Pushing the exclusivist agenda

EVEN AS THE Bharatiya Janata Party was trying desperately to convince its partners in the ruling National Democratic Alliance at the Centre of its total and self-denying commitment to the common agenda, its Governments at the State level seem to be relentlessly pursuing the party's divisive and communal ideology. Witness the Keshubai Patel regime's order lifting the ban on the participation of Gujarat Government employees in the activities of the RSS as also the enactment by the Uttar Pradesh legislature of a special law to regulate the use and construction of public buildings for religious purposes. This should unequivocally establish that where the BJP has the governmental authority unbridled by the constraints of a coalition of the type it is heading at the Centre, the party would have little compunction in shaking off its mask of `moderation' and going the whole hog with its exclusivist agenda. In fact, what the party - or at least the `hawkish' elements in it - can do and will do subtly (even in the coalition context and while continuing to swear by the NDA agenda) to push its sectarian plank was very much in evidence during the winter session of Parliament when the BJP leadership allowed such highly contentious measures as `uniform civil code' and `ban on cow slaughter' to be moved by its members as Private Members' Bills; the argument that a member had a right to move any Bill he or she wished is unconvincing in a party such as the BJP that prides itself on its discipline.

On the face of it, it would appear that the sort of `regulation' which the Uttar Pradesh enactment envisages for religious places and buildings is related to such matters as public order, public health and town planning rules and that the law itself applies uniformly to all religious denominations, making no discrimination against any particular faith. But the State Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Mr. Hukum Singh, gave the game away when he set the rationale for the legislation in the context of what he called the ``pouring'' in of foreign aid for building places of worship and of ``fake Indian currency'' for funding `centres of religious studies'. The targets clearly are the minority communities who have come under sharp attack in recent years from the Sangh Parivar outfits, with the BJP leadership itself making supportive noises in a calibrated fashion by talking about `mass conversions' and `heavy flow of foreign money' to sustain minority religious institutions and activity. In a more fundamental sense, anything that makes the state's permission or approval mandatory for constructing places of worship does offend the freedom to practise and propagate one's faith guaranteed under the Constitution.

As for the Gujarat Government's order laying down that ``membership or volunteering to work for the RSS'' would no longer be treated as an ``act of indiscipline'' on the part of its civil servants, it has been made to appear that the lifting of the ban was a direct consequence of a Central Tribunal not having found ``anything unlawful in the activities of the RSS''. But the salutary principle of barring civil servants, whether of the Centre or of the States, from being a member of any political party and participating in its activities has come to be evolved and incorporated in the service conduct rules for the reason that it made for the objective and non-partisan functioning of the bureaucracy; it is a different matter that the ground situation does not accord with the injunction. The BJP regime has been selective in removing the ban only in respect of the RSS. What emerges from all these developments is that the BJP, for all its perceived anxiety to project itself as having evolved into a `liberal' organisation, deems political power and the apparatus of the state as effective instruments for promoting its basic philosophy of `one country, one culture and one nation', and it also would be unrealistic to expect the party to delink itself from other organisations of the Sangh Parivar.

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