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The stupendous victory for Narendra Modi
and for Bharatiya Janatha Party in the recent Gujarat elections
is highly disturbing to the secular minds.
What is even more disturbing is the silence of BJP partners in
NDA government who claim themselves to be secular parties. Especially,
the opportunistic action of DMK and TDP is dangerous to the country
than BJP as such. Jayalalithaa earned the good will of BJP by
passing the anti-conversion law and moving closer to BJP day by
day. The mammoth victory for BJP in Gujarat has shaken even the
fundamental commitment to secularism that Congress has. One can
sense this from the lukewarm commitment Congress demonstrated
in the Gujarat electioneering. Right from the beginning Congress
was not very convinced of its own election strategy. Finally they
yielded to BJP's strategy and fell into their wide spread net.
At the end of the day, Congress went soft on secularism fearing
that they would lose the majority votes. They also tried to identify
themselves with majority Hindus. In a very calculated way, BJP
has been projecting the concept of secularism as the support to
minorities.
In the past one year, Congress and the other secular parties
allowed BJP to succeed in its mischievous attempt to taint secularism
as anti-Hindus. Thus, from the position of attacking religious
divide that BJP has been propagating, Congress and the other secular
parties have been pushed to the defensive position where they
had to defend their commitment to secularism. When Congress was
caught on this unexpected pitch, it simply surrendered itself.
That is what had happened in the recent Gujarat election. Otherwise
Modi and BJP could not have withstood the strong anti-incumbency
factor that is fueled by the poor handling of the earthquake relief
measures, water scarcity across the State especially in Kutch
and Saurashtra, the retardation in industrial development, declining
foreign investment, the raising communal hatred (recall the Godhra
incident), and the break in law and order and growing terrorism
(recall the terrorist attack in the worshiping place).
People simply got swayed by the emotions. Whenever the subjects
fall prey to emotions, they can not get a good governance. Politicians
have understood the trick of the trade as how to play with the
emotions of the people. I have seen youngsters who do not even
pray at home or go to temple are now identifying themselves as
the guardians of Hindu religion and the agents of Hindutva force.
It is said that a bad politician or a party gets to power not
because misguided and ignorant people vote for them but because
the well-informed and knowledgeable people do not go to polling
booths.
One may say that this country is a Hindu country right from the
beginning and there is nothing wrong in pushing Hindutva agenda.
This is not a valid argument and the simple fact is that majority
of Indians were Hindus for many many centuries but India was never
a theocratic State. She has an amazing potential to imbibe
and absorb different cultures and thereby gain strength. That
is what the history shows. As is always the case with any destructionist
activity, seeding the communal hatred in the nation and dividing
the country along the communal lines is turning out to be an easy
task. But it does not mean that it a constructive or a justifiable
task.
The human temptation is to side with the successful events or
support an activity that is easy to succeed so that one can feel
warmth about his existence. The momentary pleasures and successes
always sway the human mind.
Only the toughminds which is toughened by strong convictions withstand
such an emotional assault or teasing. It is time for these secular
minded people to consolidate their actions and oppose this disturbing
trend with the doubled effort. On one hand the Prime Minister
Vajpayee reiterates that Hindutva would not be used as the political
card in the forthcoming elections whereas with the same vigour
BJP President Venkaiah Naidu repeatedly proclaims that Hindutva
card would be used in the ensuing elections also. He very
smartly uses the term "Gujarat experiment" in place of Hindutva
and anybody who has an advanced brain than the amoeba would know
what Mr. Venkaiah Naidu is talking about. He has recently said
that "the BJP is not going to be apologetic or ashamed of its
agenda and the Gujarat experiment shall be replicated in all the
States before the next elections to reach the target of 300 seats".
The only thing in his statement that deserves support is the attack
on "minoritism". The concept of "minoritism" nurtured in a calculated
way by Congress all these years for cheap political gains is proving
to be a big assault on our secularism.
In the recent election what has happened is that the Congress
was made to swallow its own bad deeds of the past (read support
to "minoritism") and if anyone interprets it as the support to
"majoritism", they are grossly wrong. If minoritism has taken
such a beating at the husting, the defeat for majoritism would
even more be pathetic. But it is a costly experiment to pursue
majoritism to see its fate as by then it would have caused irreparable
damage to the fabric of our nation. The majoritism or Hindutva
is projected as "cultural nationalism". They explain that India
would never be turned into a "Hindu Rashtra" and whatever is happening
is only to infuse cultural nationalism. If one carefully analyses
the strategy pursued by the Hindu fundamentalists in the last
two decades, it does not require any extra brain power to decode
these explanations and get to the bottom of these explanations.
The only way that these divisive actions can be tackled is
not by fighting only at the political ground but they have to
be resisted and countered at the social and cultural level. As
the editorial of "The Hindu" advised, "all the political parties
and people who have committed to preserve our secular democracy
should take on the divisive Hindutva campaign at all levels -
political, social, and cultural spheres".
As a first step in the political fight, the least that is expected
of Congress is to prove its blemishless commitment to secularism
in all possible ways before the next set of assembly elections.
Commitment to secularism does not mean that one should go to the
extent of discussing our internal matters in a foreign land and
criticize the way the nation conducts itself in the recent past
(as Ms Sonia Gandhi did recently). In a way, this action of Sonia
has angered the secular Hindus also and made them to vote against
Congress. The least that the so called secular allies of BJP in
NDA should do is to extract an unequivocal commitment to secularism
from the Prime Minister and his party colleagues in the government
failing which they should not be part of NDA even for a minute.
Is DMK President Mr. Karunanidhi listening? He should stop
doing lip service to secularism by just criticizing Sankaracharya
and the Hindu religion as a whole. This will only be viewed as
his pastime hobby and at the most an act of appeasing the minorities.
For Sangh Parivar and BJP - One can fool few people all the time,
some people for sometime, but not all the people all the time.
As long as some people carry the conviction for secular India
that much your job is difficult. There the arithmetic does not
mean anything. Remember Saint Ramanujam brought social revolution
not in modern democratic India but in medieval India when there
were strong religious and castiest forces countered him.
Although the 'Modi brand' of Hindutva is not merely unfortunate
but extremely ominous for the country's future and hence a matter
of grave concern for the millions of people who are committed
to the liberal democratic values enshrined in the Constitution,
let us not ignore the fact that the strength carried by the constructive
forces is many orders of magnitude higher than the destructive
elements.
Such is the strength of the constructive forces! To realize
the full potential of the constructive forces, all that has to
happen is "consolidation". Let us start this ensuing New Year
with this optimism!
Best
wishes to all the readers of this column and to their families
and friends. .
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