The unmasking of an ugly agenda

The BJP's not-so-hidden agenda has begun unfolding, if not at the Centre where Mr. Vajpayee presides over a coalition Government, at least in the States where the party holds political sway, particularly Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, writes NEENA VYAS with inputs from MANAS DASGUPTA in Gandhinagar and J. P. SHUKLA in Lucknow.

THE SAFFRON onslaught on the polity is nothing new - it began in the Eighties with the Ayodhya agitation, and now in Gujarat, the only State where the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is not saddled with allies, the process of saffronisation is beginning to bloom.

The party's not-so-hidden agenda has begun unfolding, if not at the Centre where Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee presides over a coalition National Democratic Alliance Government, at least in the States where the party holds political sway, particularly Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.

It was the dream of the Union Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, to make Gujarat ``a model State'' and after the party got rid of ``revisionists'' like Mr. Shankersinh Waghela, the Keshubhai Government is beginning to show its colours. The systematic politicisation of the entire State apparatus and saffronisation of the education system has begun.

If in Uttar Pradesh the Sanskar Bharati, yet another RSS front, has become the self-appointed guardian of Indian culture even as the Government looks on approvingly, the Gujarat Government has made it lawful for its employees to become members of and to participate in the activities of the RSS. Soon, this new ``liberal'' regime is to be extended to RSS offspring such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Sanskar Bharati and the Bajrang Dal.

``What is wrong if Government servants are allowed to participate in the activities of a patriotic cultural organisation like the RSS,'' senior BJP leaders such as Mr. M. Venkaiah Naidu and Mr. Jana Krishnamurthi ask. ``Should one allow those flush with funds from abroad and working on a commercial project to hurt the feelings of Hindus,'' they query in relation to the agitation by Sanskar Bharati against the shooting of the film, Water, by Ms. Deepa Mehta. ``What was wrong in their demand that she submit her script to them for approval, and assuage their feelings?'' And, finally, ``did not the communist cadres in West Bengal protest in the streets against the City of Joy?''

But the real issue is that the RSS is no dance and drama club. It is political to the core. It set up its political arm, Jana Sangh, in the Fifties and handpicked half a dozen RSS ``pracharaks'' for the job. After the Jana Sangh was born again as the BJP, the links remained intimate. Almost the entire top brass of the BJP belongs to the RSS and were handpicked to lead the political arm.

The BJP cannot decide who its party president should be without the concurrence of the RSS - the decision is taken by a few senior party leaders in consultation with the top office-bearers of the RSS, and the election becomes a mere formality - and the leadership of all its fronts, including the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the Sanskar Bharati is held by RSS pracharaks.

The RSS continues to have a major say on important policies and programmes of its political wing, the BJP. In 1998, it was the RSS which vetoed the Prime Minister and decided that Mr. Jaswant Singh could not be the Finance Minister. And during every election, RSS members come out in large numbers to canvass actively for the BJP. In 1995, well before the central election committee meeting of the BJP, the Sarsanghchalak of the RSS, Mr. Rajendra Singh, predicted that around 20 to 25 sitting BJP MLAs would not be given the ticket, and that is exactly what happened.

With these admitted facts, how can the RSS be considered a non- political cultural organisation when top BJP leaders confess that the RSS chief is their ``friend, philosopher and guide''?

As for the controversy on Water, what the communists did in West Bengal does not make right the actions of the Sanskar Bharati in Varanasi. No organisation can be allowed to set itself up as the arbiter of cultural values or as the guardian of Hindu ethics.

The Babri Masjid demolition was justified on the ground that many temples were destroyed by the Mughals and many temples were brought down in Pakistan and Bangladesh. But the question remains, does India want to become a Pakistan, or do we want to bring back the jizya tax in reverse and penalise the minorities? Does India want to imitate the Islamic countries?

What the Keshubhai Patel regime did quietly through a Government Order - withdrawing the ban on Government servants participating in RSS activities - was a blatant attempt at politicising the bureaucracy and the police in Gujarat. The ``logical'' next step would be for the Centre to say that Central Government servants, including police and armed forces personnel, will be allowed to participate in the activities of the RSS, which is a ``cultural organisation''. After all, what is good for Gujarat must necessarily be good for India. Perhaps only the fear of opposition from allies prevents the Vajpayee Government from taking this step. The Government could fall, and even the RSS does not want that to happen at the moment. The RSS knows that it was on the dual RSS-BJP membership issue that the Janata Party Government of 1977 fell apart.

The RSS has always used its several front organisations to test the political efficacy of some of its saffron ideas before letting the BJP take the plunge at the formal political level. The Ayodhya issue was taken up and the ground prepared by the VHP before the BJP put it on its formal agenda. The method employed is always the same. Start an agitation, create a controversy, and then claim to speak on behalf of the ``people'' and the ``Hindu sentiment''. The ground is now being tested again on Water.

