Between the lines
BJP back to its destructive track
WHETHER history repeats itself or not but it comes back full circle to memories long familiar to people. Some 12 years ago, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) started a rath yatra to polarise the society in northern India. It generated passion which ultimately made the crowd to pull down the Babri masjid. Never since partition there had been so many killings as were in the wake of the yatra. Blessed by the RSS, the BJP is back to its destructive best. It has renewed its old agenda: an agitation to build temple without awaiting the court's decision on ownership. This may be yet another exercise in whipping up religious sentiments and stir Hindus and Muslims with all pernicious results. When L K Advani led the yatra he was the BJP president. Today even when he is India's deputy prime minister, he has attended the RSS-BJP meeting to finalise the campaign to build the temple. The first brick is the booklet which the BJP has printed on Ram temple. Advani has contributed two articles to the booklet on his thoughts while under house arrest after the demolition of the Babri masjid in 1992. Whether the two articles would incite communal passion or not is debatable. But the pertinent question is: Why should the No 2 person in the government be associating himself with extremists and fundamentalists, who look like re-igniting the mandir-masjid controversy that may throw northern India into a communal cauldron? It is clear that the BJP wants to bring the temple issue on to the centre stage for its Hindutva agenda which it believes sells. But should the country's deputy prime minister be a part of it? He has sworn loyalty to the constitution which is based on the country's ethos of secularism. Is he not violating legal obligations even if he does not bother about the morality aspect? The deputy prime minister also behaves in an irresponsible manner when he says that the Archaeological Survey of India report on excavations at Ayodhya has "strengthened" the case for a temple on the disputed land. The court, which ordered the excavations, is yet to give its judgment. His observation could tantamount to influencing the verdict. One feels disappointed when the ruling party does not observe even a modicum of decorum. How should one point a finger at rowdy parties? The latter will quote chapter and verse from the statements of the BJP leaders to justify their behaviour. Advani is already involved in the demolition case which the CBI has brought against him. Even otherwise, his comment before the judgment does not add to his stature nor to the democratic system which he, as the home minister, is supposed to protect. It is obvious that the BJP has felt it necessary to bring the temple issue to the fore even before the end of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) rule. The BJP had given an undertaking to the constituents that the party would keep the temple question aside until the NDA was in power. The alliance still has one year to go. There is seemingly no danger to the government. It comfortably sailed through the no-confidence motion only last month. What it indicates is that the BJP is worried over the Lok Sabha election, which is one year hence. Maybe, the split with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of dalits has hastened the thinking. The BJP was depending on the BSP to get its votes, averaging 15 to 20 per cent, in the Lok Sabha polls and before that in the state assembly elections in Delhi, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan scheduled for this November. With political calculations going awry, the fall back on the tried temple issue was a natural option. Even otherwise, the BJP had little choice when the RSS, its mentor, told it to make up with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Sangh parivar member, which was hell bent on duplicating Gujarat by polluting the atmosphere in the name of the temple. The party does not seem to realise that Narendra Modi has become a millstone around its neck. In fact, the observation by the Chief Justice of India that he had no faith in the Modi government or its prosecuting machinery to get justice for the victims has sent shock waves throughout the country. Some of the Hindu intelligentsia, which was with the BJP on building the temple, has felt so horrified over Chief Justice's remarks that it is distancing itself from the BJP. The party would have served its cause better if it had asked Modi to resign. Defence Minister George Fernandes, who is the blue-eyed boy of the RSS, has naturally said that Modi was not obliged to resign legally. This is true. But there is something called morality which Geroge forgot long ago. What else is raj dharma (calls of governance), the words used by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee after the carnage in Gujarat? The Chief Justice used the same words while chiding Modi. Vajpayee, who used the words raj dharma, is conspicuous by his silence. His assurance at Chennai that India will not go communal is correct because the country may not stay united in the absence of pluralism. But shouldn't the prime minister do something to strengthen the ethos of secularism? He should assert himself to stop at least the BJP from reopening such issues which may rip the society apart. Sticking to Modi on the one hand and reopening the mandir issue on the other may create fire and fury. But such a scenario does not help the nation. At a time when fundamentalists and terrorists want to destablise the country, the BJP's approach should have been to create an atmosphere of consensus. When it says that the mandir issue can be settled either by the court's verdict or through negotiations between Hindus and Muslims, then why threaten with an agitation? What the BJP leaders or their think-tank do not realise is that neither Modi nor mandir sells any more. People are tired of their projection again and again. As UP chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has said at a press conference, the people are worried about poverty and unemployment and have little time for the temple. The problem with the BJP is that it has no issue other than the communal divide it wants to pursue. Some in the party probably realise the lessening returns. Still their mind does not go beyond Hindutva. In fact, this is the sum total of the BJP's achievements during its five-year rule at the centre. Apart from communalism, it has distinguished itself in two other fields -- corruption and nepotism. There have never been so many scams as are during the Vajapyee's rule. And anyone who had anything to do with the RSS has been well rewarded. One does not know what the BJP can do to retrieve the situation in Gujarat. But it can possibly solve the mandir problem. The Muslim community may well be inclined to offer the site of the Babri masjid to the government provided there is a constitutional amendment to let religious places remain as they were when India won freedom on August 15, 1947. It means that the RSS must honour the mosques at Mathura and Varanasi. But then what happens to its Hindutva agenda?
Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.
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