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Comments: The whole tragedy of undermining of the Constitution and the secular fabric of the nation took place when the Congress government of Narashima Rao in Delhi allowed the demolition of the Babri-Masjid. The nation is paying the price since then. This singular action has let loose the dormant monster of intolerance and communal politics, the rise of the BJP, flanked by its arms, the RSS, the Bajrang Dal, the Shiv Sena and the VHP. The inability to bring to books the prime culprit in the demolition of the Babri Masjid saga, Mr. Lal Krishna Advani and his accomplices have further emboldened the Parivar in its fanatical persuits. I had said, in my unpublished article written soon after the demolition of the Babri Masjid that Lal Krishna Advani should be shut in a darkest of dark dungeons for the rest of his miserable life. But this was not to be. Instead he has managed to come close to the highest office of the Democratic Union of India as its Number Two, the Deputy Prime Minister. God only forbid, it will be the end of this nation, if ever this communal viper is allowed to usurp the office of the Prime Minister of India. With all its learning, its cultural kaleidoscope, its un-imaginable resources and the potential power that this nation musters, it will be a pity to let it all be wasted, only because its people failed to see the red in the designs of the very conception of the BJP. The recent call by Advani for the Global Community to ostracize Pakistan and declare it a 'terrorist state' will have given a bad taste in the mouths of world leaders to hear such noble urgings coming from a person who is helping to destroy his own country through internal communal terrorism. If the people of India have to go through the misery of a civil war, just like the people of America , theirs, to purge the menace of this growing communal sycophancy which is slowly gaining in strength and determination, it is a must, rather than to see the entire nation torn and shamed beyond recovery. The prelude to this option will be the elections in Gujarat come December, 2002. With the agenda of the Parivar an open book before the people of Gurajat, irrespective of their caste and creed, to read, and to understand the BJP of Narendra Modi, of Lal Krishna Advani, of Murli Manohar Joshi and of Praveen Togadia and Giriraj Kishore, it is a must that it should bite the dust, just like in Jammu and Kashmir, dealing it the deadliest stroke of the mighty sword of Indian Secularism, so that a clear message is sent to the fanatics that their machinations to subvert democracy of this country will not succeed and that they either join in the national secular mainstream or get exterminated. Likewise, the people of Goa, should wake up from their complacent slumber to say no to the growing influence of the RSS in Goa , the very thought of which should give sleepless nights to peace loving Goans of all walks of life. It must be well understood that Manohar Parrikar is a cadre RSS, committed to the warped ideology which is against the secular constitution of India. No matter how much he may seduce the people of Goa to accept him as the right person for Goa's development, he will always be the accomplice of the RSS to drag Goa, loved by Goans, into the mire of communal hatred which is the raison d'etre of the RSS ideology. Goa will have to sacrifice Manohar Parrikar with all his good intensions, for a better, safe, and strife free Goa of tomorrow. And the next most important thing to do is for Goans to deny entry ever, on its sacred soil, the communal vipers in the persons of Praveen Togadia and Giriraj Kishore to inflame the ranks and file of the Goan RSS. Floriano Lobo goasuraj UNDERMINING OF DEMOCRACY BY PARIVAR Commentary By: Praful Bidwai NT 31 October, 2002 An ugly contest has broken out in the Sangh Parivar over who can reach the lowest possible depths of abuse and vulgarity while pursuing the politics of communal hatred. While Mr. Praveen Togadia has instantly descended to the gutter level by calling Ms. Sonia Gandhi an 'Italian dog' (more accurately, 'bitch', going by the original Gujarati word kutri). Mr. Narendra Milosevic Modi during his gaurav yatra termed her "Italy ke beti". He then threatened to "wipe Pakistan off the map of the world" through "Hindu militancy" This comes on top of Mr. Ashok Singhal's grisly threats to repeat Gujarat's "successful" ethnic-cleansing experiment all over India - to butcher Muslims on a mass scale. These threats have raised international concerns about the safety of India's 180 million-strong religious minorities. For his part, self-styled Hindu briday-samrat, Mr. Bal Thackeray has openly appealed to Hindus to form 'terrorist suicide squads' to attack Muslim civilians. In his Vijayadashami address in Mumbai, Mr Thackeray not only parodied Mr. Vajpayee through tasteless mimicry for his 'soft stand on Pakistan, he even equated Hindutva with desh hith (the national weal) and rhetorically asked: "Why do you hesitate to declare the country a Hindu rashtra? Why do you continue to put up with the insults you are being subjected to by Pakistan, and four million Pakistan infiltrators?" He called all Indian Muslims "traitors". Worst of all, VHP vice-president, Mr. Giriraj Kishore, citing the shastras, put the life of a cow higher than that of men - the five Dalits lynched in Jhajjar (Haryana). True to his cowardly type, Mr. Togadia has since said he did not name any particular individual in his reference to Italian canines. Mr. Thackeray has, similarly, claimed that his remarks were oly directed at "pro-Pakistan Muslims" and not Muslims as such - a ludicrously false statement, but duly certified as true by BJP general secretary and legal sophist, Mr. Arun Jaitley. Transcriptions of their speeches -published, for instance, in The Indian Express (October 21)- should knock these claims out totally. Mr. Thackeray's defence is as