THERE is, of course, no historical evidence in support of the legend that the Roman emperor Caligula (A.D. 12-41) nominated his horse as a tribune, revealing a profound contempt for the people. But that very sentiment alone can explain the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) supremo Mohan Bhagwat's nomination of Nitin Gadkari as president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It marked the culmination of a process of riveting the RSS' control over its 30-year-old progeny. Gadkari will be more obedient than Rajnath Singh, his predecessor who was appointed after L.K. Advani was shown the door in 2005 by K.S. Sudarshan, the then RSS boss. But how did Bhagwat expect his BJP to be taken seriously if it is headed by Oliver Hardy?
Mohan Bhagwat succeeded Sudarshan as the RSS sarsangchalak on March 21, 2009. Only the day before, he had directed RSS cadres to ensure 100 per cent voting in the interest of Hindus during the general elections to the Lok Sabha in May ( The Hindu, March 21, 2009). Manmohan Vaidya, the RSS' prachar pramukh, warned against the division of Hindu votes and said, The Sangh is pleased that the swayamsewak [Advani] is the prime ministerial candidate ( The Telegraph, March 21, 2009). So much for communal vote banks.
But the BJP lost, once again. The Sangh has no time for losers. It has always been a bad loser. Advani is notoriously worse. What caused panic was the grim realisation that were the second United Progressive Alliance government to last until 2014, the BJP would stand no chance of returning to power and that it had lost its last chance of grabbing power.
Advani could have followed the British precedent of retirement after electoral defeat. He preferred, instead, Chandra Shekhar's model of clinging to power despite repeated defeats, not to mention repeated humiliation at the hands of the RSS. All of 2009 was spent in shuffling party posts on the diktat of Bhagwat. Advani's flight to Nagpur by a chartered plane to pay obeisance to Bhagwat, the day after his assumption of office, proved to be of no avail. The RSS is cold-blooded. It demands results.
The reshuffle was complete before the year was out. On December 18, Advani filled a post specifically created for him, that of the chairman of the BJP's Parliamentary Party. He nominated Sushma Swaraj as the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha and Arun Jaitley its leader in the Rajya Sabha. On November 6, Bhagwat predicted: The new leadership will be someone other than these four [Sushma] Swaraj, Jaitley, M. Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar ( The Hindu, November 7, 2009). He was as good as his word. On November 19, Gadkari was appointed BJP president.
We need not catalogue Gadkari's use of foul language or his theatricals. He performs as to the manner born. What concerns Indian democracy is the character of this major political party, its ideology and the tactics it has pursued in the wake of electoral defeats, since 2004 and 2009. The RSS' ideology thus acquires added relevance.
Bhagwat gave a dose of it on October 25, 2009, at Jaipur: Sangh work is like sweetness of sugar that cannot be experienced without tasting it. Therefore, instead of trying to understand the Sangh from home [sic], join its activities, as the whole world today needs Hindutva, the prime ideological source of RSS. He added that Hindutva is the tatva that has the solution to most of the problems of the world. It has an effective solution for global warming as well as fundamentalism ( Organiser, November 2, 2009).
The BJP's leaders are men of the world. They may cynically ignore this as the usual stuff. Do they seriously expect the young Hindu to swallow such nonsense? The young Hindus, like the young of any other community, see the country prospering, its prestige rising and its problems baffling for reasons that have nothing to do with the wicked Muslim. The RSS and its Advani cannot forget to target Muslims even on national anniversaries. On the 50th anniversary of Independence, Advani issued a Four-Point Appeal to Muslims of India ( BJP Today, June 16, 1997). On the 150th anniversary of the 1857 War of Independence, the RSS' general body in a formal resolution (Resolution No.1 of 2007) belittled the Muslims' sacrifices and argued that the 1857 war was followed by the mindless appeasement of the community culminating in the partition of India in 1947.
What are the prospects for secularism in India if these vicious forces make any headway? They are fascist in the strict meaning of the word, relying as they do on violence and deceit. The offices of Headlines Today in New Delhi were recently vandalised by an obviously organised mob. Its political affiliation could not be fixed definitely, but its political loyalty was not in doubt. Not one BJP leader denounced the attack. Those who appeared on television all but defended it. This is typical of the RSS and the BJP's attitude to violence let loose by its people.
On January 22, 1999, the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were murdered. As Union Home Minister, Advani gave the Bajrang Dal a clean chit in sweeping terms: I have known these organisations for a long time and they do not have criminal elements. Subhash Chandra, national convener of the Bajrang Dal, said that the Bajrang Dal uses violence wherever necessary to protect the Hindu if the snake bites, won't we strike it down? (The Indian Express, July 22, 2010). The Dal was set up by the VHP in 1984 as its sword arm. Its volunteers played a central role in Advani's rath yatra in 1990 and in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.
As Home Minister, Advani did not denounce the Gujarat pogrom in 2002 and has consistently backed Narendra Modi. What is revolting is the systematic recourse to falsehoods in defence of the crimes whether in 1992, 1999, 2002 or 2010. The BJP's spokesmen, unpleasantly aggressive at the best of times, made a spectacle of themselves on TV. Some TV channels make no secret of their partiality. It is doubtful if the praise for Advani the one and only would have been lavished on a Muslim leader of even superior stature.
Hitler could grab power because some intellectuals, professionals and others supported him in order to defeat communists. Also, they fell prey to his appeal as a patriot and nationalist. What are we to say of retired army officers flocking to the standard of the Sangh Parivar? What have they to say of the complicity of some close to the Parivar in acts of terrorism on the Samjhauta Express, in Malegaon, at the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, and in Ajmer? (see Smita Nair's expose joining the dots linking the Hindu extremist plot and analysing the new leads that have emerged in the Malegaon, Mecca Masjid and Ajmer blasts, in The Indian Express, July 18, and the list of the persons involved, published by the paper).
There is another aspect to the involvement of retired officers in the BJP's politics. In an incisive analysis of The Role of the Military in Presidential Politics ( Parameters, Vol. 39, No. 4, winter 2009-2010), Steve Corbett and Michael J. Davidson assert that the public endorsement of presidential candidates by retired general officers reflects a disturbing trend towards the politicisation of the American military. What is one to say of their politics in our infant democracy?
Since the BJP leaders are desperate for a comeback and are in bondage to the RSS, their conduct in opposition has become irresponsible, extremist and contemptuous of the rules, norms and values of the democratic process. This is particularly true on foreign policy. The opposition supported the BJP regime through all its zigzags on Pakistan from 1998 to 2004. The BJP's stand is mindless opposition to the government with hints to Pakistan that it would get a better deal from the BJP should it return to power. That is not patriotism.
It is something different. This behaviour poses a threat to constitutional democracy. The shrill rhetoric of the BJP's spokesmen on TV is of a piece with its calculated policy of mindless obstruction in Parliament. All in all, the BJP's leaders and spokesmen have debased the worth of public discourses and the quality of Indian public life.
A democracy depends on national consensus and a measure of cooperation between the government and the Opposition. Advani's Hindutva wrecked the national consensus that existed since Independence, formed by the Gandhi-Nehru ethos. He and his colleagues' rejection of the Prime Minister's invitation to lunch on July 23 conveys a message. The BJP will not be the kind of opposition that functions in a parliamentary democracy.
A.G. NooraniCOMMents
COMMents
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