Rerun in temple town

It is too familiar, too repetitive. Who begins the exercise does not matter. The BJP may do so and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad VHP would joi...

It is too familiar, too repetitive. Who begins the exercise does not matter. The BJP may do so and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad VHP would join it. Or, maybe, it is the other way round. It all comes to the same thing: the convergence of the Sangh Parivar. And each time, the RSS is there to plan and guide and act. The point to note is that the Parivar is there when the fat is in the fire 8212; all of them right up to the Bajrang Dal and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarti Parishad.

If you were to recall L.K. Advani8217;s rath yatra, which divided Hindus and Muslims in the countryside of northern India, it started the same way. The declaration was to collect bricks for the temple at Ayodhya. The entire Parivar chipped in. When it came to the demolition of the Babri Masjid, everyone lent a hand.

Similar was the pattern when the VHP began its campaign to have 8216;8216;darshan8217;8217; at the makeshift temple built at the site where the Babri Masjid once stood. The BJP first stayed aloof lest its Central government be seen to be mixed up in the affair. Then, as the day of 8216;8216;darshan8217;8217; approached, BJP President Venkaiah Naidu came out in open support. The RSS, so far content to act behind the scenes, then publicly joined the VHP with the warning that the atmosphere could turn foul. It even said that the best policy to tackle tension was to build the temple. So once again the Sangh Parivar converged at the same point, whatever the route different members took to reach it.

The sad part is the Central government8217;s prevarication. After his return from his tour of Southeast Asia, the first comment Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee made was to ask the nation to trust the VHP, which he said had announced a peaceful agitation. The deputy prime minister, also the home minister, was more categorical. He asked Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav not only to allow peaceful 8216;8216;darshan8217;8217; but also to permit a get-together outside the makeshift temple. In the meantime, VHP General Secretary Praveen Togadia carried on spouting poison. He said there could be communal riots if VHP activists were stopped from marching to Ayodhya. The Parishad even talked about the hundreds of mosques it had yet to pull down.

There was not even a whimper of protest from the home minister, who now has Pota in his arsenal. Even ugly threats by the VHP went unnoticed. If SIMI, a body of Muslim fanatics, can be banned, then what stops the government from banning the VHP? The difference is that the latter is part of the Sangh Parivar, which includes the ruling BJP.

History has strange twists. When the Babri Masjid was demolished, the Uttar Pradesh government was under the BJP. The Congress was at the Centre. This time when the VHP has gone berserk, the state is under Mulayam8217;s Samajwadi Party and the Centre under the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. Then the state government failed and the Centre looked the other way. This time the state stood firm but the Centre played tricks, thankfully without giving the VHP direct support. It is reported that the RSS told the VHP not to push things beyond repair at a time when the BJP is contesting four state elections and when Lok Sabha polls are only a year away.

The result is that the VHP8217;s agitation did not take off, although it managed to have some 10,000 workers arrested. It conveyed two things. One, if a state was firm and planned ahead to curb mischief, communal forces could be thwarted. Two, the temple was an overplayed card. It has ceased to attract people. The Sangh Parivar will be making a mistake if it believes that it can get votes in the name of the temple. The VHP8217;s tantrums have only strengthened Mulayam Singh Yadav and weakened the Parivar.

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It is comical that the makeshift temple which is a point of controversy was not supposed to be there. It was built during the night following the destruction of the masjid. The state was then under president8217;s rule. I recall the then prime minister, Narasimha Rao, assuring some of us senior journalists that the mandir would not be there 8216;8216;for long8217;8217;. He did not explain how the central forces, which were already in Lucknow, could not manage to prevent the temple from coming up.

Strange, on Friday when Hindu extremists were trying to tear asunder the fabric of pluralism and legal system at Ayodhya, Muslim extremists were wreaking havoc in Srinagar. Coincidences can be telling at times.

Ayodhya is a temple town in the Hindu majority state of Uttar Pradesh while Srinagar is a picturesque city in the Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. Both had planned their moves days in advance. The message they gave was similar: when religion was sought to be politicised, the law and security forces should be pushed into the background.

True, the intent of extremists in Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh cannot be compared. The former are trying to wrest the Valley away from the rest of the country through terrorism, assisted by elements from across the border. The second set of extremists are destroying India in a different way, targeting its ethos of secularism. Still, where the two coincide is in their communal approach 8212; one would do anything to Islamise Kashmir and the other to Hinduise India.

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New Delhi is justifiably firm in fighting the terrorists in Kashmir because it is a low-level war for secession. There is no doubt that we will win this war, sooner or later. But I am not sure about how we would emerge from the war against bigotry and extremism. The BJP-led government at the Centre does not seem to be sincere about it. Its pronouncements may, at times, be in support of pluralism. But its actions betray the support for Hindutva through and through.