India is not the BJP
By Kuldip Nayar
An unfortunate fall out of the tests at Pokharan is the contorted image
that India has come to acquire. Very few are talking about
the country`s traditional values, or its spiritual heritage. It is now
being seen in the worst possible light as a Hindu
fundamentalist state out to silence critics within the country and around.
The fact is that the BJP has only 180 seats in the 543 member Lok Sabha,
the lower house of Parliament. Without consulting the
other 100 who give the BJP a majority in the House, the party has hijacked
the many strands of conciliation and tolerance. What
the RSS-backed BJP is projecting is an aggressiveness which is alien to the
country. BJP is not India and India is not just the
BJP.
It is however unfortunate that the world, barring a few countries, is
beginning to perceive India as any other fundamentalist state
which will go to any Iengths to justify its chauvinism. Comments by the
West, thoroughly irresponsible, suggest as if India, a
Hindu majority state, has exploded the bomb to create awe in the rest of
the world. They castigate New Delhi for finding a novel
way of bombing their way into the Security Council.
On top of that, when Home Minister L K Advani suggests a new situation in
Kashmir after the bomb, and when the Prime
Minister`s political adviser - Pramod Mahajan - provokes China, the
international opinion cannot make sense from such rhetoric.
It begins to infer that the BJP-led coalition is itching for a fight.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is considered a liberal who is opposed
to Hindu fundamentalism and war-like postures. But
it appears he has no control over ministers like Advani. The very fact that
Pramod Mahajan denies any difference between the
Prime Minister and the Home Minister confirms the impression that the two
do not see eye to eye.
Things may have changed now, but the two have been poles apart. In 1990
when Vajpayee came to London, I was India`s High
Commissioner. Advani was then leading the Rath Yatra through Northern India
to Ayodhya. I asked Vajpayee why he had not
followed Advani, but had preferred to come to London. His reply was: Those
who are Ram bhagat have gone to Ayodhya; but
those who are desh bhagat have come to London.`
It is Vajpayee who was projected by the BJP as the Prime Minister during
the Lok Sabha polls. The message was that given a
chance, the BJP will rise above obscurantist views and give the country a
secular, not Hindu government. The 13 parties had
given their support to Vajpayee, not Advani or the other hardliners. Were
the Prime Minister now to take a back seat that would
amount to violating the confidence of voters and allied parties.
Vajpayee should at last shut up the lunatic fringe of Hindu
fundamentalists, like Vishwa Hindu Parishad which gets its blessings
from the RSS. Ashok Singhal, heading the Parishad, has advocated the
establishment of Hindu Raj in India and a war against
Pakistan. India is not a Hindu state. Neither its constitution, nor its
functioning point to such a narrow denominational attitude.
After partition in August 1947, India, with 82 per cent of Hindus, could
have declared itself as a Hindu state, just as Pakistan
declared itself as an Islamic republic. But the national struggle,
including leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, Maulana Azad and Abdul
Ghaffar Khan, had a free, democratic, and secular India as its goal. The
creation of such a state after independence was logical
and met the ethos of the fight for independence.
The West, Pakistan and other countries are equating India with the BJP-led
coalition. Most Indians are as much critical of Hindu
jingoism as the people outside. Their abuses and provocative observations
may drive Indians to the wall where they may be
forced to say: good or bad, it is my country. Do not treat it as a pariah
because that would be counter-productive.
New Delhi, somewhat better in its pronouncements than before, cannot take
other countries for granted. Washington, however
arrogant in its attitude, has real fears because India`s tests can lead to
Iran, Israel and some others making their nuclear options
explicit. The entire effort to restrain nations from going nuclear come to
nought.
Given the history of relations between India and Pakistan, Islamabad`s
paranoia is understandable. Its governance is under the
overall supervision of the army which considers India the number one enemy.
Its security perceptions do not allow New Delhi to
become too powerful. On the other hand, Pakistan has to reckon with the
fundamentalists for whom India is a mere Hindu state.
Even a liberal person like Benazir Bhutto says that Pakistan should take
military action against India. And in his own
government Nawaz Sharif has persons like foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan.
Therefore when some responsible BJP leaders like Jaswant Singh urge
Pakistan to go nuclear, they should realise they are
playing with fire. Islamabad narrowly escaped a fundamentalist regime in
1995. Some top army officials had planned a coup in
collusion with Islamic zealots. The rallying point was Islamabad`s 'weak
kneed policy on Kashmir.` It failed because some of
the officers involved informed army headquarters.
It is in India`s own interests that Pakistan does not go down the
fundamentalist road. That road may go beyond the borders of
India and Pakistan. It can also pose a threat to India`s secular polity.
Islamabad is not without blame. In all the last 50 years
since independence, it has mocked at India`s efforts to build a secular
society. At every international conference or otherwise, it
has tried to project India as a Hindu country. Purposely, they translate
Hindustan into Bharat. The entire tone and tenor of
discussions on Pakistan Radio and TV is to prove that they are Muslims who
are pitted against Hindus, not Indians.
The first remark made after the demolition of the Babri masjid was that the
two nation theory was proved right, underlining that
Hindus and Muslims were two different nations. Some hooligans took upon
themselves to raze the masjid to the ground and the
BJP state government remained inactive. Does this mean that those hooligans
represent the entire Hindu community and that the
community becomes a different nation?
True, India has not yet become a truly secular country. True, there are
Hindu-Muslim riots. True, the police and the authorities
have often been found communal. Still great efforts are being made at every
level to see that the virus of communalism is
eliminated and that equality before law is never undermined.
The fact that the BJP has progressed from eight seats in the Lok Sabha to
180 in the last 18 years is of great concern to the
people. Still it had to give up its programme to build the Ram temple, to
enforce common law and to shelve the amendment to
Article 370, which gives special status to Kashmir, to form the government.
India could have probably done better if only Pakistan had been a little
circumspect in running down secularism. Their
predicament probably is that once they accepted religion as the basis for
the state`s formation, they had no choice except to plug
the religious line. If Pakistan was Islamic, India had to be Hindu. If
Pakistan had only gone back to the enunciation outlined by
the founder of that country, Qaid E Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah :'...In course
of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and
Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that
is the personal faith of every individual, but in the
political sense as citizens of the state.`
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