The mask, off and on

The BJP-led government does not have to mutilate history to dilute the secular ethos of the independence struggle. The party has its own goal, the Hindu Rashtra. It should be open about it. The argument that Hindutva is secular in character indicates that the BJP lacks the courage to present itself as it is. In a way, it pays compliments to the concept of tolerance when it tries to steal the clothes of secularism to cover Hindu fanaticism.

The role of the RSS, the guiding hand behind the BJP, is still worse. It does not want to be even accountable for what it does. In the name of culture, it operates politically. When the organisation nominates ministers, chalks out the strategy on alliance and selects candidates for Assemblies and Parliament 70 per cent of the BJP assembly members and MPs are RSS nominees, why should it feel shy of owning the responsibility for doing so? After the imposition of the Emergency in 1975, the RSS even included the name of Mahatma Gandhi in its morning prayer. It uses all methods to project an image which is contrary to its real character.

Similarly, the BJP plays the game of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in Parliament. It defends the RSS but does not utter a word about Hindutva lest the mask should come off. That Law Minister Ram Jethmalani, not a BJP member, lavishes praise on the RSS does not give credibility to the party. He is a lawyer who can take up any brief. Many have heard him praising secularism with the same vigour. His argument that the non-BJP parties in the National Democratic Alliance NDA were not worried about the issue turned out to be incorrect. Allies like the Telugu Desam, the DMK and the Trinamool Congress objected to the BJP8217;s underprinning of the RSS. The clarification by former RSS chief Rajendra Singh that his organisation is not bothered whether a government employee joins it or not is an admission of failure on this count. Gujarat8217;s withdrawal of the order amounts to a surrender.

Home Minister L. K. Advani8217;s pr-aise for the RSS does not mean much. He has said more than once that he is proud of his RSS background. His certificate for its patriotism is neither here nor there. Nobody has ever blamed the RSS for siding with enemy countries. But there are very few who do not hold it responsible for damaging the country8217;s ethos of secularism. In fact, the RSS has done something worse. It has inducted sadhus into the political scene to fundamentalise the atmosphere, as certain parties in Pakistan have done by playing up to maulvis. Jayaprakash Narayan, whom Advani and Defence Minister George Fernandes have quoted as praising the RSS, felt cheated towards the end of his life. The Jan Sangh, now the BJP, did not cut off its relations with the RSS even after merging in the Janata Party in 1977. This was the undertaking given to JP.

In fact, the Janata gave respe-ctability to the Jan Sangh. Its mentor, the RSS, was shunned after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi because of the atmosphere of communal hatred it had built. The same game is now being played in a different way. The BJP has ridden on the shoulders of some regional parties to reach every nook and corner of the country. The lust for power has made leaders of these parties so blind that even avowed socialists have compromised with the same forces that they had denounced as communal till yesterday.

The success of the RSS is that it has been able to hoodwink many people. First it was the slogan, Garv se kaho hum Hindu hain Say with pride we are Hindus. Then it was the right to pray at the place8217; where Lord Ram was born. Now it is the permission sought to be given to public servants in Gujarat to join the RSS. The Vajpayee government would have extended the same concession to Central employees but for the wide protests it created.

It was not made clear whether the Gujarat cadres of IAS and IPS, all-India services, could attend the RSS shakhas training classes when posted in the state! And what could one do about a former CBI director who inaugurated a Bajrang Dal meeting?

UP, ruled by the BJP, is also witnessing the RSS fervour. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad AB-VP in the state has announced that it proposes to hold RSS shakhas for students in the Lucknow University campus. State BJP president Om Prakash Singh, also the state8217;s Irrigation Minister, says he sees nothing wrong in the holding of shakhas. The manner in which some girls in jeans at Kanpur were heckled shows the beginning of a fundamentalist society that the RSS wants.

It is a pity that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who has a liberal image, has called the RSS a cultural organisation. Is it because of pressure from within? At times, he makes one feel that what the BJP8217;s ideologue Govindacharya has said about him is correct: the Prime Minister had been described as a mask8217;.

How one wishes that the Hindu zealots would concentrate on the removal of ills in the Hindu society, wh-ether casteism or the widows8217; death-like living, but they are not interested in reforms. Their purpose is to convert India into a state of their thinking, with their own interpretation of religion and their own narration of history. What defeats them is the diversity of Hindu society, its real strength.

Communal poison, which has been dripping into Indian politics, is destroying the country8217;s ethos. The result is that the roots of tolerance are weakening day by day. Those believing in secularism should work in the field to inculcate in the public an attitude that will keep religion separate from politics. It was naive to think that communalism would disappear the moment the British with their divide-and-rule policy were thr-own out. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India8217;s first education minister, said in his book India Wins Freedom that, once the country was free, the differences between the two communities would go. But he realised after independence that the problem was not so simple.