> B) Vidyadhar-bab says : 1) Many people who have serious > problems with the BJP do not belong to the categories I > mentioned. 2) My question as to why mild / moderate persons > support BJP in spite of knowing their " Hindutva " agenda > and their links with pro-Hindu organisations is irrelevent.
> change that to all staunch anti-BJP persons. > 2) I feel my question above is still extremely relevant . It is one > which I seriously doubt many , if not most, staunch anti-BJP > persons on this forum have been presented with before . Don't know if I would describe myself as 'staunch anti-BJP', would prefer some more positive label like 'pro-social justice' or "For Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" :-) But jokes apart, yes, till the BJP dumps its communal politics I would be unequivocally opposed to it. The question you raise above does come up in people's minds all too often. You think it's very nice to find oneself actually finding the Congress a better choice, given the Congress's long history of acts of commission and omission? Note that finding the Congress tolerable is a strictly relative activity. The Sangh Parivar's virulent brand of hate politics has ended up polarising Indian society and politics in such a way that anything looks better than that. Yes, EVEN the Congress. Apart from corruption, the Congress also has a bad record in the area of communalism. It has often indulged in or connived at communalism, most horrifically in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The Congress does little or nothing to promote secularism. But communalism is not part of its ideology, only of its convenience. After the 1984 anti-Sikh violence, one did not see Congress leaders asking for votes on the basis of their communal track record, as one sees BJP luminaries do, most starkly in Gujarat. The BJP could become perfectly acceptable to many people if it were to shed its communalism. 1. Break all links with the RSS and publicly repudiate the ideology of Hindutva. 2. Apologise to the nation for the vandalism of the Babri Masjid and make efforts to rebuild the original mosque. 3. Apologise for the Gujarat communal cleansing of 2002, and bring those responsible to justice. But for the BJP, Hindutva is a core ideology, a raison d'etre. And its links with the Sangh Parivar are too deep-rooted. As Vajpayee once famously said, "The Sangh is my soul." So somehow the BJP doing this seems unlikely... Don't know if this answers your questions, I just followed a train of thought set off by them. In this depressing scenario, how one wishes for a progressive, secular third force in Indian politics, one which has a realistic chance of winning elections. But this also seems unlikely, so one is left with the depressing choice you mention, in which even the Congress appears better. > Like Karl Marx , we need to question everything Indeed! :-) -- I wept because I had no answers, until I met a man who had no questions -- John David Stone
