The Hindu : Power at any cost?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 12, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Power at any cost?

By Kuldip Nayar

That Narendra Modi, occupying the high office of Chief Minister, runs amuck during the much tom-tommed ``gaurav rath yatra'' has not shocked me at all. I did not expect anything else from a person who has destroyed Gujarat economically and socially and who has put an indelible mark of shame on the face of India because of the carnage that killed hundreds of innocent people. But what has really shocked me is the silence of the BJP leaders on his diatribe. None of them has uttered a single word of criticism.

I did not expect the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, to say anything. He had hailed Mr. Modi as one of the best Chief Ministers. I thought the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, although moulded in the same saffron cast, would react at least when Mr. Modi made vituperative remarks against the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, for her religion. He also dragged in the Pope. Mr. Vajpayee is the Prime Minister. He cannot allow anyone, much less his partyman, to mock at any religion or its head. The Gujarat happenings have already fractured our multi-religious society. People like Mr. Modi will do their worst to break it up. His handiwork in the State is known to us.

Elections are important. Equally important are the methods to fight them. Democracy allows freedom of expression but not dissemination of poison. By raking up the passions of Hindus, who constitute more than 80 per cent of the population in the State, Mr. Modi is only proving that the ``ethnic cleansing'' he managed in the State was meant to polarise the electorate before they went to the polls. Even if he wins — a doubtful prospect — what will he, or for that matter, his party, prove? A communalised verdict in a communalised State under a communalised Centre. A BJP leader was quite right in condemning the Congress-led ``yatra''. All ``yatras'' are bad. But those in the name of religion are worse because they are aimed at dividing people who have lived together for centuries. Mr. Advani left a trail of blood and hatred when he led the ``rath yatra'' from the Somnath temple to Ayodya in the 1990s. Mr. Modi may do worse because he is concentrating on one State alone. He is trying to establish a Hindu State by spilling the blood of the minorities.

But let him stop using the name of Mahatma Gandhi for his Hindutva campaign. Gandhiji said: "Hindus and Muslims are my two eyes." Of late, the BJP too has started exploiting the Mahatma. The party president, Venkaiah Naidu, has his statuette in his office. The RSS, Nathuram Godse's party, has Gandhi's name in its morning prayer. The organisation has not yet displayed his picture at its headquarters in Nagpur. Mr. Modi's swipe at Jawaharlal Nehru that he sidelined Sardar Patel and Morarji Desai, two Gujaratis, is as despicable as his attack on Ms. Gandhi's Italian origin or her white skin. Should a politician stoop to this level? Is this how the BJP is going to conduct its election campaign in Gujarat and elsewhere? As for Nehru, Mr. Vajpayee once said that he was proud to occupy the seat where Nehru sat in Parliament. Regarding Sonia Gandhi people will decide.

There is no point in telling the BJP about the norms and standards it should follow. It is obsessed with power at any cost. Nothing else counts. Has it ever considered the harm it is doing to the country and its ethos? Not that the other political parties are above blemish. But none has taken the campaign to the filthy level as the BJP and its ``hero'', Mr. Modi, have done. I shudder to imagine the consequences if all parties jump into the arena with their parochial, personal and caste agendas. For the sake of the country, let's pause and think.

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