Communal Trap

A cornered cat pounces at the throat of the one who has cornered it. Should the Muslims act likewise? Some of them did. The serial bomb blast in Mumbai was in retaliation to the demolition of the Babri mosque. So were several other acts of terrorism. But an act6 of terrorism triggers off state terrorism of greater maginitude. Besides, terrorism alienates the common people from a terrorist outfit.

An act of terrorism by members of the minority community helps reinforce the propaganda by Fascist forces that Muslims are anti-social elements who need to be dealt with an iron hand. It was because of the attack on the Akshardham temple complex in Gandhinagar and the assassinatioin of former home and revenue minister Haren Pandya that the police could terrorize the Muslims by subjecting a large number of youths to torture and then putting them behind bars under the provisions of the draconian POTA.

Violence breeds greater violence. Similarly, communalism of the majority community thrives on communalism of the minority community. Some religious and political leaders seek to encourage and strengthen orthodoxy among the Muslims on the plea that preserving a distinct identity is the only way to survive the onslaught by forces that seek to wipe out Islam. But by doing so, they add fuel to the fire of communalism on which Fascist forces thrive.

Another tendency seen among a few Muslim leaders is to accept the supremacy of the majority community and be rewarded with a share in power. Such Muslim leaders, who accept positions in the government or in the ruling party, play a second fiddle to the top leadership and come in handy for the Fascist regimes to tom-tom their 'secular' credentials. As happens with any fifth columnist, they become a subject of abject contempt among their own community even as their loyalty remains suspect in the eyes of the majority community.

A vast majority of Muslims are poor and illiterate, making them vulnerable to the machinations of politicians and the clergy. Politicians, irrespective of their party affiliations, view Muslims as a conglomerate of various monolithic, closely-knit clans each controlled by clerics and/or community leaders. In times of elections, politicians seek the support of these clerics and community leaders, who act as power-brokers.

Politicians, clerics and community leaders have shown little interest in the welfare and uplift of the common Muslims. On the contrary, they seem to have a vested-interest in keeping the masses illiterate and their attention diverted from such burning issues as education, poverty, unemployment, social and economic justice. The same holds true for the Hindutva forces too.

Karl Marx had described religion as the opiate of masses. The followers of Savarkar, Godse and Modi are proving Marx right in Gandhi's Gujarat.

Hey Ram

Savarkar had seeded the idea of partition by propounding the theory of 'Hindurashtra' in the 1920s, much before Mohammed Ali Jinnha came up with his two-nation theory. When the country was partitioned in 1947 and India decided to remain a secular state, the followers of Savarkar were angered that India had not become a 'Hindurashtra'. So, one of them, Nathuram Godse, killed Mahatma Gandhi who was a living symbol of universal brotherhood and secular India.

The Muslims who had opted for Pakistan were far less in number than those who had chosen to stay back in India. It was their conscious decision to opt for the citizenship of a secular and democratic nation. But for the followers of Savarkar's ideology, a secular and democratic India was neither palatable nor acceptable. They had no reasons to celebrate either the Independence Day or the Republic Day.

When the Union government banned the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Hindu Mahasabha after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, there was no sympathy for the Hindutva forces. The dogmatic Hindutva was stoutly rejected by the country's diverse religious, linguistic and ethnic people, who have had coexisted peacefully for centuries, enriching their respective cultural heritage through inter-mingling and sharing.

The Hindutva forces, represented in the political arenda by the erstwhile Jan Sangh (renamed later as the Bharatiya Janata Party), were rebuffed by the Indian electorate in all the successive elections to the Parliament and various state legislative assemblies but for the elections held in 1977.

The 1977 general elections proved a turning point in the post-independence political history of India. The elections were held under the shadow of a dictatorial rule. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, indicted by a court for indulging in corruption during her election and facing a country-wide protest movement led by youths, had declared a state of emergency and suspended all the fundamental rights of the citizens, gagging the press, arresting her opponents and unleashing a reign of terror.

The Indian voters expressed their anger against the dictatorial rule through the ballot papers, routing the Congress party and electing to power the Janata Party, a newly formed coalition of opposition parties. Mainly because they had joined the Janata coalition that most of the Jan Sangh leaders got elected to the Parliament.

It was a negative vote against the dictatorial rule of Mrs. Indira Gandhi and not a positive vote for the Hindutva ideology that helped the Jan Sangh gain political legitimacy in the country. When the Janata government fell due to bickering among the constituentsand fresh elections were held, people voted Mrs. Gandhi and her Congress party back to power. The biggest loser was the Jan Sangh that had renamed itself as Bharatiya Janata Party. Only two BJP candidates managed to win their seats in the Lok Sabha.

From the subsequent events and developments, it would become clear that the BJP gained more political mileage from the follies of the Congress than from the popularity of the Hindutva ideology. It was because of fragmentation of opposition votes due to the presence of a large number of political parties in the election fray that the Congress was managing to win a majority in the Parliament and in state assemblies. Else, the popularity of the Congress party was fast depleting on account of corruption in high places, rising inflation, the culture of sycophancy and perpetuation of one family rule - that of Mrs. Indira Gandhi.