Monday, Oct 21, 2002
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By Neena Vyas
Violence was witnessed at demonstrations by the Mahila Congress protesting outside the VHP headquarters here. In Hyderabad, Congress demonstrators demanded Mr. Togadia's `immediate arrest'. Opposition party politicians, including Chief Ministers, academics and even some bureaucrats, agreed that Mr. Togadia had been successful in plumbing ``new depths of vulgarity, even obscenity''. A group of five eminent academics and bureaucrats criticised the ``cheap remarks'' made by Mr. Togadia, who reportedly referred to Ms. Gandhi as an ``Italian dog'', in a speech in Gujarat two days ago. Though he did not name Ms. Gandhi there was no doubt that the remark was directed against her. Mr. Togadia had described others who criticised the massacres in Gujarat as ``secularist dogs''. ``We express deep anguish at the language used by Pravin Togadia of the VHP against the Leader of the Opposition, Sonia Gandhi. This is reducing the political debate in the country to the level of the gutter. It also shows utter contempt for the Indian ethos. We appeal to all political leaders to ensure that politics is not dragged down to such depths of vulgarity.'' Professors Bipan Chandra, V.P.Dutt, Arjun Sen Gupta, Mridula Mukherjee and a former bureaucrat, Gopi Arora, said here today. If Mr. Togadia was not stopped, political discussion would be reduced to exchange of abuses and four letter words. The Karnataka Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, said in Bangalore that Mr. Togadia's comments showed the ``moral and mental bankruptcy'' of the Sangh Parivar which had a ``fascist culture''. In Jaipur, the Rajasthan Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot, attributed the use of such ``cheap words'' to the ``frustration and inferiority complex of the Sangh Parivar''. He said Ms. Gandhi's popularity had upset the RSS organisations. The CPI national secretary, D. Raja, saw this ``language of extreme right fascists'' as a symptom of ``lack of strength of their ideology which has no respect for democratic discourse''. By uttering such words, Mr. Togadia had ``debased all norms of public life''.
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