``Hindu sentiments have been hurt. The people have protested because their traditions are being denigrated.'' These are samples of comments from senior BJP leaders on the happenings in Varanasi where Ms. Deepa Mehta was prevented by Sanskar Bharati activists from shooting her film. Having demanded pre-censorship of Water, would the day be far away when these organisations attack newspapers demanding a reading of news stories or articles that are to appear the next day? Or demand to see the video recordings of programmes to be telecast? All in the name of ``people's sentiments'' which were used to whip up the Ayodhya agitation then, and now it is religious conversions, or Mr. M. F. Husain's paintings or Ms. Mehta's films.

With Mr. Ram Prakash Gupta, an old RSS hand as Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh, the scene has been set for full-scale saffronisation. The U.P. ``allies'' are only interested in their Ministerial berths, and are not expected to make much of a noise.

Saffron activists have argued that the script of Water shows the holy city of Varanasi and the life of Hindu widows there in a bad light. They damaged the sets, forced Ms. Mehta to get her film script reviewed a second time by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and accept some changes. And even now it does not seem to be the end of the story, for the hardliners are demanding that ``they'' be satisfied.

Besides, Mr. Gupta has on and off made statements saying that Ayodhya was very much on his Government's agenda or that he would not come in the way of the VHP or the Bajrang Dal trying to build a temple on the disputed site. All this on video tape. His later denials only support the belief that the provocations were deliberate, that there is method to the madness, that the BJP has been signalling to its cadre through him that it has not abandoned its pet plank.

The recent legislation - the Uttar Pradesh Regulation of Public Religious Places and Buildings Bill - giving enormous powers to district magistrates to prevent construction of temples, mosques and churches in rural areas has been justified citing growing ISI activities on the U.P.- Nepal border. It was a virtual admission that the law will mostly be used to stop construction of mosques. National security has become the Government's alibi, and the recent hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane has given credence to this. No one trusts the BJP on this count, not even its allies believe the BJP is secular.

In Gujarat the ``Hindu card'' of the BJP is not its hidden agenda, it is very much out in the open. Repeated electoral victories have only emboldened the party to flaunt its communal card unabashedly. The Government notification withdrawing the ban on its employees participating in the activities of the RSS and a similar exemption expected soon for the VHP is part of the process of saffronisation that began five years ago.

After the 1995 elections, the BJP Government appointed RSS men to watch over the shoulders of its Ministers. The system of at least one RSS card-holder being posted in the personal staff of each Minister has been introduced - in the Chief Minister's office there are a dozen of them.

Take this example. The BJP was critical of the Congress-supported Chief Minister, Mr. Waghela's ``Balguru'' scheme to appoint primary school teachers. The Keshubhai Government renamed it ``Vidyasagar'' and adopted it. Primary school teachers' jobs were given to 20,000 men drawn mostly from the RSS and the VHP cadre with the aim of catching them young. At the higher education level, the Congress-sympathiser Vice-Chancellor of Gujarat University was removed under the pretext of alleged indiscipline and the pro-Vice-Chancellor's face smeared with black ink by activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (student wing of the RSS) to humiliate him and force him to quit. The courts struck down an attempt to hand over board examinations vigilance work to RSS-VHP activists. But, in another decision, the training of some 6000 Sanskrit teachers to ``teach in Sanskrit'' was entrusted to the Sanskar Bharati.

No action was taken against a group of hooligans belonging to the Bajrang Dal and the ABVP for ransacking the reputed Centre for Environment Planning and Technology or attacking Mr. M. F. Husain's ``Husain-Doshi Gufa,'' both located on the Gujarat University campus. Sangh Parivar activists have held at ransom organisers of numerous beauty pageants in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Surat and elsewhere, all in the name of ``protecting'' Indian culture, but there has been no ``action'' against Doordarshan which recently telecast the Miss Femina beauty contest.

A Gujarat Government circular for a census on religious lines, apparently to browbeat the minorities, had to be withdrawn last year after intervention by the court. To circumvent this, the Government has entrusted to a private trust the enumeration of religious conversions. ``If the Congress in Orissa can ban all conversions except with the written permission of the local police, why cannot the BJP in Gujarat ban forced conversions without being called communal,'' a party activist asked.

Before the September Lok Sabha elections, pro-BJP Government officials were deputed in the entire tribal belt and they openly canvassed for BJP candidates during duty hours using Government vehicles. Part of the saffronisation process.

Not all Government officials have fallen in line and many of them are resisting political interference in educational and administrative matters, but riding high on one electoral success after another, the political bosses are having their way.

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