The Hindu : PM discounts all talk of Hindu rashtra

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 25, 2002

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PM discounts all talk of Hindu rashtra

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI DEC. 24. Hindutva cannot be an election issue, it is a way of life, the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, said here today in his concluding remarks at the two-day Bharatiya Janata Party national executive committee meeting. He also discounted all talk of India becoming a Hindu rashtra in two years. It had been a Hindu nation for thousands of years, he said.

It was left to the Deputy Prime Minister, L. K. Advani — who addressed the executive just ahead of Mr. Vajpayee — to warn those who talked derisively of Hindutva that it would continue to cost them dearly. Hindutva was a "noble concept,'' he said and suggested that secularism had become a "cover for Hindu-bashing'' which the people would not tolerate.

Mr. Vajpayee said "the Congress is incapable of discharging the responsibility (of protecting national unity and strengthening national security).'' The suggestion was that the Congress under its present leadership was not trusted by the people, thus picking up the theme of the party's political resolution which had charged the opposition party with being "soft on terror.''

The BJP's "special endeavour'' should be to "carry all sections of our diverse society with us.'' Blaming the country's "enemies abroad'' for "dividing our society" along religious lines and making "brother fight brother,'' he recalled the long years of "externally-inspired terrorism in Punjab'' which was now thankfully behind us. "We foiled their design by maintaining unity. We should learn from this example and maintain peace and tranquillity in the face of the gravest provocation anywhere in the country.''

Mr. Vajpayee's remarks were in direct contrast to his comments, made immediately after the Gujarat results, when he suggested that the massacre that followed Godhra took place because "Muslims had not criticised Godhra enough'' and that "they were still not repentant.''

His view was that development and good governance were slow to yield electoral benefits, but effective communication of the work done for the people would certainly yield electoral results.

And finally, it was Mr. Advani who declared that the victory in Gujarat was the triumph of (Chief Minister) Narendra Modi. Mr. Vajpayee saw it as the BJP's victory.

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