VHP’s yatra politics

These protestations ring false for several reasons. For one, the VHP is no benign religious-cultural organisation. Its leadership regularly spews venom against the country’s minorities, contributing to the vicious communal polarisation that led to the Gujarat conflagration. It has targeted the leader of the country’s main Opposition party in the most vile terms; and demanded the dismantling of the PMO.

The ‘Vijay Yatra’ that the EC has now ruled out was a clearly political initiative — from Godhra to Akshardham, on the eve of crucial elections in Gujarat, picking up the campaign of hate from where Narendra Modi had to leave it, having been subdued by the model code of conduct.

Only the most naive or the hopelessly uninitiated in Indian politics will believe that the VHP does not have politics, sectarian politics, on its mind.

As for the EC’s jurisdiction, it is surely the most restrictive reading of its powers that will ask it to close its eyes to everything other than the activities of organisations that are formally registered as political parties. It is the EC’s onerous responsibility to conduct free and fair polls and it is well within its rights to take serious note of the activities of an organisation that threatens to pose hurdles in that task.

There have been enough forewarnings, and then some, that the VHP poses such a threat in Gujarat in the run up to the December 12 elections. Its leaders have carried on with their inflammatory rhetoric, endangering the hesitant calm that set in after the carnage. It is not entirely coincidental that communal violence still continues to rear its head in Gujarat.

The EC issued its directive after its full three-member team returned from a tour of the state, and after deliberating upon a report sent by the state administration that ‘unequivocally’ warned that a law and order problem could arise because of the VHP’s yatra. In the last instance, as the party in government at the Centre, the onus is on the BJP to ensure that the VHP respects the EC’s order.

By supporting the VHP’s recalcitrance, as it has, the BJP has put itself squarely in the line of fire, should anything go awry in the forthcoming elections in Gujarat.