People's Democracy

                          THINKING TOGETHER

By making overt appeals seeking the support of the  Muslims, is the BJP showing itself as having reconciled to the vision of a secular India?  Is there any truth in such a "change of heart"?

Naveen Bhai, Rajkot

NOTHING could really be farther from the truth. There is, in fact, no "change of heart" at all.    The BJP's current posturing  is a straight forward naked opportunism that is seeking to enlist Muslim support in the elections.  Apart from shedding crocodile  tears over the State-sponsored communal genocide in Gujarat, the BJP and its leadership  has done the least to stop, if not dilute, the anti-Muslim communal bashing that the RSS outfits indulging.  The Prime Minister continues to campaign alongside Narendra Modi. If there was any sincerity, the least that should have been done was to dismiss the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat.  Vajpayee & Co. have not even  thought of it despite the severe indictment of constitutional authorities like the Supreme Court, NHRC etc.

Far from reconciling with the vision of a secular India, the record of BJP rule provides ample evidence that the BJP is bent upon tearing apart the secular fabric of the country. Towards this end the BJP has stepped up its ideological and cultural onslaught on all fronts.

The BJP has demonstrated its notoriety in the changes it introduced in the school curricula. It decided to  add a new chapter, "Religious Policies of Babar", in the sixth standard history book. It will explain that Babar, a Muslim ruler of the 16th century, built a mosque over the Ram temple at Ayodhya after demolishing it. The BJP government also plans to delete or condense chapters on Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln in the 9th and 10th standards and instead add chapters on Keshavrao Baliram Hedgewar, the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Disseminating ideology through textbooks was a phenomenon initiated by the BJP government headed by Kalyan Singh in Uttar Pradesh in 1991. Singh altered history books in UP schools to help children understand the "real Hindutva truth."

The BJP's hatred towards Muslims is clearly spelt out in a series of articles by Deen Dayal Upadhyaya that have been reproduced in the BJP's web site on the Internet under the title "BJP's guiding Philosophy". At one point the article says. "No particular socie­ty has a monopoly of goodness. However, it is observed that Hindus even if they are rascals individual life, when they come together in a group, they always think of good things. On the other hand when two Muslims come together, they propose and approve of things which they themselves in their individual capacity  would not even think of. They start thinking in an  altogether different way. This is an everyday experience." If the BJP's guiding philosophy says that muslims are inherently incap­able of "thinking good things", their attitude to the whole Muslim community will clearly, for all times to come, be steeped in hatred and hostility.