Vajpayee’s Lakshman Rekha

However, now, in his advanced dotage, Vajpayee has come to the mournful conclusion that an RSS agenda cannot bring the BJP to political power — or keep it there. This is not a conviction shared by those who politically fathered him. They have not put him where he is to carry out the programme of others; they’ve put him there to carry out their programme. This he is not in a position to deliver. And so he pleads for a Lakshman Rekha to be drawn, and not violated, between the socio-cultural work of the sangh parivar and the political agenda of the BJP-led NDA. It is a distinction which the parivar is unable to recognise, still less observe, with the scruple Vajpayee desperately needs to keep his coalition going.

Hence, in the last one month, we have seen various elements of the sangh parivar and its associates (primarily the Vishwa Hindu Parishad) insist that politics cannot be divorced from the socio-cultural transformation of India that is Bharat into a Hindu Rashtra. First, RSS agents in the Gujarat government thought up the ingenious scheme of drawing the entire civil service into their network on the argument that since the activities of the RSS were not “unlawful” and the RSS was only a “socio-cultural” outfit, the ban on government servants becoming regulars at RSS òf40óshakasòf39ó might be lifted. The Prime Minister endorsed the argument. Unsurprisingly, Gujarat was followed in rapid succession by the BJP governments of UP and Himachal Pradesh. (Tamil Nadu, though not of the BJP, almost followed suit, Karunanidhi equating the RSS with the Dravidar Kazhagam, only to get punched in the nose for this secular equivalent of blasphemy.) If the prime Minister subsequently pulled back it was because theTDP balked, opening the way to the other non-BJP elements of the NDA similarly balking.

Next came the much-reported mob-rule over Water which could never have got to where it did without the active connivance of Ram Prakash Gupta’s RSS, oops! I mean, BJP government. It got Gupta so excited he went back on his solemn retraction to Vajpayee and confessed his heart’s desire — a Ram temple at Ayodhya, provided there was no “law and order problem”, forgetting that the whole masjid-mandir problem is a “law and order” problem which he is supposed to control, not provoke. We now have threats from a whole panoply of “socio-cultural” organisations that they will do to chief ministers Digvijay Singh and Jyoti Basu what Hitler’s goons did to the Jews on Kristallnacht if they let Deepa Mehta shoot (a movie, not men) in either of their states.

Next it was the knobbly knees of adolescent girls which got the parivar worked up, the covering up of which is, one learns, the essence of Bharatiya sanskriti. Why they don’t concentrate on covering up the slightly higher protuberances to be seen on every one of our goddesses, and in the most sacred of sanctums sanctorum at that, is not even dare raised let alone answered. And the nation’s chief cultural policeman, the Minister with the socio-cultural portfolio of Human Resource Development, has just embarked on his “socio-cultural” programme of cleansing history of Truth.

This is the India which the sangh parivar is set on creating. They gave Vajpayee the mandate to establish the political frame-work within which this remaking of India could be secured. He, however, has turned into a Ravana of secularism and, moreover, has the gall to ask the RSS to desist from invading his sphere. The RSS, understandably, refuses to be ravished in this fashion. So, for Vajpayee, there is no escaping his dilemma. He has to decide, not once for all, but repeatedly, indeed all the time, whether he is a fully subscribed member of the RSS or leader of a secular coalition.

As Leader of the House, he can nurture the illusion that this is not a threat to his political position, but that is only because he has the good fortune of having his back to his back-benchers whenever any question relating to the Hindutva agenda comes up in the House. Were he to stare, as we of the Opposition stare, into their shining eyes, their crusading passion, their unrestrained language, the girding of their loins, as it were, taking place behind him, he might be less sanguine. Vajpayee’s goals are not their goals. He wants to remain in power without purpose. The sangh parivar wants power with a purpose. That purpose has been clearly spelt out, nowhere more explicitly than in the RSS equivalent of òf40óMein Kampf,òf39ó Guruji Golwalkar’s òf40ó“We, or the Nation Defined”òf39ó. The BJP may disavow this unbridled work but they are still stuck with the Guruji’s “Bunch of Thoughts”, the parivar‘s equivalent of Hitler’s “Table-Talk”.

No wonder then that Acharya Giriraj Kishore has told the Prime Minister where he can stuff his Lakshman Rekha. As the Vishwa Hindu Parishad is not a branch of the sangh parivar, the good Acharya can afford to speak his mind. Meanwhile, the relentless, multi-pronged assault on Vajpayee will continue. By those to whom Vajpayee owes his primary loyalty — the RSS. They broke the Morarji government. It is they who will blow the NDA apart.

BLURB:

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