The Hindu : Gujarat will repeat: Singhal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 12, 2002

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National

Gujarat will repeat: Singhal

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI OCT. 11. The war of words between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad shows no sign of dying out. Undeterred by the BJP describing the VHP as being influenced by religious extremism, the VHP today warned that Gujarat would be replicated in the entire country.

The VHP working president, Ashok Singhal, said today that "what happened in Gujarat will happen in the whole of the country. Hindus were not born to be cut like carrots and radishes (`gajar mooli ki tarah katne ke liye nahin paida huye hain hindu'), and that the Hindukaran of the people of Gujarat was the direct result of the `jehadi' mentality of Muslims.

This is the second time that Mr. Singhal has talked of the Gujarat massacres being replicated. Earlier, he had said that the "Gujarat experiment'' would be repeated elsewhere, a remark which the BJP preferred to ignore.

But after Mr. Singhal turned his anger against the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, in Lucknow recently the BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu, had said that he felt constrained to observe that "some of the utterances of VHP leaders give the impression that they are influenced by religious intolerance and extremism from across the border.'' In short, the VHP's "extremism'' matched that of the `jehadis' inspired by Pakistan.

Mr. Singhal was addressing a press conference on the apparently hostile relationship between the BJP and the VHP. A few days ago, another VHP leader, Vishnu Hari Dalmia, had also criticised the ruling party.

Mr. Singhal today suggested that the BJP's electoral defeats were the direct result of the party having "abandoned" Lord Ram and its "failure to protect cows and the Ganges river''. It was "good'' that the Congress would be coming to power in Jammu and Kashmir.

Today, he had written a letter to Mr. Naidu telling him that it would have been better if he had properly read the reports on what he had said about Mr. Vajpayee before jumping to any conclusion. "I had not criticised him for every decision, but only on failure to take appropriate decisions relating to Ayodhya,'' and he stood by that.

The `sants' had once again drawn up a plan for construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, and this time the Government would not be in a position to beat around the bush, it would have to say "yes'' or "no''. But, of course, he would not reveal what that plan was.

Finally, Mr. Singhal approved of the Tamil Nadu ordinance prohibiting religious conversions by force or fraud. He strongly criticised some Christian leaders for threatening to close all schools run by their religious orders. His advice was that the Tamil Nadu Government should give "a befitting reply'' by "taking over all Christian educational institutions forthwith''.

The Supreme Court, he said, had already interpreted Article 25(1) on religious freedom to mean freedom to profess, practise and propagate one's own faith, "not liberty to convert people of other religions.''

The Tamil Nadu ordinance could be the result of a month-old incident in which some 100 Hindus had been converted to Christianity, he said. Several Hindu organisations had decided to hold protest demonstrations in Madurai on October 20.

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