untenable as it is false. It is downright criminal to threaten to kill anyone with terrorist suicide squads. Actually, Mr. Togadia's offence goes much further than abusing Ms Gandhi in his October 19 speech. He demanded that Indian Muslims should get their genes tested. He atrociously chided Gujarat's minorities for their small numbers: "We are five crore, you are just 50,000. You think Hindus can be suppressed with bomb explosions or violence? We are five crore Hindus. If 50,000 Hindus get killed in a terrorist attack, the five -crore figure will not get smaller. If you people who number 50,000 die, no one will be left" He also underlined the need to militarise Hinduism into a malign, violent faith: "Hindus have the tradition of wearing a garland of flowers, but the Hindu deity wears a garland of human skulls. We wrongly adopted the (first) tradition. These vituperative speeches mark a true new low in Indian politics. BJP-VHP-Shiv Sena leaders have dragged even the language of politics down to the most abysmal level conceivable. Modern Indian historians will confirm that our political discourse did not fall so low even before that terrible trauma called Partition with its ghastly bloodbath. We are witnessing an explosion of an altogether new politics - of ethnic venom and hatred, which violates the foundations of pluralism and tolerance. Nothing can be more corrosive of our democratic sensibilities and our claim to be a minimally civilized society. Such venomous politics could not have developed forty, thirty , even twenty years ago. What made it possible is the Parivar's anti-Babri campaign launched in the mid - 1980s and its still unfolding sequel. This is Hindutva's sole contribution - to India's political coarsening and decay. Parivar hate speeches are not only vile in themselves. They are backed by action or serious intent to act - as in Maharashtra and Gujarat, which witnessed our two worst pogroms, both inside a decade in Rajasthan, where the BJP-VHP are systematically trying to polarize politics communally; in Tamil Nadu, where Ms Jayalalithaa has promoted obnoxious Hindu majoritarianism through an ill-conceived ordinance banning religious conversions; or in Haryana, where five Dalits were barbarically beaten to death in police custody because the VHP spread false rumours that they had illed a cow. This speech-action connection gets consolidated each day as Muslims and secularists are gratuitiously called Gaznis. Each time Mr. Modi descends to the ham-panch-hamare pacheese level of abuse and each time BJP leaders justify this as only a reference to "family planning", they further vitiate our public life. Why has the Sangh Parivar descended to the gutter level, and why have many BJP leaders joined the hate campaign as doers or apologists despite their differences with the VHP? To start with , half of the VHP's top leaders have been, like most BJP leaders, RSS pracharaks - and-in recent years BJP MPs. The Shiv Sena and BJP are inseparable. The Bajrang Dal's topmost man (Vinay Katiar) is the BJP's Uttar Pradesh president. There is no 'external' provocation for this hate campaign either - no Coimbatore, no December 13, no recent hostile action by Pakistan. The trigger is purely 'internal' This trigger has to do both with the intra-Parivar power struggle discussed in this column early last month) and the BJP's appalling performance in government. Messrs Togadia, Thackeray and Giriraj Kishore are deeply upset at the NDA's drift towards economic policies they don't like, and towards 'appeasement' of Pakistan through demobilization of troops at the border. These are not differences of principle, rather, they pertain to the sharing of the spoils. Mr. Thackeray plucked out Mr Suresh Prabhu from the Union cabinet because he didn't deliver 'enough' moolah to the Sena, and was getting too big for his boots. The senapati fulminates against Centaur Hotel's sale not because he opposes public sector disinvestments, but because he wants the hotel to be sold to his friend, Mr Ajit Kerkar. As for "appeasing" Pakistan, the NDA government has only done what was long overdue and demanded by the Army. Keeping seven lakh troops on high alert for 10 months had become counter productive and drained away between Rs. 5,000 and 8,000 crore. The NDA also acted under external pressure, most importantly from the US, which at one stage even started talking about reimbursing Pakistan for its counter-mobilisation expenses. The more virulent of our communalists need constant tension and enmity with Pakistan. They see India's neighbours, especially Pakistan, rather than hegemonic powers, as her worst enemies. De-mobilisation will temporarily deprive them of this plank. In Ayodhya, or in India, there is no popular support for a Ram temple. But this is Hindutva's sole (gambling) counter today. Mr. Thackeray openly exhorted Hindu youth to take to terrorism-fighting which is the number one official priority. Governmental pusillanimity alone has saved Mr. Thackeray from arrest and prosecution in the past. All the state needs is the minimal will to bring these dangerous fanatics to book in the interest of the nation, the Constitution, the law, indeed the establishment itself. If it fails the present test, it will bring disgrace upon itself - not just from the external world, but from its own citizens. ---------------------------------------------------------- What's On In Goa: * Oct 26-Oct 30: Painting exhibition, Kala Academy art gallery. * Oct 28: Panjim Passport Office shifts to new EDC Complex premises. * Oct 29-31: Sale of polytechnic trainees garments, Govt Polytech, Panjim * Oct 29-31: Films on architect Le Corbusier, Goa Col. of Architecture * Nov 1-17: Swimming classes for children, others. SAG pool, Fatorda * Nov 1: Antonio Costa's painting exhibition, Fundacao Oriente 6.30pm * Nov 4: Book release, on Dr Gama Pinto, Lourdes Convent Saligao ----------------------------------------------------------
