WHILE there is little threat to the BJP government in terms of the NDA partners pulling out of the alliance, the party does face a crisis of confidence. Prices and everyday hardships are being linked to government policies, the Agra summit has brought criticisms rather than accolades, and, with elections just round the corner in UP, the BJP is in a mess. The Sangh Parivar is resorting to its usual remedy of raising temperatures and tempers over temple, national security, Kashmir, ISI, and by its casteist politics.

Most people think that there has been a let-up after the chain of events and attacks coinciding with the Pope’s visit two years ago in Gujarat and other states, as the RSS concentrates on taking over institutions and transforming education. There could be nothing further from the truth. Not only has there been no decline in the intimidatory politics of the Sangh Parivar, there is a conscious and deliberate attempt to terrorise the minorities prior to the UP elections in order to change the electorate’s priorities. After deliberations, the Sangh Parivar has reiterated its view that communal tension and divisive politics are likely to serve its interests better, given its ideological underpinning of what the Hindu Rashtra implies in political terms.

The Sangh Parivar would like people to forget the economy, the issues of livelihood, the mess in Kashmir, the sell-out of the country’s assets, the capitulation to US, and the erosion of subsidies and public distribution system, when they vote. Communal politics is the Parivar’s best bet, as it sees the situation. The last few months have therefore seen growing attacks on Dalits, Christians, Muslims and women all over the country, but especially in UP under Rajnath Singh’s stewardship.

The arms training being given to thousands of Bajrang Dal ‘volunteers’ all over North India and the poisonous propaganda being unleashed through them are illegal and unconstitutional acts. No private individual is legally permitted to own firearms. Creation of private armies is unconstitutional. If anything, these armies are worse than the Ranvir Sena in Bihar in terms of the sheer number of people involved and the training given in these camps. The Bajrang Dal openly declares that it has made it its business to deal with ‘internal’ enemies; to identify them at its own initiative and to mete out its own private vendetta as ‘punishment’; and the home minister promotes this activity as patriotism. Never in the history of independent India has a government’s home minister behaved with such open partisanship and such open political cynicism, as L K Advani does. He has declared a virtual war against the minorities in the name of fighting the ISI and given full freedom to the Sangh Parivar storm-troopers to decide who the ISI-linked individuals or groups are. He has given them full freedom to act as a substitute for the state machinery and to lead and command the state machinery when required for their purposes. The government is giving legitimacy to attacks on minorities. All this has more than a passing affinity with the Nazi state and party in Hitler’s Germany and fascist Italy.

People’s Democracy has carried a number of reports in recent past on the attacks on Dalits in various parts of UP, engineered by the upper caste elements aligned to the Sangh Parivar. They showed that the Rajnath Singh government has not merely condoned but actively abetted in this series of killings. It should be noted that killings and intimidation of Dalits have become a form of politics and electoral strategy for the BJP and its affiliates, in the context of its declining popularity and the growth of parties like the Samajwadi Party that espouse the OBC cause.

More recently, there have been murders of young people who married across castes in UP and Haryana, and across religions in Gujarat villages. All such cases have ended with murders of these young people. The BJP government has not lifted a finger to protect the civil and fundamental rights of the citizens, while the Sangh Parivar has actually abetted in the crime against these citizens with its inflammatory propaganda and upper-caste engineered social pressure.

Christian schools and missionaries are being specifically targeted. Attacks have recently taken place in Himachal, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh where Sangh Parivar goons have been threatening, coercing and intimidating the orphanage managements, church groups and evangelists. VHP men in Varanasi "arrested" innocent Christians. In Kota, the Sangh threatened the Emmanuel Orphanage.

On August 4, in Chamgarh in Solan district of Himachal, two seminarists --- Arun Magar and Sandeep Masih of the Believers Church Bhavan, Solan --- were manhandled when they were distributing booklets. They were forced to sign statements that they were "forcibly converting" people. The Himachal police did not show any keenness about protecting the innocent; it is in fact harassing the seminary.

In Thane near Bombay (Maharashtra), the situation became tense on August 6, following a murderous attack by over 40 Sangh Parivar activists on Father Oscar Mendonca near the St John Baptist Church. Father Mendonca, who was returning after visiting a clinic for treatment, was seriously injured. The activists, in their own words, wanted to "punish" the Christians for the killing of 3 RSS men in Tripura. The mob kept chanting that the church was responsible for killing Hindus throughout the country. This lie is a standard component of most Sangh literature being widely circulated in the country.

In village Korua in district Kota (Rajasthan), a Christian ashram catering to 1500 destitutes under Bishop M A Thomas was subjected to vandalism; he too received murder threats. In Orissa, 17 Dalits opting for Christianity were forcibly converted to Hinduism by RSS riff-raffs. The state administration colluded, and the Shankaracharya of Puri presided over this violation of human rights and freedom of religion.

Another major crime has been the attempt to kill a nun in Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh) on August 7. The 30-year-old nun, Sister Leena Vellampuniyel of the Nirmala Hospital in Chandera village on Dewas Road, and her colleague Sister Anupa had gone to the market to buy provisions for their convent. As they returned, Sister Leena sat down on a parapet to catch her breath. Four men on two-wheelers drove in, accosted a priest, entered a room of the hospital, and then came out. They came near the nun and, as she saw them and got up, they shot her in face and fled. The police have not been able to establish their identity. The nun is in a critical condition in hospital.

