The Hindu : Election-eve Solicitude

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 30, 2003

Opinion

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Election-eve Solicitude

THE MINORITY-FRIENDLY POSTURE the BJP chief, M. Venkaiah Naidu, has struck at a social harmony rally in Uttar Pradesh is but an attempt to project what fundamentally is an exclusivist communal party as inclusivist, a game its leadership indulges in whenever the political exigencies warrant it. Mr. Naidu's solicitude towards the Muslims, as reflected in his reported "offer" of more ministerial berths to them if only their community backed the BJP at the hustings and his anxiety to `demonstrate' his party's concern for them, which he did by citing the Vajpayee Government's enhanced subsidy for Haj pilgrims, have to be seen in the context of the upcoming Assembly elections in four politically crucial States. And here, one is reminded of a former BJP president's famous quote: "Muslims are the flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood". The sticking point about such pious declarations addressed to Muslims by a party like the BJP, which has a communally divisive majoritarian ideology as the core of its political platform and which, despite being in power, has little compunction in letting the Sangh Parivar outfits such as the VHP and the Bajrang Dal get away with all sorts of patently incendiary anti-minority campaigns, is that they have insincerity written all over them.

In fact, the post-Godhra pogrom in Gujarat under the Narendra Modi regime and the Assembly elections held subsequently revealed the BJP leadership's real attitude towards the minorities, particularly Muslims. In the flush of the Gujarat victory for the Modi brand of Hindutva, Mr. Naidu himself proclaimed the BJP would not be "apologetic" about its ideology and that the Gujarat model would be replicated in elections throughout the country. And there have been any number of assertions from the protoganists of Hindutva to the effect that the minority communities should earn the "goodwill" of the majority community if they want to live in peace. The BJP-run Governments did precious little to rein in such forces (carrying on a hate campaign against the minorities) by invoking the law of the land, with the party leadership merely choosing to come up with appropriate noises of dissent, if not protest, whenever the Sangh Parivar's campaign threatened to be politically too embarrassing. Against the BJP's track record, any overture to the Muslims by the party is bound to evoke a cynical response.

On the Ayodhya front, Mr. Naidu proposed, apparently as a `concession' to the Muslims, that a mosque be built alongside the Ram temple. The proposition, for all its seeming fairness and note of conciliation, is seriously flawed and grossly unjust to the community that had been outrageously wronged when the Babri Masjid was pulled down over a decade ago. Although Mr. Naidu does sound `open' when he talks of court, legislation or negotiation as the possible options for a solution, he leaves no one in doubt that the end result has to be a Ram temple at the spot where the mosque had stood and this is hardly surprising, given that the Vajpayee regime has been, in a blatantly partisan manner, making moves and taking positions in support of the `temple at the disputed site' line. Witness its pleas before the Supreme Court on the status of the undisputed land and its more recent affidavit before the Liberhan Commission on the contentious issue of whether a temple had existed prior to the building of the mosque. In a sense, Mr. Naidu's `offer' reveals, albeit in a subtle form, the same majoritarian mindset that showed up in the `minorities must win the goodwill of the majority community' line.

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