Et tu, RSS?

How does it benefit the state or the country? And what does the RSS get out of it?

New Delhi has always opposed the division on the basis of religion because it defeats the very secular ethos of India. Is there a change in the Centre8217;s policy? Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee owes an explanation to the country because the RSS his soul, as he has declared many a time advocates the separation of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in the state.

The state8217;s division will only provide grist to the propaganda mills that the Muslims, even after living for 52 years in secular India, want to live separate from non-Muslim regions of Jammu and Ladakh. How do the constituents of the ruling National Democratic Alliance reconcile their secular approach to a purely communal formation?

The proposal of division was mooted by the editor of an Urdu daily in Lahore many years ago. He wanted the Valley to merge with Pakistan. His emphasis was on the separation of Muslims from the non-Muslims.

A similar proposal to divide the state was made by Punjab Pakistan Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to Punjab India Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal at their meeting held during Prime Minister Vajpayee8217;s visit to Pakistan. What was significant was that the Lahore process of amity had not changed the old thinking that the Muslims by virtue of their religion had to come to Pakistan and non-Muslims to India.

Pakistan has always held that the Hindus and the Muslims are two separate nations. Since the subcontinent was divided on that basis, the Muslim-majority Kashmir was theirs. By supporting the division of Jamp;K, the RSS is unwittingly endorsing the Pakistan line. No doubt, the RSS is all for the Hindu Rashtriyata but as of today, it has not subscribed to the two-nation theory. Why is it playing into the hands of separatists?That Hurriyat chief Ali Shah Gillani should talk in terms of the state8217;s division on religious lines is not surprising. He has always been advocating Kashmir8217;s merger with Pakistan.

Why should the RSS give credibility to his scheme? It is also surprising that youthful leaders like Yasin Malik, who believe in Kashmiriyat, the state8217;s secular ethos, have not contradicted Gillani. Is it the official policy of the Hurriyat, as he has claimed in a statement, with which they have concurred? They may have a point.

Hindu nationalist feelings are being fostered to submerge other identities and communities. The RSS has done the greatest damage to our pluralistic society. But they do not realise the depth of our secular feelings.

Our attitude was firmed up when the country was fighting its battle for independence. The national movement knew no religion, no caste and no language. It was a war in which all participated with one purpose: to throw out the alien rulers. The ethos, the distinctive feature of the struggle, was togetherness, the spirit of understanding. That was precisely the basis of our Constitution which, amo-ng other things, enunciated in the preamble: quot;Liberty of th-ought, expression, belief, faith and wo- rship.quot; Although India, after Partition, had some 82 per cent Hindus inhabiting it, yet it did not declare itself a Hindu country. That was not the ideal. The freedom movement kept religion separate from politics.

Some who did not believe in that ethos embarked on their agenda to convert India into a theocratic state from the day the British left. But Mahatma Ga-ndhi8217;s assassination at the hands of a Hindu fanatic gave such a jolt to the nation that it asserted itself to regain the territory which the communalists had usurped. The Hindu chauvinists ran for shelter. India heaved a sigh of relief for almost 45 years.

But the point to consider is how the BJP or, for that matter, the RSS, has spread all over the country in the last two decades? Does it mean that our secularism was skin-deep or does it mean that the communal forces are getting stre-ngthened day by day?

India takes pride in the fact that it is secular. Pakistan has not been able to extricate itself from the outmoded concept of theocracy in which it has got stuck despite the enunciation by its founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah after Partition that the Muslims and the Hindus in the subcontinent had ceased to be religious entities and had become Indians and Pakistanis. But India too seems to be drifting. We find that either in the name of forced conversion8217; or the threat of being swamped by minorities, the liberal ethos is sought to be diluted. The intelligentsia is getting contaminated. This is what we criticise in Pakistan.

When a Pakistan Urdu poet, Fah-imda Riaz, recently recited her poem at the JNU campus in Delhi, chiding Indians that quot;you have turned to be like usquot;, she was probably right. Still she was hooted by a small section of the audience, a few Hindu chauvinists and a couple of army men. They objected to her statement that India had become a carbon-copy of Pakistan in communalism and parochialism. Hers was an expression of anguish.

During the seven years she took shelter in Delhi to escape the military rule of General Zia-ul-Haq, she would extol India for fighting against the saffronists and casteists. The present atmosphere in the country made her feel that the shadows were lengthening in India as well. Not many would like what she said but there is no doubting the danger of revivalism India faces.

In this atmosphere, it is no surprise that many in India should think of dividing the state into three regions. This proposal has been talked about by some think tanks of India and the US. The purpose is to facilitate the merger of Jammu and Ladakh with India and the Valley with Pakistan. That the RSS has also been roped in is a surprise.