BJP and the Hindu state

When I first came across his having said this in a Telegraph interview of 1989, I asked whether, in that case, Advani regarded himself as a Hindu — or as a Hindu Hindu? His reply is still awaited.

The fact is that this play with words is a BJP specialty. They think they have made a point when they say they cannot be ‘dharmanirpeksh’ (the usual Hindi translation for ‘secularism’) because you cannot refuse to take sides between dharma and adharma.

So, they say they are ‘panthnirpeksh’. But whatever the word, they do not seem to see that they offend as much against ‘panthnirpekshata’ as they do against ‘dharmanirpekshata’. So with the ‘Hindu’ state. What they want India to be is not what the rest of us want India to be. And if there is no difference, then what’s the argument?

Indeed, one has to look no further than the rest of his speech to see where the difference lies. He quotes Justice Verma to assert that his Hinduism is something more than just a religion, it is part of a larger Indian culture. True enough, but then is not Islam as practiced in India and Christianity as practiced in India part of the larger Indian culture? If he is as Indian, as he claims to be, would Advani please repudiate his statement at Himachal Bhawan, New Delhi, August 13 1990: ‘The Ram Janmabhoomi movement is the biggest cultural movement in history to unite crores of Indian hearts and assert the emancipation of Hindu culture from medieval vandals and pseudo-secular pseudo-intellectuals’? (Note the easy equation of ‘Indian’ with ‘Hindu’).

Advani described Pakistan as a ‘theocratic’ state to distinguish it from secular India. But Pakistan is theocratic only in the sense that it calls itself ‘Islamic’, not in the sense that it is ruled by clerics.

Indeed, in no election since the establishment of Pakistan has a theocratic party won more than 5 per cent of the vote or more than a couple of seats in the Pakistan National Assembly — until the latest where, thanks to Busharraf kowtowing to the Americans over the Taliban, Maulana Fazlur Rahman has failed by no more than a single vote to make it to prime minister.

No, what distinguishes Pakistan’s constitutional development from India’s is not that they are ruled by mullahs while we are not ruled by pandits and pandas. What makes Pakistan non-secular is that they are avowedly majoritarian while we are not. To Advani and his ilk, the fact that ‘we’ are 85 per cent and ‘they’ are not makes all the difference between those who legitimately belong and those who may remain on our sufferance. Hence their rejection of our composite culture.

Hence their insistence that we are secular only because we are Hindu. Hence their tampering with history textbooks. Hence their avenging themselves on ‘Babar ki aulad’. Hence their obsession with conversion. Hence their perverse humour: ‘ham panch/hamare pachees’.

Hence, where Ram was born being, in Advani’s exquisite phraseology, ‘not a matter of fact but a matter of faith’, targeted with precision at the point where my faith will give maximum offence to the other’s. Hence their listing of masjids to demolish and mandirs to build. In which of these particulars is Advani any different from the mob he leads?

Hence, too, the mob he chooses to lead. Was it not Advani who described the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Ayodhya Movement as ‘a stroke of genius’? Did his train not include the likes of Sadhvi Rithambra: Samajh na paaye baton se, ab laaton se samajhne do/ Khoon kharaba hota hai, tho ek baar ho jaane do (What words have not taught, let our kicks teach them now/ If bloodletting there must be, let it be, let it be).

Can Advani deny the picture of Uma Bharati hugging Murli Manohar Joshi as the two of them watched the masjid tumbling down? I asked Advani rhetorically in the Lok Sabha before the infamous Black Sunday, December 6, 1992, if it came to the crunch which oath would prevail — his oath to the constitution or his oath to smash the Babri masjid (Ram ki saugand ham khate hain/Mandir wahin banyenge)?

The constitution, of course, he spiritedly replied. And then stood silent, as he stood silent over the carnage committed in the wake of his ‘rath yatra’, as one by one over several hours each of the three domes was torn down. Had he stepped under the domes and said the next brick that falls, falls on my head, the outrage would have been stopped.

Nearer now, who but Advani picked Narendra Modi to lead Gujarat? Who but Advani failed to visit his constituency of Gandhinagar when marauding hordes were targeting his own constituents? Who but Advani sang paeans of praise, and still does (he was back at it last week in his Lok Sabha reply), to Modi’s Newtonian condoning of the most ghastly excesses — ‘kriya-pratikriya’? And who but Advani’s cabal twisted Vajpayee’s tail to rephrase what the prime minister said at the Shah Alam camp in Ahmedabad into what he said after the party conclave in Goa?

Be warned: our subcontinent is in imminent danger of slipping into the hands of two spitting images of communalism — Advani in India and Maulana Fazlur Rahman in Pakistan. There is nothing to choose between them.

Write to msaiyar@expressindia.com