People's Democracy

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

THE recent announcement by the prime minister, A B Vajpayee, that a "solution" to the Ayodhya dispute would be evolved by March 2002, has stunned all the peace-loving citizens of the country, instead of enthusing them. It has also served to rip off the mask of a moderate leader that he has been donning so far. And all this for good reason.

The timing of the announcement is worth noting. It has come at a time when UP, Uttaranchal, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir are to go in for assembly polls in near future. UP and Uttaranchal polls should have been held by October this year, but they will be held by February 2002 in any case. In UP in particular, the BJP finds itself in a desperate position, and the front organisations of the RSS are trying their utmost to divide the people on communal lines. Riots have already taken place in Moradabad, Muzaffarnagar and some other places in UP (and also in Rajasthan). The talk of March 2002 for solving the Ayodhya dispute assumes significance in this context, and is nothing but a move to placate the communal outfits. It is interesting to note here that the home minister L K Advani, leader of the hawks in BJP, has already been given charge of the BJP poll campaign in UP, and by Vajpayee himself.

Further, the announcement came at a time when the Vajpayee-led NDA government stands thoroughly discredited. The Tehelka episode exposed the BJP and some of its allies as pure self-seekers, who have no compunction in jeopardising even our national security for filthy gains. It was preceded by a series of scams in telecom and other sectors as well as the infamous Mauritius route bunglings. The Ketan Parekh episode followed soon after. And then came the scam of scams, the UTI scam, that robbed more than 20 million people of their hard-earned savings. (A project of one of the companies that duped the UTI, a Lucknow-based company, was inaugurated by Vajpayee himself.) The urban middle class has been one of the solid support bases of the BJP, but it was this very section that was the main loser in the UTI fiasco. Can the BJP really hope to mobilise this section again into voting for it?

The fact is that whether it is economy or defence of national unity, federalism or secularism, military policy or foreign policy, the Vajpayee regime has miserably failed on all fronts. Belying all the bravado on part of Yashwant Sinha, the RBI has officially admitted that the economy is in a bad shape and that no turn-around can be expected in near future. The rate of growth in all the three sectors --- agriculture, manufacture and services --- is much less than what was projected (without any basis in reality). The regime’s pro-imperialism is getting reflected in the spate of suicides which our peasants are committing in various parts of the country, more so after the withdrawal of all quantitative restrictions on agricultural imports.

Truly, no government has discredited itself so thoroughly in so short a time as the Vajpayee government has! It was not surprising, therefore, if Vajpayee himself admitted that UP polls would be tough for his party.

It is in the light of this unenviable position of the BJP that the recent announcement by Vajpayee needs to be viewed.

One thing is certain --- that no citizen of the country is going to be fooled by this gimmick. The reason is obvious. Vajpayee did talk of a negotiated solution of the Ayodhya dispute, but he very carefully refrained from telling us as to who is negotiating with whom. All the prominent Muslim organisations have made it clear that they have not been contacted for any negotiations. The matter is already sub judice and everybody knows that, in the present situation, a court verdict is the only way to solve the dispute. But the question is: Can Vajpayee really force the judiciary to expedite the process? And if not, on what basis did he say that the dispute would be solved by March next year?

Moreover, organisations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal have not yet repudiated their earlier position that they would abide by the court verdict only if it is in their favour. Will these outfits honour the law of the land if the court verdict is not in their favour?

Vajpayee’s announcement is thus clearly a case of seeking to dupe the masses.

The real reason for the gimmick lies somewhere else. As The Times of India editorially commented on August 29, "it is disconcerting that a head of government can show himself to be so blatantly opportunistic. The deadline is not December, not January, but March, which is also when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a parivar affiliate, starts its threatened construction of the Mandir."

It will be recalled that the VHP gave its threat at a congregation of the sadhus during the Mahakumbh in the earlier part of this year.

This aspect of the Vajpayee announcement has been noted by most of the papers that have editorially commented upon it. The Times of India pointed to the "placatory meeting with RSS chief followed by the mandatory salute to the bhagwa dhwaj (saffron flag) at a Sangh gathering and now the unprovoked statement on Ayodhya."

