People's Democracy

EDITORIAL

 Har Har Judev!

THE religious chant Har Har Mahadev! is often misappropriated by the RSS octopus to whip up a communal frenzy leading up to riots. Its political arm, the BJP, seems to have transformed the slogan into Har Har Judev! Corruption and sleaze has become the hallmark of this Vajpayee government. Some misguided people seem to have felt that the BJP had learnt lessons from the Tehelka experience. They must be sadly mistaken. Making money and making more money by most unscrupulous of methods seems to be the magnetic motivation of this government. The closer the general elections appear the greater is the urge to make most of the situation.

Carrying forward this ignominious tradition, the union minister for state for enviroment and forests, Dileep Singh Judev was caught in the act of accepting money for help in securing mining rights in Chattisgarh and Orrissa for an Australian firm. The Indian Express carried the sequence of photographs on November 16 on the front page in all its editions across the country. 

Far from showing any remorse the BJP has been the most brazen in defending this scandalous exposure. Bangaru Laxman, whose image of accepting wads of notes was seen by millions of people on television screens, immediately jumped to Judev’s defence and pleaded not to make another Bangaru of him. The scam tainted BJP president Venkaiah Naidu, in the light of this exposure claimed that his party was more “principled” than any other. He further went on to state that “money was taken for a social cause”.

The deputy prime minister and the home minister, while claiming credit for handing over the entire matter to the CBI for enquiry, ordered that the conspiracy of such a “sting operation” will also be enquired into. Virtually forecasting the outcome in the elections he said, “it is for the first time that Indian politics and elections have been influenced by sting operations”. Advani would like us to believe that if a trap is laid and a man is caught then he is not guilty! As the home minister, he is obviously aware that police and vigilance departments daily lay traps to catch their victims red handed. Far from apprehending the criminals, like it is normally done with ordinary mortals, Advani is brazenly defending both the criminal and the crime.

Given the track record of the CBI in diluting the charge sheet on the Babri Masjid demolition, there is little confidence in the impartiality of the agency under the PMO and the home ministry. Readers will recall that the CBI had exonerated Advani and other leading lights of the RSS from its own earlier charge of criminal conspiracy to demolish the Babri Masjid.

Not to be outdone the “Raja” of Jashpur, the BJP’s projected future chief minister of Chattishgarh, Dileep Singh Judev, has invoked Mahatma Gandhi, Chandra Sekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh in defence of his action. He said, “everyone needed money” and that there was nothing wrong in taking money for a “social cause!” 

This is the BJP’s new definition of political morality. Procuring money for giving dubious and illegal contracts to multinational companies is the same – we are being told – as revolutionary freedom fighters procuring arms in the struggle for the independence of India from Colonial rule.

If this was not bizarre enough Judev also doled out a conspiracy theory. He claimed that he was a victim of a “conspiracy by missionaries” from “across the seas” who had carried out religious conversions in Chattisgarh, a sin he was fighting against as a social crusader.  This even more bizarre theory dove tails with the BJP’s charge that the Chattisgarh chief minister was a “nominee of the Pope” whose main job is to convert the poor and unsuspecting tribals to Christianity!

Such is this “party with a difference”.  Inadvertently, rather deliberately to mislead the people, the BJP had given its objective of ridding India of bhook (hunger), bhay (fear) and bhrashtachaar (corruption). On all three grounds, under Vajpayee’s stewardship, this government has not merely worsened the situation but has brought it to scandalising depths. For the sake of India i.e. Bharat, the sooner they are removed from office the better.