These are not isolated incidents. There is a pattern in the violence and coercion which every time takes place in the backdrop of a sustained fundamentalist campaign of malice, slander and hate against the community.

Even as Left parties and secular groups are asking that those found guilty by the Srikrishna commission be punished, Advani, Joshi and Co have decided to be nonchalant and aggressive by turn in their statements before the Liberhan commission regarding their role in the Babri Masjid destruction.

As if on cue, the VHP acknowledged its role in the new demolition act of a 500-year old Kalandari mosque at Asind near Bhilwara (Rajasthan) and ‘converting’ it into a ‘temple.’ According to press reports, the RSS too made its contribution to keeping ‘the flag of Hinduism’ flying. In this case, they did not even bother to find an excuse such as birthplace, etc, except that it stood next to a temple and belonged to non-Hindus. It must be understood that proximity was no problem prior to this incident, and the 16th century mosque was certainly the older monument. The matter was made public days after it took place and was reported widely in the press on July 31.

Again in Rajasthan, in Pander town, ten kilometers from Jahazpur in Bhilwara district, the Sunni Jama Masjid was attacked and the cupboard containing copies of the Quran Sharif deliberately set on fire (Indian Express and The Times of India, August 14). This was the second such incident in this area in less than a month. On July 19, two mazaars were damaged in Jahazpur. There is tension in many districts as a result of the Sangh Parivar’s aggressive propaganda in Rajasthan where the BJP was soundly defeated in the last elections and where it is now trying to divide the settlements where people live amicably. In Ajmer district, where the dargah has served to preserve communal amity, the VHP is trying hard in the villages to destroy peace and amity.

Killings of Muslims took place in Moradabad and other towns of UP recently. These killings, the Sangh Parivar propaganda and the acts of vandalism are clearly calculated to injure and inflame Muslim sentiments, and to serve the ends of divisive politics.

According to a press release by Ram Punyani on behalf of Communal Harmony groups in Mumbai, only one policeman is to be dismissed for the riot-related conduct, while at least 22 policemen charged with murder were neither suspended nor arrested. Seven of the 31 policemen indicted by the Srikrishna commission stand exonerated. There is no criminal prosecution, only departmental inquiry against PSI Nikhil Kapse, whom the commission held responsible for the death of six innocents, four of them inside Hari Masjid, Wadala. There is no departmental action against policemen who have retired, and only five cases have been re-opened out of 1358 cases closed by the police during the riots. Hardly any of the accused has been arrested so far. Despite the commission’s directive, the government has paid compensation to the heirs of only three missing persons. The attitude of the Special Task Force and the government towards punishing the guilty is clear from the way they treated the former police commissioner, R D Tyagi. A murder accused continues to remain out of custody for two-and-a-half months, thanks to the government’s reluctance to arrest him at the very start.

According to press reports, the Indian government is likely to amend a foreign contribution law to check the flow of foreign funds for "insurgent activities." The law ministry has already distributed a note on the draft amendment bill among cabinet ministers, and it is likely to be presented during the ongoing session of parliament. The new bill, according to the ministry, would specially target three categories: foreign funds received by madrasas (Muslim seminaries), funds for Christian missionaries working among tribal people, and funds for Buddhist organisations. There will be obviously no curb on the huge foreign funds received by the Sangh Parivar, and the unholy and criminal uses to which it is being put. No doubt secular NGOs, critical of the RSS, will also find themselves in trouble on this account. Like the circular requiring scholars to obtain government permission to participate in seminars abroad or to invite foreign scholars to India, this bill is an attempt by the government to intervene on behalf of the Sangh Parivar.

A private member's bill in the Lok Sabha against conversions is both discriminatory and redundant. There is already a law in our penal code against forced conversions. But the new bill will selectively prejudice and criminalise certain choices of religion, and facilitate others as fair and proper. Free education is among what would qualify as "inducement" for conversion and therefore punishable.

The government has extended to the Jammu region the act that sanctions the killing of a ‘suspected’ militant by armed forces. This is yet another act of intimidation of the Kashmiri people. The attitude and motivations of this government become clear from a recent act. In a shocking incident, the state government razed to the ground a memorial being built for more than 5,000 persons missing in Jammu and Kashmir, a day after its foundation was laid on July 18. It was being built by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, which had provided a voice to the families of victims of "enforced disappearance" (Hindustan Times, July 28). Such acts can only further alienate the Kashmiri people, as do the selective mourning that goes on in our media. While the national TV cannot forget the innocents being killed by militants in Jammu because they belong to one community, those killed in the Kashmir valley by militants or by armed forces are given short shift as mere statistics, mentioned one day and forgotten the next day.

There is a need to unite, strongly resist and defeat the nefarious designs of the Sangh Parivar and its partners in the government.

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Number of communal riots and incidents that have occurred in India since 1950: 13,000

Percentage of Muslim victims in every communal riot: 80

Percentage of Muslims among those arrested in communal riots: 90

Percentage of police officials who say they have noticed communal bias in behaviour of policemen during a communal riot: 48

(Outlook, August 20, p 62)

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