were the only two parties, which were with the BJP. Till then the BJP was an outcast and could not continue for more than 13 days in office in 1996.
So Janata Dal (United) in its earlier avatar as Samata Party was the first among the secular parties to jump the BJP bandwagon and helped BJP remove the image of political untouchable. Today the party under the leadership of Nitish Kumar is trying to win over Muslims on the plea that it can keep a check on the communal forces. bug
But the experience of Orissa has exposed the weakness of the secular parties. Navin Patnaik, notwithstanding his secular record, failed to prevent the witch-hunting against Christians simply because the Sangh Parivar has made big inroads into the state machinery. True, communal violence has not broken out in Bihar in the last three years, but there is no denying the fact that once such an incident takes place the state government would not be able to do anything to control them as the communal elements in the state administration have become much more empowered and bold recently. Today leaders like Pravin Togadia can freely come and make inflammatory speeches. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad has decided to launch a stir against the so-called Bangladeshis in Kishanganj (Bihar)-Cooch Behar (West Bengal) belt in December.
Past experience also reminds us of the Sangh Parivar’s threat from within. The April 1979 communal riots of Jamshedpur in which hundreds of people were killed stands as a testimony to the fact that it is difficult to rein in these elements when you are in power with them. The state then had the most secular man, Karpoori Thakur of the Janata Party as the chief minister. But when the then Jan Sangh people – though they were part of the Janata Party – instigated riots, he could do little. Though the chief minister himself rushed to the town, the rioters torched a big ambulance carrying more than 100 people. Almost all of them died. The then Union home minister, Charan Singh, also a man of secular image, had to rush the BSF from Delhi to check further flare-up.
It would be wrong to underestimate the strength of the Sangh Parivar elements within the system. The latest incidents of violence in Bihar may have nothing to do with communalism. But the way these elements targeted the railway property in retaliation to what happened to Bihari rail examinees in Mumbai on October 19 needs to be examined carefully. In a very subtle way they directed the people’s ire against the railway minister, Lalu Prasad, though he had absolutely nothing to do with what happened in Mumbai. The Sangh Parivar elements in fact wanted to give a new twist to this latest development. They targeted the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and its chief Raj Thackeray and United Progressive Alliance just to deflect the people’s attention from the much bigger threat to Biharis, Shiv Sena and its chief Bal Thackeray. Even the chief minister Nitish Kumar, not to speak of the BJP people, failed to speak a single word against Bal Thackeray, the source of all the trouble.
This is the way the Sangh Parivar operates. If Karpoori Thakur and Navin Patnaik have failed and if an entire agitation in retaliation to Mumbai incidents could be given a new twist, will Nitish Kumar really succeed?