Atal Bihari Vajpayee made a pretty picture in the green turban. But there may be reasons to hope that Vajpayee’s frontal appeal to a Muslim audience, at the minority development convention sponsored by the BJP this week, was not about poll-eve symbolism alone. After all, it needs a measure of courage to make peace — between communities and between nations — into an election plank in these agitated times. It takes vision of the long term kind to sidestep the seduction of handy cleavages and old antagonisms, and to craft an inclusive appeal from the promise of problem-solving and the commitment to address development issues. To be sure, Vajpayee’s effort to reach out to the Muslim community in the country is wholly heartening. But it will not be easy going for the BJP, despite Vajpayee’s initiative and the recent spate of photo ops, in spite of Arif Mohammed Khan and Najma Heptullah. Vajpayee’s invitation to the minority community to shed their fears and insecurities and reciprocate the BJP’s overture will need to be bolstered by much more. Because in the long run, inclusiveness is also a policy and a programme; it must be seen to be implemented on the ground. Vajpayee’s ‘peace card’ also needs to be owned by his colleagues in BJP-led governments in the states, and especially by them. Here, the news is not encouraging. In Gujarat, the CBI report on the Bilkis Yakub Rasool case has just bared the extent of the Narendra Modi administration’s complicity in hushing up crimes of murder and rape. In Madhya Pradesh, this paper has tracked the revealing contrasts of the Uma Bharti government. Police officers who acted promptly to contain the recent communal flare up in Ujjain must face inquiries in Bhopal while the state maintains its studied inaction vis a vis officials accused of watching sangh activists go on a violent rampage against Christian missionaries in Jhabua. Vajpayee is right when he points to the need for a new political discourse, especially on issues of secularism and communalism. Indeed, the existing debate is bedraggled and threadbare, all arguments on all sides have lost most of their credibility. His attempt to weave peace with Pakistan, conflict resolution in Ayodhya and Kashmir and a development agenda into a new seamless whole is arresting. But in times when there are signs that the voter, Hindu and Muslim, is more unsparing towards sops and gimmicks and more mature in her political assertion, Vajpayee’s initiative must do considerably more than just declare new beginnings. They must be followed up.
