The Hindu : A cynical approach

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 03, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

A cynical approach

WHILE RELEASING ITS manifesto for the Gujarat Assembly elections now under way, the Bharatiya Janata Party has sought to project the absence of any reference in the document to the Godhra carnage as an earnest of its desire not to use the communally sensitive horrendous episode for political gains. Nothing could be more preposterous than that claim. As the whole conduct and virtually every act of the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, and his Government would show, the outrageous event has in fact been exploited fully by the Sangh Parivar outfits to polarise civil society along communal lines through a vicious anti-minority campaign in pursuit of their sectarian agenda, as part of a grand design to help the BJP retain political power. The VHP is persisting with such a Godhra-centric hate campaign as brazenly as ever. In fact, given the Modi regime's diabolical role in the post-Godhra Muslims-targeted revengeful riots — characterised recently by an independent body, Citizens' Tribunal, as "genocide" — the least that the BJP, as a party of government, ought to have done was to voice a sense of remorse, if not an open apology, and display some sensitivity to the hurt feelings of the minority community. Despicably, not only has the party's manifesto been singularly devoid of such sentiments — unsurprisingly, though — but the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, has unapologetically hailed Mr. Modi as the "most popular, competent and successful Chief Minister"!

What has been handed out by the BJP as its manifesto — setting aside those sections that addressed development and growth concerns — is nothing but a carefully crafted plan of action to achieve its majoritarian goals. Running through the various measures promised in the name of ensuring the "safety and security" of the people is an unambiguous anti-minority objective, set against the party's calculated and consistent attempt to identify the disturbing phenomenon of terrorism with the Muslims as a community. Hardly disguised in all the anti-terror and anti-Pakistan rhetoric Mr. Modi has been indulging in, particularly after the attack on the Akshardham temple, is the bashing of the Islamic community in general. The party's manifesto is verily a documented version of such a sinister camouflage attempt, except of course in areas where its exclusivist ideology stands out sharply and without any facade as, for instance, when it speaks of looking at the "utility of madrassas (religious seminaries) in the 21st century" and enacting a law against religious conversions by force or allurements. The electoral strategy obviously is that while the VHP, under the dubious pretext of not being a registered political party, would push ahead with its abrasive anti-minority campaign unrelentingly, the BJP for its part would wrap the sectarian agenda in a deceptively irreproachable way, with the cause of combating the scourge of `cross-border terrorism' serving as a convenient cloak and the phenomenon being played up to jingoistic levels. Witness for example a whole clutch of promised measures — from compulsory NCC training at the college level to creating a second line of defence with what are called "Gram Rakshak Dals" and Home Guards to special training in the use of weapons to the people in border areas.

No amount of sophistry on the BJP's part would help it in obscuring the stark reality that the party, with nothing worthwhile to show by way of `achievement' during its tenure of governance, hit upon the cynical plan of depicting the post-Godhra communal pogrom (which in itself was largely an orchestration of its affiliates) as a matter of Gujarat's `Gaurav' and security. What is being attempted by the BJP in Gujarat, with Mr. Modi as its mascot and the VHP as its chief campaigner, is really a political mobilisation on the basis of a platform that constitutes a deadly combination of religious bigotry, chauvinism and communal fascism, something that dangerously militates against modernity and all the cherished values associated with the national ethos, not to speak of the core features of the Indian Constitution such as secularism.

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