People's Democracy

Friendly Relations Would Ruin Its Political Designs

If fascism has to pose as nationalism it needs an external enemy as much as an internal one. It needs a permanent external enemy even as it fights its own people, if only to distract from its divisive politics. It is not possible that rhetoric against a section of its own people will succeed all the time; and it does not happen that its own people will acquiesce in fighting their own unfortunate countrymen, however much the fascists may make them sound like traitors or perpetrators of injustice against their own mass base. After all, all kind of diverse ties bind people within a country.

If religions are divergent regions may match, if regions are divergent class may match, and in cases of class conflict other cultural or kinship ties may prove stronger, if not all the time at least part of the time. And in extraordinary circumstances, as history shows, people do act in extraordinary ways, not necessarily in the way ruling classes or vested interests may want them to. That is what keeps humankind advancing towards nobler endeavours despite fascist and other ruling class conspiracies.

This also keeps fascists constantly on their toes, just as it does those working towards democratic alternatives, because despite manipulation and creation of solidarities that are anti-people in their application, the fascists as much as democrats basically want to create political majorities out of other majoritarian alliances like religion or race. For this a permanent external enemy is a useful entity, and if one does not exist fascists will create it.

This is very true of our homegrown fascists as well, for whom the September 11 bombings of the World Trade Center in New York came as a gift of ‘providence’. Just when Indian people were getting restive and angry at their economic policies, the US declared its war on terrorism, which for a whole lot of people in the west and for our own fascists essentially means Islam and Muslims. The Sangh Parivar in India was able to cavalierly hitch its own bandwagon to the right wing onslaught against democracy (in the name of terrorism) initiated by the US. Having accomplished Gujarat in India and now afraid for the wages that may have to be paid, war against Pakistan becomes a good way of salvaging prestige in the West and among our own countrymen disgusted with the organized genocide against poor and innocent Muslims. Reports of numerous fact finding teams have made it difficult for any decent person to defend the Hindutva brigade, however well inclined they may otherwise be towards them.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Sangh Parivar first used the Bush sponsored hysteria against the Muslims to both reinforce its ties with American imperialism and to hitch its own anti Muslim private agenda to the so-called war against terrorism, culminating in Gujarat; then it used Gujarat to create grounds for its anti Pakistan tirade, and war hysteria; and is now using the war to again ‘teach the Muslims’ a lesson. The identity between a jingoistic nationalism, Pakistan and a terror against the Muslims has become a part of its strategy of creating a spiraling fascist political temper that spells disaster for the country and for the region—a temper in which it becomes easy to suppress all democratic protests and secular expression. Anand Patwardhan’s film against nuclear war and films documenting the Gujarat genocide are now being banned for ‘promoting’ communal and religious disharmony in this scheme!

The speeches of the BJP leaders are very akin to those of Hitler and Mussolini, as pointed out by Parsa Venkateswara Rao Jr. in a write up on the Tehelka website. "Hitler told time and again to the hypnotised audiences in Germany at the Nazi rallies that Germany wants peace, but it is forced to fight the grave injustice embedded in the Treaty of Versailles. The sentiment and the logic were unassailable. There is a similar refrain in the speeches of Vajpayee, Home Minister L K Advani, Defence Minister George Fernandes. We do not want war. We want an end to cross-border terrorism, they say in speech after speech. And it will be hard to find fault with the argument." And just as for Hitler the Versailles treaty was just an excuse for other sinister designs, the BJP leaders see war as strategy for mobilization on the Hindu Rashtra.

History is a powerful force but its fabricated Hindutva version is not sufficient to permanently fracture shared lives and other ties, particularly in the wake of common livelihood interests against liberalization policies and social facts amply visible, as in the case of one lakh helpless Muslims in relief camps, unattended by the government. Therefore, the identity between Indian Muslims and Pakistan, and an enemy image for Pakistan are extremely crucial for Hindutva forces.

The whole world heard Vajpayee say it live on TV on April 12 in Goa: ‘Jahan Jahan Musalman hain ghul milkar nahi rahte hain (wherever there are Muslims they don’t want to live in peace)’. And this was just the beginning. He went ahead with Muslim-bashing and added, ‘Auron se ghulna milna nahi chahte. Shantipurna tarike se parchar karne ke bajaye atankwad se dara dhamka kar apne mat ka parchar karna chahte hain (They don’t want to mix with others. Instead, they want to preach and propagate their religion by creating fear and terror in the minds of others). Vajpayee dwelt at length on 'Islamic fundamentalism' in the countries he visited recently. He said: 'one version of Islam taught love, peace and compassion' while 'Islam today was being used for militancy and Jihad and trying to bring the world under its influence. ‘Har jagah jahan Muslims bahut sankhya mein rahte hain, unki chinta hai ki kahin Islam ugra rup na le le (wherever Muslims live in large numbers, the rulers apprehend that Islam can take an aggressive turn)’ Vajpayee went on to say. This is true of the Prime Minister. Advani, Togadia and Sudarshan—all have been far worse.

And, as always the media eggs on. It seems we cannot have enough of the war on TV, and if not an actual war we must at least win a virtual war on TV screens. We have Atal Bihari Vajpayee on every channel thundering we will teach Pakistan a lesson, Lal Krishan Advani threatening that Pakistan had better do this or that or else… and so on. Similar bytes are procured for Musharraf, and the war act is played out on TV screens. As if that were not enough, it seems there is no issue of concern to people on both sides of the border than war, and TV discussions have zeroed in on this item to the exclusion of everything else. As observers have said, Gujarat is already relegated to the back pages of the media, and that is half the war already won for the Sangh Parivar.

In addition the film world has obliged by continually managing the release of ‘patriotic’ films, whose raison d’ etre is Pakistan bashing, and which revel in rabble rousing dialogues that reduce love for the country to fighting the ‘enemy’, and where the enemy is reduced to Pakistan. Despite cross border terrorism, there are much grounds for friendship and solidarity, which is never explored by films, nor referred to by the dominant political leadership of the country. That, in response to Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s rallying cry of an all out war, Pakistan, in a show of strength, has fired three missiles capable of launching a nuclear attack on India has not helped matters. And as western governments evacuate their citizens from India and Pakistan, both governments vie with each other in competitive subservience to and attention from the US rather than concern for the common interests of the region.

Just when there is a need to unite against the new imperialist offensive and the US has actually stepped into South Asia with its armed forces-likely to be a permanent affair-in South Asia, including India, governments are ready to welcome them and fight their own neighbours. War, and possible use of nuclear weapons could mean millions of dead and deprivation and suffering unimaginable—a suffering that is not easily comprehensible as dominant political leaderships and media churn out jingoistic propaganda in a relentless fashion. Even as more than a lakh and a half Muslims remain unattended by the government in relief camps all over Gujarat there are reports of a similar number of people having to evacuate from their homes and sources of livelihood on both sides of the border in India and Pakistan, and a billion armed soldiers stationed eyeball to eyeball even as water riots break out in districts of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and the economy goes haywire in Pakistan.

We clearly need to be more alert and to expose the war designs of the Sangh Parivar for what they are, and to argue for more peaceful alternatives to sorting out issues. More than that we need to argue for friendship and solidarity with our neighbour with which we certainly have far more in common than with the US government whom the BJP is out to appease and welcome into South Asia. As democratic people, we should be as much concerned about the people of Pakistan as we are about ourselves.