The Hindu : Sangh Parivar above the law?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 21, 2002

Opinion

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Sangh Parivar above the law?

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI OCT. 20. It seems that the laws of the land, or for that matter the norms of any civilised nation, do not apply to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or other RSS offspring. A string of dangerously provocative, communal and casteist statements have been issued by VHP leaders during the last two months.

Some pronouncements by the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, compete in vulgarity with those by the VHP leaders, and, yet, there is no word of condemnation from those at the helm of affairs. Neither the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, nor his deputy, L.K. Advani, have said a word, except that some anguish has been expressed by their associates over the direct attacks made by the VHP on Mr. Vajpayee and even Mr. Advani.

Is the life of a cow more important than that of the Dalits? When this question was put to the VHP leader, Giriraj Kishore, two days ago, his answer was: "according to our shastras, the life of a cow was very precious (shastron ke hisab se gau ka jeevan bahut moolya hai)". Given the question, the unambiguous implication was that the taking away of the life of a cow was far more significant than the lynching of five Dalits, as it happened in Jhajjhar in Haryana a week ago.

There is a law in the country which forbids any casteist slur against the Dalits, and, yet, a senior leader of an organisation that is closely affiliated to the main ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, can be allowed to get away with such a criminally-provocative statement. It seems that the BJP has totally lost control and is unable, even if it were willing, to take exemplary action to put a stop to this.

On September 3, in Amritsar, and, more recently, here, another VHP leader, Ashok Singhal, threatened to repeat Gujarat throughout the country. He described what happened in the State after the Godhra carnage as a "successful experiment'' in which "entire villages were cleansed of Islam". The meaning was clear: those professing Islam as their faith were killed or driven away, and Mr. Singhal approved. And, of course, he warned that this experiment would be "repeated all over India'' if the "jehadi mentality" of some Muslims, who he held responsible for the Gujarat killings, was not checked.

The closest that the BJP came to condemning the VHP was when the BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu, in a statement on September 29, said that such utterances compromise India's fight against terrorism and gives the international community "a pretext to bracket us with forces of religious fundamentalism", which, he said, was "totally alien" to the party's Hindutva ideology. And it may be mentioned, that Mr. Naidu's remarks came not in response to the Singhal statement threatening a repetition of the Gujarat massacres, but after his critical comments on the Prime Minister.

The tragedy is that the self-styled votaries of Hinduism and protectors of Hindu `shastras' are themselves thoroughly ignorant of Hindu ethics. Well-known historian, D.N. Jha, who has written a book, "Myth of the Holy Cow", based on references to the cow in various ancient religious texts, had this to say: "The life of a cow belonging to a Brahmin was considered inviolable, but there is silence on the life of a cow belonging to the lower castes, especially shudras. In Atrismriti, an early medieval lawbook, killing of a cow was no doubt frowned upon, but was seen as a minor behavioural aberration. The punishment for this `minor sin' was various forms of penance, not a death sentence (as was meted out to the Dalits in Haryana even if one were to go by the old scriptures)".

The kind of language used by another VHP stalwart, Praveen Togadia, against the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi — he had referred to her as an "Italian dog" (Italy ni kutri) — is criminally appalling. And Mr. Modi had referred to hum panch hamare pachees (literally, "we five, ours twenty-five") during his `gaurav yatra' while making inciting comments against Muslims. Mr. Togadia may argue, as he is, that he was not referring to Ms. Gandhi, and the BJP spokesperson, Arun Jaitley, justified Mr. Modi's comments as "general references to family planning".

It is an atrocious comment on the affairs of this nation and an insult to its people that while the country pretends to be part of a global campaign against terrorism, those who are daily terrorising the minorities and the Dalits, those who are heaping insults on women (in the past VHP leaders justified the practice of `sati') and those who depend on abuse rather than on cohesive arguments. In short, those who are terrorising our own people, are part of the ruling elite in this country. There is no doubt that the VHP (and other organisations such as the Bajrang Dal) are protected by being part of the Sangh Parivar. As some of their leaders are openly saying: "Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Advani owe their jobs to us".

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