People's Democracy

VAJPAYEE'S US VISIT

Official Tour To Promote RSS Agenda

Sitaram Yechury

BY now, it has become routine that the only official agenda that the prime minister carries when he addresses the UN General Assembly is that concerning Pakistan. The decimation of India’s image as the leader of the third world articulating the concerns of the developing world and championing the causes and movements for liberation has been total under this Vajpayee government. Such has been the Pak-centric foreign policy pursued by Mr. Vajpayee & Co. When the whole world was engaged with the threatening noises being made by US imperialism to mount a military offensive against Iraq, the prime minister chose not to mention this issue at all, in his address! How could he? This government’s foreign policy objective has been singularly motivated by the desire to replace Pakistan as the US surrogate in the region. Sucking up to US imperialism has become this government’s basic instinct.

The biggest achievement of this week-long visit by the prime minister has been clearly stated by himself. In a press conference, he said that the fact that USA had not asked India to talk to Pakistan, this time (implying that it did on earlier occasions) was a big achievement! Could there be anything more insulting and humiliating?

For over three decades, the consensus in India has been that the Kashmir dispute is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan that brooks no interference or intervention by any third party. By now admitting that the USA has been putting pressure on India to start a dialogue with Pakistan in the past, Mr. Vajpayee has virtually admitted to such interference. The satisfaction that he is deriving from the fact that the USA has not, once again, asked him to talk to Pakistan betrays the fact that this government had defacto permitted the USA to have a mediatory role in the Kashmir dispute. Apart from this, by the prime minister’s own admission, there seems to have been no other achievement in his week-long tour.

Such has been the uneventful outcome as regards the official agenda for the visit. The unofficial agenda however, as always, had kept the prime minister more pre-occupied. And, this was in elaborating his government’s patronage in advancing the RSS communal agenda in India. Speaking to the overseas friends of the BJP and the Hindu Swayamsewak Sangh -- the overseas version of the RSS -- Mr. Vajpayee dwelt on three issues. While castigating Musharraf for spreading falsehood, he himself seems to have taken more than a leaf from his approach.

GUJARAT

DEVELOPMENT

First, he bemoaned the developments in Gujarat. Not for a moment, however, did he show any remorse. The ghastly state-sponsored communal genocide in Gujarat was, for Mr. Vajpayee, solely an embarrassment when he meets foreign dignitaries. This is the only reason for him to bemoan the Gujarat developments. This, in fact, echoes what he said both inside the Parliament and outside: that the Gujarat developments would make him hang his head in shame when he goes abroad. Of all other counts, the prime minister has clearly endorsed the worst communal carnage that independent India has seen, a la his RSS siblings.

COMMUNALISATION OF

EDUCATION

The second issue on which he harangued, spreading disinformation, is in claiming that the Supreme Court had endorsed his government’s programme of saffronisation of education. To the cheering long-distance Hindutva Brigade, he said: "and if Saffronisation is going on, then what is the objection".

Of course, there are objections. Firstly, the prime minister has deliberately misinterpreted the Supreme Court. The apex court had ruled that not consulting the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) was not unconstitutional as the CABE was not a constitutional body. Such was the technicality of the judgement. Further, the court went ahead to also caution that religious education should not be allowed to become perverted. To interpret this as an endorsement of communalisation of Indian education is diabolic.

Secondly, the apex court dealt only with the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) and not the various other efforts being made to communalise the education system and to rewrite Indian history. The packing of all institutions of historical research with RSS elements of dubious academic qualifications; the introduction of various courses such as astrology, etc; in the guise of these being sciences; the efforts to hijack the Indus Valley civilisation as an Aryan and, hence, Hindu civilisation etc constitutes the larger agenda of saffronisation. The Supreme Court, in no way, has endorsed all such efforts.

These are issues on which people have taken to the streets in protest and this battle against saffronisation and communalisation of education will continue to intensify, notwithstanding the sympathies from those who have chosen to leave our country only to express saffron patriotism living in comforts abroad.

MASK

OFF

The third issue the prime minister chose to dwell upon was on the role of the Muslim League during the freedom movement. This role has been well-documented and needs no repetition. But the insidious aspect of the prime minister’s reference was to equate the Indian Muslims of today with the League of the past. Since the League had championed the partition of the country, the patriotic credentials of Indian Muslims are suspect according to his perverted logic.

We have, in these columns earlier, exposed the fact that the first Indian of any significance to have forwarded the two-nation theory stating that Hindus and Muslims are two separate and distinct nations was none other than Mr. Vajpayee’s hero, V.D. Savarkar. Not only had Savarkar advanced such a thesis more than two years before Jinnah had, but he went further to support Jinnah when he raised the demand for Pakistan. If the raising of the two-nation theory is enough cause to suspect the patriotism of this generation of Indians, Mr. Vajpayee and his Saffron Brigade are as guilty, if not more, on this score, by their very own perverted logic.

Such fascistic demagoguery should at least now open the eyes of many who have illusions that Mr. Vajpayee represents a liberal face. It has, once again, been proved that Mr. Vajpayee always wears a mask for public consumption. This has always been the case since Mr. Vajpayee was sent alongwith Mr. Advani and S.S. Bhandari by the then RSS supremo, Golwalkar, to assist Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in founding the Jan Sangh in 1951. For full five decades and more, Mr. Vajpayee alongwith others, is functioning as the political face and arm of the RSS.