Proving Musharraf right

The vice-president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Acharya Giriraj Kishore, may not know it, but he has just proved Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf right. On Friday, Kishore put forward an argument that may, just may, have passed muster in the medieval ages but rings plainly monstrous today. Referring to the Jhajjar outrage, in which five young Dalit men were lynched by a mob for allegedly slaughtering a cow — even though this was disproved subsequently — Giriraj Kishore argued that the life of a cow is more precious than that of a human being. In other words, he came perilously close to actually justifying the carnage in Harayana.

How does Musharraf come into this? Remember how the Pakistan general in his ineffable fashion had launched on a diatribe against India at the 57th Session of the UN General Assembly in September? Remember what he said? To refresh memories, here’s a quote from the speech: ‘India’s belligerence also reflects the chauvinistic ideology of the Hindu extremist parties and organisations. Rising fanaticism in India has targeted Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and even the scheduled caste Hindus…’ When the general uttered these words, India found them to be preposterous. Prime Minister Vajpayee, when his turn came to address the assembly, made it a point to state that ‘we are proud of the multi-religious character of our society’. Yet, here goes a senior functionary of an organisation fraternally linked to the PM’s party giving vent to thoughts that conform perfectly to Musharraf’s dark scenario. Truly, with affiliates like these, the BJP government needs no enemies; with organisations like these on the rampage, the country needs no enemies.

A related aspect requires to be underlined here. When the leaders of organisations speak in this vein, the message received by their followers at the lowest rung is that they can take the law into their own hands. Today, the VHP is busy denying that their unit had anything to do with the murders at Jhajjar. Yet, when the vice-president of this organisation doesn’t have a word of condemnation to offer on the killings, when in fact he almost justifies them, it only indicates how pernicious such attitudes are and how easily they can translate into acts of blind hatred. As the language of political discourse gets increasing bigoted and ugly, as a Bal Thackeray exhorts Hindus to form suicide squads in Mumbai and a Praveen Togadia terms the leader of the Opposition an ‘Italian dog’ in Bhuj, it signals how deeply the politics of hatred has poisoned the system. Worse, words like these carry within them the seeds of future riots, massacres, mob attacks, seeds of future shock, anarchy, disintegration. Will the political guardians of this country ever wake up to this? It is as Dalit poet, Yashwant Manohar wrote in a poem entitled, ‘An Ultimatum’: Or tell me how to live as I die at each moment’s turn.