No accidental swayamsevak

By Malini Parthasarathy

FOR REASONS or compulsions best known to him, the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, has shattered the myth of his being the bridge-building statesman gently steering a politics-weary country away from the acrimonious divisions of the past into a rosy future, and instead made clear that he is as much a prisoner of the poisoned and inflammatory politics of Hindutva as his colleagues, Mr. L. K. Advani or Mr. Murli Manohar Joshi, are perceived to be. Mr. Vajpayee's jettisoning of his mask of sweet reasonableness must be extremely discomfiting for the partners of the BJP in the ruling NDA coalition. It was the loudly professed ``moderation'' and ``pragmatism'' of Mr. Vajpayee's governing vision that had provided a readymade rationale for regional parties such as the Telugu Desam and the Trinamul Congress eager to clamber onto the BJP's ship, regardless of the political costs of such opportunist disregard of the contradiction between the BJP's communally polarising politics and their own platforms. In one sense, the unmasking of Mr. Vajpayee could have the healthy result of forcing these regional allies of the BJP to come clean, as it were, on which of their political priorities has greater emphasis - the need to demonstrate the sincerity of their professed commitment to the idea of a pluralist, secular and democratic ethos of governance or their own inclination not to rock the boat in order to continue to enjoy power.

Mr. Vajpayee's latest utterances revealing him to be an unabashed member of the ``mandir wahin banayenge'' (``we will build the temple only at the disputed site'') brigade of Hindutva fundamentalists are not the first such gestures that he has made to indicate his commitment to the goal of the Sangh Parivar of turning the Indian nation-state into a Hindu Rashtra. What is becoming increasingly clear is that Mr. Vajpayee is becoming less and less concerned with maintaining the obligatory distinction between his role as the Prime Minister of a ruling coalition which has categorically distanced itself from the BJP's political agenda and his private sense of duty towards the Hindutva campaign. Mr. Vajpayee's remarks on Ayodhya, particularly his provocative assertion that the temple-building project at the site where the Babri Masjid was destroyed by Hindutva zealots was an ``expression of national sentiment'', have had a damaging impact in institutional terms by implicitly associating the Prime Ministerial office with a blatantly partisan and communal stance. Equally corrosive in impact was his earlier declaration at the VHP-sponsored event on Staten Island during his visit to the United States last September, that he would always ``remain a swayamsevak'' and that his ``right'' to be one could never ``be taken away''. It should also be recalled that at a more disturbing time when the terror squads of the Bajrang Dal and the VHP were unleashing violence on members of the Christian community, especially in the Dangs district in Gujarat, the Prime Minister, while condemning the acts of violence, had also quickly noted that there was a need for ``a national debate on conversions''. In other words, the Prime Minister of a democratic republic anchored to the principles of the rule of law and the equality of all citizens before the law was virtually offering a justification for the violation of these fundamental tenets.

It does appear now that notwithstanding the rush of clarifications that invariably follow Mr. Vajpayee's controversial statements, there is a consistent political pattern in the Prime Minister's articulations. The substance of his observations seeks to buttress and legitimate the fundamental arguments of the Hindutva majoritarian campaign while ensuring that these are couched with sufficient ambiguity to provide the Prime Minister space to extricate himself from the political and institutional consequences of adopting such a partisan stance while in office. It is evident that another purpose for this particular tactical approach is to allow enough room for Mr. Vajpayee and the BJP to continue to portray him as a natural leader of a heterogeneous coalition and a person with the right kind of healing touch that can effectively address complex problems such as the Kashmir issue and tensions with Pakistan, subjects of worldwide scrutiny. Interestingly, the success of this tactical approach can be gauged from the fact that a strong section of the middle class, several members of the bureaucracy and of the international diplomatic community have indeed signed on to this theory of a pragmatic and moderate Prime Minister, personally committed to distancing himself from the politics of polarisation and desirous of ``going down in history as a man of peace''. So much hinges on this portrayal, so many stakes have now been vested in this image that it was ironic if not suggestive of a measure of desperation that political circles in Delhi were in fact anxiously peddling the thesis that Mr. Vajpayee was deliberately talking hawkishly on Ayodhya to buy some political space from the RSS and its cohorts in the Sangh Parivar for his peace overtures in Kashmir.

But if indeed it is the case that the Prime Minister is looking to a larger agenda of bringing peace to Kashmir and thereby calming the tensions between India and Pakistan, it is inexplicable how he has not taken into account in his scheme of things the reality that the political agenda of the Sangh Parivar which he is now seen to be tacitly endorsing would militate against any such plans. The hate campaign frenetically being drummed up by the RSS, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal is steeped in revanchism and vandalism while it draws its lifeblood from the canvassing of vituperative stereotypes of the Muslim and Christian minorities. The bruising impact of this hate campaign which pits Muslim and Christian against Hindu reflects in the fact that old wounds are once again being ripped open and are bleeding. There is a renewed struggle in Surat district in Gujarat where the VHP is masterminding an operation to convert a church into a temple and in Rae Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, Hindutva activists are targeting a mosque. All this evidence of acrimony will drain out the credibility from any prospective subcontinental peace initiative.

For the Prime Minister to tread so heavily on the highly sensitive terrain of the Ayodhya issue is to invite disaster for his administration. As matters stand today, the dispute has been rendered largely symbolic thanks to the vandalism of the Hindutva fanatics who turned the mosque into rubble. Its legal outcome now hinges on the resolution of title claims in the Allahabad High Court to which the case was returned by the Supreme Court in October 1994. That judgment of the Supreme Court also pointedly returned a Presidential reference seeking its opinion on whether or not a temple pre-existed a mosque on the site, and instead restored the dispute to its original form - a dispute over property claims. It was noteworthy that the Supreme Court upheld the substantive portion of the Ayodhya Land Acquisition Act of 1993 which authorised the Union Government to take over the disputed land on the basis that the dispute had ``affected the maintenance of public order and harmony'' between different communities in the country. It thereby placed squarely on the shoulders of the Central Government the responsibility of upholding the status quo on the disputed site as it existed in the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri Masjid. The assumption underlying such a bestowing of responsibility is that the Government would be best placed to maintain strict neutrality between the claims of both the communities and could thereby ``maintain public order and promote communal harmony''. In this context, for Mr. Vajpayee to make such explicit suggestions in favour of a temple and against a mosque on that contested site is a grave betrayal of the responsibility enjoined on his office.

It also indicates that if the Prime Minister, Mr. Vajpayee, is prepared to go to such lengths to risk his painstakingly cultivated image as a conciliator and a man of peace, rendering the country vulnerable to another phase of scorching communal unrest and polarisation, the majoritarian Hindutva campaign is moving into a far more assertive mode. In a sense the unmasking of Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee marks the beginning of a more aggressive challenge to the essence of India's secular and plural democracy. It is now the time for the BJP's allies in the ruling NDA to stop pretending that it is business as usual. More important, it is time for the vast number of secular and peace- loving Indians who just want to ``get on with it'' and for the bureaucracy and the diplomatic community to acknowledge that all the dreams and grand talk of a resurgent India will only founder if the hate campaigns of the Sangh Parivar are allowed to continue taking their deadly toll of India's civil society.

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