The Hindu : Let Vajpayee keep distance: VHP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 29, 2002

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Let Vajpayee keep distance: VHP

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MARCH 28. While announcing its decision not to celebrate Holi this year in memory of the victims of the Godhra outrage, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad today blamed the string of electoral defeats suffered by the Bharatiya Janata Party on its having backtracked from its earlier Hindutva agenda.

Talking to presspersons here, the VHP vice-president, Giriraj Kishore, said the BJP had gone back on its Ayodhya agenda as well as demand for the scrapping of Article 370 of the Constitution conferring a special status on Kashmir. It had also given up the demand for implementing a uniform civil code. As a result they were being defeated everywhere, and it was for the party leadership to think about this issue.

Both the VHP and the RSS today said that Hindus could not be extremists. In fact this was close to the formulation of Union Home Minister, L.K.Advani, who had repeatedly stated that India was secular because Hindus were secular. But today's assertion by Acharya Kishore and the RSS spokesperson, M.G.Vaidya, had come in response to questions related to the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee's statement on Thursday that some people had defined Hindutva in such a manner that it would be preferable to maintain a distance from them. Although he had not identified who or which organisations he meant, the inference was that he was referring to some of the Sangh Parivar outfits.

However, Mr. Vaidya did not criticise the Prime Minister, saying there was nothing objectionable in his reference to Hindutva as a "way of life'' rather than any religion. But Acharya Kishore went a step further. His comment was that if he (Mr. Vajpayee) found anyone to be an extremist he should maintain a distance from them.

While the RSS, the VHP and many within the BJP are beginning to feel that the electoral defeats of the BJP are the direct result of abandoning a hardline Hindutva ideology, there is also the view in the party that Hindutva issues have now stopped yielding any electoral dividend, in fact they may have had an adverse impact.

There is also the view that the device of maintaining that the BJP is separate from the RSS and its affiliates no longer works, and whether the BJP likes it or not, the VHP's Ayodhya stance and a host of other issues created by statements made by the RSS have begun to alienate people.

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