Hindutva with a vengeance

The Jamiat-e-Islami prospered in Bangladesh with the support of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Nepal, a Hindu state, has never seen a Hindu party winning, nor has Sri Lanka the Buddhist monks. Since history and geography have thrown the different communities together in the region they have learnt to live with one another. They generally raise above religion, though not caste, when voting.

The BJP should know it better. It lost in the last election because the countryside voted against the saffron that the urban areas had begun to accept during the six-year rule of the BJP at the centre. The party's new president Rajnath Singh wants 10 years, not for economic development but for measures to stop "Muslim appeasement." When they have no jobs, no shelter, not even proper status, as the Sachar committee has proved through statistics, where is the Muslim appeasement?

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This is another way of arousing Hindus' passion. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi whipped up a frenzy and killed hundreds of Muslims and uprooted thousands of them a few years ago. The problem with the BJP is that it has no other agenda, neither economic nor social. Its programme is to isolate and torment the minorities, although the party's 2004 election manifesto promised all to them. The wilderness has made the party go berserk.

India's commitment is to pluralism. The freedom struggle consecrated this belief through sacrifices. The nation has developed a secular temperament which the BJP has been trying to change, in vain. The party fails to understand that democracy and theology do not go together. No doubt, the British divided India on the basis of religion. But the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, himself changed the goalposts. His first announcement after the creation of Pakistan was that religion had nothing to do with governance. The BJP is resurrecting the discarded ideology. But the party had tried it earlier and failed.

As the Hindu Mahasabha, it won only three to four seats. When it became the Jana Sangh, the tally was no different. It gained during its new incarnation as the BJP. But that was because it acquired credibility for being part of the Janata Party which had risen from the ashes of Mrs Indira Gandhi's authoritarian rule. However, the BJP went back on the undertaking it gave to Jayaprakash Narayan, the Janata Party's founder, that it would sever its connection with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which rules it completely. The BJP lost at the polls again when it presented itself as a Hindu party.

What brought it to power was the alliance with the non-Congress parties which had won on a secular, not communal, plank. After deluding even the liberal rightists, the BJP has taken off its mask of being a different entity from the RSS. The party even held its executive meeting a few days ago at a RSS building in Lucknow where it proudly announced that the RSS "pracharaks" (preachers) would occupy key positions in the BJP.

The party president, like an evangelist, has declared that they would construct the Ram mandir at the same place where the Babri masjid stood before its destruction. Also, Article 370 which gives a special status to Jammu and Kashmir, is sought to be scrapped. But the party, or its leaders, did not utter a word to condemn the atrocities that the upper castes are committing against the "dalits," constituting one-sixth of the Hindu community. Even the ban on the "dalits" entry into temples in Orissa recently figures nowhere in the BJP's discussions. What kind of Hindu party is this?

The BJP's onslaught takes the shape of Hindutva with a vengeance -- anti-secular and anti-minorities. The party will seek to comunalise every field and try to polarise the society. This may affect economic development adversely because the BJP's attention is going to be focused on how to Hinduise the country, not on how to harness all communities for people's welfare. Institutions may face a relentless pressure from Hindu fanatics who will stop at nothing. Parliament and state legislatures may be hit. The BJP will measure every bill or business on the scales of religion. What will push the cause of Hindutva will be the criterion, not the country.

In a way, this is welcome because the BJP's game of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is over. Forces committed to secular democracy have before them an opponent who, like the Al-Qaida, wants religion to throw out democracy and the rule of law. It is difficult to imagine how secular parties can adjust themselves in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The Janata Dal (Secular) has left it. How can the Nitish Kumar government belonging to the Janata Dal (United) have, in Bihar, the BJP as its coalition partner? He needs the BJP's announcement that the NDA's common minimum programme stays. In other words, the party will have to keep aside the mandir and the Article 370 issue as it did during the Atal Behari Vajpayee government.

Indeed, the BJP has thrown down the gauntlet. It is up to the nation to pick it up. It is a challenge to the pluralistic structure that the country has built in the last 60 years. True, the future may decide whether the nation can protect the ethos of secularism which Mahatma Gandhi provided while leading the people to freedom. This will mean that all secular, democratic forces should join hands to kill the demon of communalism once and for all. But the question is why does it raise its head again and again?

The Pakistanis have a point when they ask me: why are members from the BJP increasing in parliament and in the state legislatures, particularly in the north? How does India, with its long tradition of secular democracy, return the BJP which is like any Muslim fundamentalist outfit?

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.