The end of an aberration

After the 13th Lok Sabha election in 1999 it's man, a redoubtable Vajpayee returned to South Block in flying colours at the head of 24-party National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Behind the facade of BJP-led NDA it was, in fact, the Sangh Parivar including the RSS of which none other than Vajpayee had once been an 'activist', that started calling the shots. Obviously an India of Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru could not be quite comfortable with the new band of rulers who conjured up the image of brutes vicariously guilty of Mahatma's assassination or a bunch of fanatics demolishing Babri mosque and torching churches out of sheer intolerance. BJP's fascist character called for undoing everything India built up to uphold the country's multi-cultural ethos and democratic egalitarianism as the rampart of Indian polity and insisted on a Hindu majoritarian rule. The RSS pushed the BJP-led government at least to adopt an idiom of governance that would ultimately serve their larger project of establishing a Hindu Rastrya. Nehruvian dream of a modern, liberal and secular India came crashing down.

During the tenure of 13th Lok Sabha which ran its full term as the BJP succeeded in pulling down the edifice of the country's multicultural heritage the majority of Indians feeling shorn of their anchor, were left with little to savour and stillless to pride on. The Indian polity lost the course charted by its visionary leaders portending a period of aberration in national politics. At the peak of this aberration came the malignant brand of Hidutva which ominously initiated a hate campaign in Gujarat under an infamous Narendra Modi, the state's chief minister-directly responsible for independent India's worst communal carnage after 1992 Mumbai riots in the wake of Babri Mosque demolition. Earlier India's miniscule Christian community suffered persecution of Sangh Parivar whose brutality in the killing of Father Staines and his children in remote Orissa leprosy centre stirred the Indian conscience.

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There are constitutional imperatives for a pluralistic democracy like India where there cannot be denial of justice, no second class citizen or minorities. The ultra-right BJP's outlook and policies were viciously sectarian. If implemented as it was trying to do so graphically, it was feared, it could destroy India! Thanks to the articulated protests of India's highly conscientious civil society and human rights activists some of the persecution perpetrated by Modi government were halted in Gujarat but the BJP's diabolical agenda of capitalising on its achievements in Gujarat continued through 14th Lokshava election.

During the crises for communal harmony even earlier India's media, politicians and intellectuals stood firm in defence of secularism. Even the people from among the majority community played a remarkable role in containing the insanity. In last election it was specifically the turn of India's common people whose hard issues and problems were seldom addressed amidst communal frenzy deliberately kept alive by Hindutva zealots. It was the turn to give their verdict to put India back on the road to the goals envisioned by the nation's architects. The enlightened electorate of India immersed in the tradition of democracy and pluralism made no mistake and put an end to a dark chapter of aberration that crept into their national life. The 14th Lokshava election resulted neither in the victory of Congress or Sonia Gandhi. It was the triumph of India as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and Moulana Azad.

It is a great moment for India when someone from the minority Sikh community becomes the country's prime minister. The tradition thus set befits only a great nation like India. All the BJP did or could do later was to trivialise that greatness. Only if India's composite culture and democratic pluralism can be guarded zealously the BJP will not dare baring its fangs; neither will the nation be haunted by Hindutva again.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.