A manipulative mindset

Bakht8217;s was a similar fate. He smiled faintly in reply. He did not want todiscuss why the BJP had dropped him after years of service. Yet he was theonly Mu-slim leader in the party8217;s high command.

Reluctant as he was, Bakht merely said that one day before the swearing-inof the cabinet, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee rang him up and told himthat he would be appointed the governor of a state. He said he declined theoffer on the phone itself.

This was no reply to my question. Why had he been dropped, I persisted inasking him. Still no response. Instead, he asked me whether he had performedbadly as minister of industry, a position he held in the last BJP-ledcoalition. 8220;I settled the Maruti problem,8221; he observed. There was adispute between the Japanese firm and New Delhi over the chairmanship of thecompany8217;s board.

Realising what he said had not satisfied me, he told me he would prefer tokeep quiet 8220;for the time being8221;. Disillusionment was writ large on hisface. I recalled how the party had to placate him when he had refused tojoin in the first 13-day Vajpayee government because of the insignificantportfolio allotted to him. He remembered that. Still he did not open hismouth. After my persistent queries, he talked a bit 8212; only a bit. He saidhe had noticed that they8217; had included two Muslim bacchas in thegovernment. 8220;Where is the Muslim?8221; he asked. Indeed, Bakht had stood likea rock when the Muslim community had run him down and called him aquisling.

8220;I wish I knew why I have been dropped,8221; Bakht said. It could not bebecause he was getting on in years because the age of Home Minister L.K.Advani and Bakht is more or less the same. Did Bakht cross someone8217;s path inthe BJP or that of its mentor, the RSS? He is not that type of a person. IfJagmohan could be included in the cabinet at the last minute at the RSS8217;sbidding, Bakht could have been accommodated after Vajpayee8217;s no8217;.

The air would have cleared if Bakht had spoken out like Arif Beg from MadhyaPradesh when he was not given a ticket in the recent election. He attackedthe BJP directly and openly for its 8220;anti-Muslim bias8221; and went over thevarious incidents of humiliation he had experienced when he was in theparty. He left the BJP. Bakht has, however, maintained a sphinx-like silenceand has continued to be in the BJP despite losing face. Vajpayee had said onthe cabinet formation that there was no pressure on him from his party.Could it be from any other quarter? Some persons who have left the BJP saythat the RSS knows how to use people and then dump them.

The case of Bakht reconfirms the suspicion that Muslims are not in thereckoning of the RSS, however long and loyally they may serve. He was usefulat one time when the credentials of the BJP were certainly parochial andknown solely as the party of Hindus. Apparently, the climate has changedbecause the party has acquired so many allies, from Mamata Banerjee to M.Karunanidhi and from George Fernandes to Sharad Yadav, who defend theirpresence in the BJP-led government by saying that the blunt communal edge ofthe party has been rounded off. But is that the case?

When I was talking to Bakht, Ramakrishna Hegde was standing by our side. Hequoted Emerson to say that life was replete with betrayals. He did notclarify what he had in mind. He sympathised with Bakht but refused to drawany lesson from his case. He did not blame Vajpayee for his being droppedfrom the cabinet. Instead, he picked on Fernandes who, he said, did notinclude his name in the list he forwarded to the Prime Minister. Hegdeconceded that the Lok Shakti8217;s alliance with the BJP in Karnataka had notworked. But he put the blame on the BJP which, according to him, did nottransfer its votes to the allies.

If this is true the BJP or, for that matter, the RSS, has a long-termpolicy to grow by using someone here and someone there. Hegde and Bakhtfitted into its scheme of things for a particular period and for aparticular purpose. When that was over they were redundant. The fault istheirs for not having assessed the true nature of the organisation, whichconsiders individuals expendable.

Maybe, there is something in what Subramanian Swamy, once part of the innercircle of the BJP-RSS, has said in an article: 8220;The BJP is a politicalfront of the RSS and the RSS is a fascist par excellence. They are far moredeceptive, devious and sophisticated than Indian intellectuals give themcredit for8230; The nation thus stands at the crossroads of history such asGermany did stand in 1933. The RSS juggernaut is now decisively on the move.Since the secular parties have failed to learn from history, they arecondemned to repeat it8230;8221;

I think it is not the country which is at the crossroads but Vajpayee. Herepresents the liberal element in the party. The nation has come to trusthim. Can he rise above the RSS pressure? And can he convert the NationalDemocratic Alliance into a secular front to fight the Hindutva and communalforces which are harming the country8217;s composite culture and telling uponIndia8217;s integrity and democratic structure? How can his party be a member ofthe same parivar which has the Vishwa HIndu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal asits members? Currently, they are damaging the country8217;s image of pluralisticsociety by a campaign of calumny against the Christians.

And it is time Vajpayee stopped onslaughts on the basics, for example,education, which is sought to be saffronised. All the appointments at highplaces in the fields of education and scientific research reflect the intentto move the thinking in a particular direction. Are there no historians oreducationists who have remained untainted by one ideology or the other?Rewriting history is a subjective effort at any time. It will be more sonow. It will become a point of view, not history.

I sympathised with Jaswant Singh when he said in the Rajya Sabha that theytoo loved knowledge and did not want to shut it out. He was replying to ashort discussion on a circular which said that the teaching of communism hadbeen stopped. It turned out to be a printing mistake. Still he must askhimself why an impression has spread that his party is obscurantist. Why areliberals willing to believe the worst when it comes to the BJP and the RSS?It is because they have acquired an image of communalism and jingoism.Anything done by them creates suspicion because their bona fides are indoubt.