Halting Hindutva's march: BJP must be unhinged
Congress should begin a series of discussions with committed anti-communal forces: Left-liberal political leaders, academics, intellectuals and anti-communal activists...Resecularising India isn't any one party's agenda. Politically unhinging the BJP and denying it legitimacy and electoral success is an imperative for all secular parties and movements. We are now witnessing a battle for the soul of Indian nationhood. The Congress must not lose it by default -- as it did in Gujarat.
As political India debates whether the Bharatiya Janata Party can replicate the Gujarat "formula"-- of igniting communal polarisation to win votes -- in the other states facing Assembly elections, one must ask if the BJP's opponents will repeat their Gujarat strategies.
An analysis of the final election results shows that the BJP gained as much from its opponents' mistakes, as from its own communal appeal. The effects of the second factor were far more widespread.
It turns out that the BJP didn't cross the half-way mark, its ballots totalling 49.79 percent, or 10.13 million votes. Just 31 percent of the electors voted for it. The secular parties bagged 9.44 million votes. In addition to the 53 seats of the Congress and JD(U), there were 40 other constituencies in which secular candidates would have won had they not divided the anti-BJP vote.
Gujarat's true shame is that the BJP's vote rose six percentage-points -- despite the butchery of 2,000 citizens, on top of abysmal governance. But its victory was less sweeping than seems.
The Congress followed soft-Hindutva and made many mistakes. It didn't fully mobilise its organisational machine -- although it controls 80 percent of Gujarat's municipalities and 70 percent of panchayats. Instead of playing a hands-on role, Ms Sonia Gandhi left matters to the mediocre leadership of Mr Kamal Nath and Mr Vaghela.
Worse, the Congress didn't take the BJP head-on on the core-issues of Hindutva, "terrorism" and "security". It didn't ideologically demarcate itself from the BJP. It left the field uncontested as the BJP equated Hindutva with nationalism. Mr Modi's rantings about "Miyan Musharraf", and his ludicrous accusations about Indian Muslims' collusion with Pakistan, went unchallenged.
The Congress should have attacked the BJP's demonisation of Indian Muslims as Pakistan's Fifth Column. The Indian Muslims' rejection of jehad is remarkable, exemplary, indeed unique. As former Research & Analysis Wing official B. Raman says, "not a single Indian Muslim" has ever joined any jehadi group abroad.
No Muslim from the rest of India has joined Kashmir's militants either. The restraint and patriotic spirit shown by Indian Muslims is probably unmatched elsewhere. Even US conservatives acknowledge this.
The BJP's campaign equated Hindutva with nationalism. The Congress should have ruthlessly exposed Hindutva as divisive, extremist, deeply illiberal and incompatible with India's composite culture, and the Constitutional values of democracy, secularism and universal citizenship.
It should have pointed out that the RSS-Hindu Mahasabha played no role in the Freedom Movement -- their main enemy being Muslims, not colonialism. The Hindutva ideologues founded the Two-Nation Theory. The Congress will have to frontally oppose this national chauvinism in the coming elections.
BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu believes the BJP's success in Gujarat was premised as much on the "terrorism" platform as communal violence: "Our political adversaries were rightly recognised as willing to compromise on national interests ... The people had been watching the country being bled by terrorists ...
The Gujarat elections offered an opportunity to effectively articulate their concerns on these larger issues..."
This is the key to confronting the BJP in Himachal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi, where elections are soon due. The BJP will contest these on "national-security-is-in-danger-from-terrorism" platform.
The BJP is vulnerable here. For, no party has endangered "national security" as severely as Hindutva, by dividing the nation and severing it from the people. And none has driven such a wedge between Hindus and others, and among the Hindus themselves.
Today, the BJP-NDA pursues this policy by heightening hostility with Pakistan. They identify Pakistan as the external manifestation of the "threat from within" (read, Muslims). That's why the government has created obstacles to normalising relations with Pakistan. Its latest mean-spirited visa curbs will reduce the cities that Pakistani nationals can visit from 12 to only three.
During 2002, New Delhi granted less than 200 visas to Pakistani nationals (normal annual rate, 4-5,000). It also wantonly sabotaged the SAARC summit in Islamabad.
The secular parties, especially the Congress, must contest the BJP's claim to fighting terrorism effectively. For all its militant "pro-active" rhetoric, the BJP-NDA's strategy to counter and contain terrorism has proved bankrupt. India was bled by Rs 10,000 crores -- four times the Central health budget -- during the pointless 10-months-long mobilisation of 700,000 troops.
In fact, some of the worst terrorist attacks (e.g. Akshardham and Raghunath) have taken place during the NDA's rule. As Mr Raman says, this government has "trivialised counter-terrorism".
Hindutva's "national security" rhetoric must be countered with people's security. This means focusing centrally on the people's minimum needs, and enhancing food security, income security, employment security, gender security and personal security. We must reduce tensions with Pakistan by engaging it in a dialogue and through diplomatic pressure. It will be even more crucial to start an internal dialogue in Kashmir.
The Congress must not be apologetic about this alternative perspective. The BJP lost heavily in the Jammu region in the last Assembly election precisely because the electorate saw through its empty "anti-terrorism" rhetoric.
The Congress must confront the BJP head-on on all these issues. By concentrating on human security, and show that it has a healthy, wholesome conception of defending and advancing the interests of all Indian citizens, irrespective of religion or ethnicity.
This won't be easy for the Congress, which is timid and confused. It "naturally" tends to follow soft-Hindutva and fudges issues.
So the Congress will need external help, especially intellectual and ideological-political inputs. It should begin a series of discussions with committed anti-communal forces: Left-liberal political leaders, academics, intellectuals and anti-communal activists.
Resecularising India isn't any one party's agenda. Politically unhinging the BJP and denying it legitimacy and electoral success is an imperative for all secular parties and movements. We are now witnessing a battle for the soul of Indian nationhood. The Congress must not lose it by default -- as it did in Gujarat.
Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.
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