Making sense out of cynicism

The BJP and its allies laboured equally hard to dispel the notion that they were in any way anti-secular in character. While L.K. Advani claimed that 1998 was a riot-free year and dismissed the attacks on Christians as part of a conspiracy to defame the BJP, his combative cabinet colleague George Fernandes stoutly defended the Vajpayee rule by maintaining that the maximum attacks on Christians had taken place in Congress-governed states.

But most of this was bluster. The contradictions between what politicians say and what they do constantly surface. Take the recent attempt to form what was termed as the “secular alternative” to the BJP-led coalition. There was Dr J.Jayalalitha, general secretary of the AIADMK, suddenly appearing on the political stage in the garb of the angel of secularism. Wasn’t it just the other day that she helped mainstream the BJP and its Hindutva agenda in a state where the party had no presence, by virtue of joining hands with it? With what credibility can she, or her ally Subramanian Swamy, now claim an undying commitment to the secular cause?

Her arch foe fared no better in the secular sweepstakes. When Jayalalitha made common cause with the BJP before the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi had acidly remarked that corruption had joined hands with communalism. The moment Jayalalitha moved away, Karunanidhi discovered th-at “corruption was worse than communalism” and quickly sk-ipped across to the BJP. Communalism was, by implication, an acceptable evil to this champion of secularism.

As for that veritable champion of champions of secularism, Mulayam Singh Yadav, he is presently preoccupied with flashinghis secular credentials by charging the Congress for having betrayed the “secular cause.” Through such rearguard action he hopes to dodge the charge that he had let down his secular allies by not supporting the proposed Congress minority government. It is without doubt Mulayam’s anxiety to prevent the disintegration of his Muslim vote base that lends a touching urgency to his secular campaign.

Mulayam’s statements may smack of hypocrisy but the Congress, much as it would like to emerge as secularism’s greatest votary, has had its own share of doublespeak, its own brand of wink-and-nudge politics dictated by such exigencies as cultivating the upper-caste vote. Its Working Committee last year recognised Hinduism “as the most effective guarantor of secularism” — a formulation that is just a variation on the one Advani recently spelt out when he held that Hindutva is the most effective guarantor of secularism.

What is the citizen to surmise from all this? What is it about the term “secular” — which isgenerally understood as the separation of religion from politics — that elicits the most cynical responses? The fact is that secularism has come to be widely recognised as a social good. Despite concerted attempts of political parties to cynically carve out religion-based constituencies, there is today a general understanding that secularism is a precondition for India remaining a democratic state representing a diverse people.

What’s more, secularism has acquired electoral currency; it’s a value that the Indian voter recognises and responds to. There is no denying the fact that Vajpayee’s popularity is premised on his secular rhetoric. This, after all, is the man who stood up in the Lok Sabha in May 1997, as the debate on Deve Gowda’s confidence vote was in progress, and declared that nobody could change the secular fabric of the country. “India was secular, India is secular and India will remain secular,” he had thundered.

It is precisely because Vajpayee can pronounce words of this kind in a mannerthat appears more convincing than, say, if it had been L.K. Advani mouthing them, that made for his acceptability as a prime ministerial candidate. This is also why Vajpayee, throughout his 13 months as prime minister, had to constantly negotiate his way between two opposing poles: his commitments as a member of his party and those dictated by his role as a “secular” prime minister.

While he paid obeisance to the religious agenda of the Sangh Parivar by calling for a debate on conversions, for instance, he followed it up by going on a fast on January 30, Gandhiji’s martyrdom day, to atone for the “sectarian violence” that the country had witnessed in December and January. Just as the conversion statement was meant to placate hardliners within the Sangh Parivar who had attributed the party defeats in the November assembly polls to Vajpayee’s dilution of the Hindutva agenda, this was a gesture designed to assuage a liberal public disturbed by the attacks on minorities and the Staines murders.

The word“secular” then is on every politician’s lips, but never has it been so cynically used, so systematically robbed of meaning, as it is now. There seems to be a deliberate attempt to obfuscate and distort it to suit the power struggles of the day. It’s only when voters begin to separate the rhetoric from the reality and perceive the cynical power games that are being played, will we even begin to make our first tentative moves towards a genuinely secular politics.