And The Hindu editorial warned on the same date: "In the immediate context, what is expected of the centre is not a deceptive show of sweet reasonableness, as reflected in Mr Vajpayee’s talk of ‘negotiations’ but decisive and deterrent action, at the minimum, to halt the provocative and incendiary campaign of the VHP and, more importantly, to stop forthwith the various works (connected with the construction of Ram temple) now apace in different places."

The editorial advised the prime minister against extending "an unmerited concession to the Sangh Parivar’s nationally disastrous revanchist campaign," indicating by implication that Vajpayee has extended this very type of concession to the parivar. Vajpayee’s move to placate the RSS and its outfits is thus more than evident.

The episode, however, reveals the reality of the moderate character of the prime minister who has hitherto been regarded as a misfit in the Sangh Parivar. This was his image which the bourgeois media had assiduously and carefully built over years, and there is no doubt that a good chunk of public opinion was misled by this media campaign.

Vajpayee also cultivated this moderate image for himself by his various moves. For example, when the Babri Masjid was being demolished, he kept himself away from it. On that Black Sunday, he confined himself to Lucknow while Advani, Joshi and Ms Uma Bharati were present at the Babri site and guided the demolition work. During the run-up to this heinous act, Vajpayee never questioned the motives or actions of his party colleagues; he regretted the demolition only after the event.

Poor Govindacharya, who is now languishing in bewilderment, was quite correct when he described Vajpayee as the mukhauta (mask) of the Sangh Parivar. His fault, from the parivar’s point of view, was only that he spoke out what should have been left unspoken.

Yet, time and again, Vajpayee has clearly indicated where his real sympathies lie. In an article in Panchjanya, Hindi mouthpiece of the RSS, he took pride in being a swayamsevak (RSS member). Then, while in New York last year, he addressed a separate gathering of the sadhus, and declared that he was prepared to lose his prime ministership but not his status as a swayamsevak. Again, while resting at Kumarakom in Kerala, he described the proposed temple construction as an unfinished "national aspiration" that has to be fulfilled. It was the same Vajpayee that advised for holding a national debate on conversions when the need was to take stern action against those who were launching murderous attacks on Christians in Gujarat and other states.

It is therefore not surprising that this carefully cultivated image of a moderate among the BJP leaders has lost its deceptive charm and can no longer befool anybody.

Vajpayee’s announcement also came at a time when he is going to meet General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan very soon, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s annual session. This is not the place to go into the reasons why the Agra summit could not produce the desired results; this has already been dealt with in these columns. Here we would only reiterate our position that any betterment of Indo-Pak relations will be beneficial not only to these two countries but to the whole subcontinent and for world peace, and that therefore the process of dialogue and confidence-building must go on.

But Vajpayee’s recent announcement is not in accordance with the spirit with which such a dialogue must be conducted. Apart from the prime minister’s inappropriate statement about the legitimacy of the past elections in Jammu and Kashmir, Vajpayee’s announcement about Ayodhya dispute has only boosted the morale of the communal forces at home, who have been against any betterment of Indo-Pak relations.

There is one more aspect to it. It is known that General Pervez, like his predecessors, wants the merger of Jammu and Kashmir in Pakistan on the basis of the discredited two-nation theory that defined Hindus and Muslims as two separate nations on the ground of religion. But the RSS and its outfits are doing exactly the same thing. It is on the basis of religion that they are demanding the trifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir, with perhaps the untold understanding that the Muslim-majority valley may go to Pakistan while the Hindu-majority Jammu and Buddhist-majority Ladakh regions must remain with India. There could not be a bigger disservice to the nation, and that too in the name of nationalism, which the RSS never tires of repeating ad nauseum!

In other words, while the secular and democratic forces in the country want a betterment of Indo-Pak relations in the interest of the people of both these countries and of world peace, this is not the perspective of the RSS and its frontal organisations. Therefore, no one can say with certainty as to how far these organisations will allow Vajpayee to go in his talks with the rulers of Pakistan. This only time will tell.