People's Democracy

EDITORIAL

Saffron Tentacles At Work

THE deputy prime minister and union home minister has made a startling revelation that over 11,500 Pakistani nationals and half a crore or so Bangladeshis are remaining in India after the expiry of their visas.  He went on to add that these people pose a serious threat to India's internal security.  Therefore, they should be deported.

No country can allow foreign nationals to continue to stay on illegally. Of course, they have to be identified and deported. But in the first place, the home minister who presides over the entire apparatus designed to protect internal security as well as monitor immigration, will have to explain how such a situation has arisen.  The serious lapses and obvious inefficiency must be removed. It is, indeed, ironic, to say the least, that it is under the governing dispensation of people who self-appoint themselves as the crusaders against terrorism and protectors of internal security that terrorist attacks increase and such revelations come to light.

However, the bid to rid the country of illegal occupants cannot be allowed to provide grist to the mill of the communal hatred being currently spewed by  various outfits of the Saffron Brigade.  Even The Times of India, in a comment, has warned that this effort should not result "in a witch hunt by targetting particular countries and communities".

Seen in conjunction with other developments, such a direction appears imminent to suit the political and electoral fortunes of the BJP. The VHP and the Bajrang Dal have already made it known that the movement for the construction of the temple at Ayodhya will proceed irrespective of the judicial verdict. They have threatened to go ahead with the temple construction "even if a hundred governments fall".  Following the elections in Gujarat, the VHP has planned to hold district wise congregations and raise youth battalions (reminiscent of the Nazi fascist black shirts) armed with trishuls.   Such brazenly provocative and patently unlawful activity called `trishul deeksha are being carried out in the name of Hindutva.  The central BJP's vigorous reiteration of its commitment to Hindutva was recently displayed by assertions such as "we need not be apologetic about it". 

Notwithstanding the prime minister's usual tactic of obfuscation (as contained in his latest "musings"), the BJP has declared its intention to replicate the Gujarat experiment elsewhere -- a process we had repeatedly stated in these columns as the Modification of India. 

What appears more chilling is the fact that such strident communal posturing and mobilisation is being accompanied by a march towards authoritarianism.  The reaction of the home ministry to the ongoing  judicial proceedings concerning the arrest of  journalist Iftekar Gilani  is a case in point. The military intelligence has ruled that the information the journalist possessed, on the basis of which he was arrested, had "no security value".  It further went on to state that the said information "seems to have been gathered from open sources".  The home ministry, under Mr. Advani, has however, usurped the right to be the sole judge on deciding  the nature of information a person possesses irrespective of its source.  Therefore, anybody who is in possession of published material, which the home ministry feels is inimical to the interests of the country, can be persecuted and prosecuted. Shades of fascistic authoritarianism?

Clearly, the saffron octopus is upping its ante with an eye on the next round of elections.  All its tentacles are actively moving. They seemingly appear to be independent of each other.  But, as we have repeatedly stated in these columns, it is a single heart that pumps blood to activate each of these tentacles.  And, that heart is the RSS with its vision of seeking to metamorphose a secular democratic Indian republic into a fascist "Hindu Rashtra".

Such an attempt was once defeated by the Indian people at the time of our independence.  The time has come to do so once again.