Disturbing aggressiveness

THE DOGGEDNESS WITH which the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief, Mr. K. S. Sudarshan, has pursued the `swadeshi church' line that he had gratuitously and presumptuously proposed to Indian Christians just a week ago is another disturbing indication that the Sangh means business in its aggressive pushing of its fundamentalist Hindutva ideology. If this message, which came loud and clear from the three-day `national security camp' the RSS had organised at Agra, must be in itself troubling for the minority communities, the fact that the Union Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, was very much present when Mr. Sudarshan delivered his peroration on `cultural nationalism' would only exacerbate their fears. Given the gameplan of the RSS and the objectives of the Agra camp, it must have been clear to Mr. Advani, as much as to everyone else, what to expect from the conclave - a strong majoritarian tenor. The presence of the country's Home Minister at such a forum is bound to send a signal to the minorities that his being there provided some legitimacy and encouragement, if not implicit support, to the theme espoused at the camp. Significantly, at the party level, this line had received enthusiastic endorsement from the BJP general secretary, Mr. Narendra Modi.

If his Vijayadasami Day message was a primer of sorts on the theme of an `indigenisation of the church', with the foreign links projected as the root cause of (what the Sangh Parivar perceived as) ``anti-national and subversive'' activities, Mr. Sudarshan's speech at the Agra conclave was in the nature of an ideological exposition. The burden of his talk, in effect, was that while the minorities were free to adopt any method of worship they could not build an identity on the basis of religion. And the most provocative of his propositions is that the minority communities could have a ``sense of belonging'' only when they integrated themselves with the ``culture of the land (read the Hindu culture)''. To equate patriotism with the `culture' of the majority community is to strike at the very root of the multi-cultural mosaic and secular foundation of the Indian polity and nation-state. And it is rather preposterous for anyone to speak as if the majority community had an exclusive right over patriotism or nationalist sentiments. So is the oft-repeated call of the Sangh Parivar outfits particularly to the Christians and the Muslims to join the ``national mainstream'' by ``respecting'' and ``recognising'' their Hindu cultural roots.

Taken together with the strident voices raised on the construction of the Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya and the six-point `swadeshi' agenda on the economic front unveiled at the camp, the aggressive anti-minority campaign may be seen as a strategy by the RSS to put pressure on the BJP leadership against straying too far from the Hindutva plank due to compulsions of coalition politics. Any such construction will be highly misplaced. If anything, the RSS and its political arm, the BJP, appear to be playing out their respective parts according to a carefully-drafted script. To be fair, the BJP leadership has never left anyone in doubt that if the party had shelved the three key elements of its agenda (construction of the Ram temple, abrogation of Article 370 and the formulation of a common civil code) it was only because it lacked the requisite strength in Parliament. Witness, for instance, the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee's speech at a gathering of Hindutva activists in Staten Island during his recent visit to the United States where, without mincing words, he said if the BJP got the majority, they could build the India of their dreams. The non-BJP partners in the ruling National Democratic Alliance cannot be oblivious to the insidious game being played out by the Sangh Parivar and the looming threat thereby to the country's secular and pluralistic fabric.

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