DESAFFRONISE OUR INSTITUTIONS

 Harkishan Singh Surjeet

WHEN the Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) assumed office at the centre in May this year, its Common Minimum Programme (CMP), which is its profession of faith, said that the “UPA government will take immediate steps to reverse the trend of communalisation of education that had set in (in) the past five years.” Detoxification was the word that the media coined to denote this process. As for the main content of this process, the country was assured that the various institutions of education and culture would be rid of the persons whom the BJP led regime had put in the saddle in these institutions, often in total disregard of the norms governing such appointments. 

AN EXAMPLE OF WITCH-HUNT

SOME media scribes have used simplistic words like vendetta to describe this process. It is another thing that these very scribes were silent or jubilant when the BJP led regime was packing these institutions with the pro-Hindutva lobby and removing intellectuals of repute from these bodies in order to make way for staunch pro-RSS communal elements. Now, while shouting for justice in their blind rage, these very scribes forget that injustice was meted out to a number of intellectuals in the last six years simply because they were not ready to tow the communal fascistic line of the RSS.

Examples are galore. But, for the sake of brevity, here we confine ourselves to just one example. After the Vajpayee government came to power in March 1998, one of the first steps it took was to throw some prominent intellectuals out of the board of Prasar Bharati, the electronic media corporation that is yet to gain full autonomy. The persons who suffered in this process were Professor Romila Thapar, an eminent historian, and Rajendra Yadav, a well known Hindi writer. The argument then informally advanced from many forums was that these intellectuals were “leftists.” 

The argument was bogus, to say the least. The first thing is that these two intellectuals themselves never claimed to be leftists. But even if one concedes, for the sake of argument, that they were leftists, the communal lobby has to answer whether they were suitable or not for the job entrusted to them. Professor Romila Thapar’s fame rests on the fact that she is a historian of calibre, and not on any supposition of being leftist. Moreover, to date, not a single person of any hue has dared to deny her stature as a historian. Therefore, even if she was a leftist (conceding it again for the sake of argument), the question is: was she not fit to be on a watchdog body like the Prasar Bharati board? In fact, any regime, except one like the RSS controlled Vajpayee regime, would have been glad to have persons of eminence like Professor Romila Thapar and Rajendra Yadav on the Prasar Bharati board or some other body. But nothing like that for the Vajpayee regime that found these intellectuals too independent, too secular and democratic to tow the communal line of the RSS.    

Therefore, those who are crying foul today, will have to first reply to our pointed question: was it not a witch-hunt of the meanest type that these intellectuals were dropped from the Prasar Bharati board on the ground (which was no ground at all) that they were leftists?

THE QUESTION INVOLVED

IN fact, the question involved here is not of any vendetta; rather it is a much more weighty question. As we all know, among the institutions directly or indirectly controlled or funded by the centre, there was hardly any institution where the BJP regime did not put its own men in the saddle, with the aim of stridently pushing its communal agenda forward. No walk of life did the BJP spare from its communal campaign, though education, culture and sports were the main fields which, understandably, the communal combine selected for special attention. So much so that the media cell of the RSS put its men even in the press and other media controlled by the private sector. To quote one example, a well known pro-RSS man called Deepak Chaurasia was inducted into the Doordarshan in the position of a consultant at a hefty Rs 3 lakh a month.

The BJP led state governments did precisely the same thing at the state level. The ongoing textbook controversy in Gujarat demonstrates this very fact. Rather the state has been most notorious for communalisation of the whole administrative set-up and invited even a sharp criticism from the Supreme Court of India.

And what these pro-RSS men did while being in key positions? An eye opening case is that of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), a premier body of the country in the field of education. After the BJP regime put one Professor J S Rajput in charge of the NCERT as its director, the fellow went wholehog to saffronise the school textbooks. Nay, the attempt was so blatant that the last five years witnessed a countrywide debate and protest on the issue of saffronisation of education. Similarly, though the Delhi government divested Professor Gopichand Narang of the position of vice chairman of Delhi Urdu Academy, saffronite HRD minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi retained him as vice chairman of the National Council for the Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL) and he kept pushing up the RSS agenda in the NCPUL.

Thus the question involved here is not of academic excellence and professional competence. If that had been so, there were a whole lot of persons with no less academic excellence and professional competence than Professor J S Rajput, Professor Gopichand Narang and others like them. The fact is that these individuals were appointed to these bodies with the clear-cut purpose of pushing the saffronite agenda ahead. As an example of his sycophancy, Professor Narang went so far as to present Dr Joshi as “Mujahid-e-Urdu” (warrior for the cause of Urdu) before the Urdu speaking people. 

RSS MEN STILL IN KEY POSITIONS

YET, today the sorry state of affairs is that though Rajput, Narang and a few other RSS nominees have been divested of their respective positions, many of the RSS men are still there in various institutions and they are also active from behind the screen, while Rajput is still busy writing in press in favour of the RSS agenda. Here we only give a short list of such individuals, with the contention that this list is far from being exhaustive.

1. L M Singhvi is a BJP member of parliament. He is still heading the governing body of a reputed institution of culture, namely, the Indira Gandhi National Centre of Arts.

2. Tarun Vijay is editor of the RSS’ Hindi organ Panchjanya. He is in the review committee and executive council of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication.

3. M V Kamath is a columnist in the RSS’ English organ Organiser. He continues to be in the Prasar Bharati board.

4. Sonal Mansingh, who campaigned for the BJP in the last parliamentary polls, continues in her position in the Lalit Kala Akadami.

5. Sudhakar Sharma continues to be the secretary of the same academy. He was appointed at the recommendation of a pro-RSS ‘historian’ S P Gupta who played a notorious role in falsifying and distorting the facts of history in relation to Babri Masjid, before its demolition and even after it.

6. Anupam Kher continues to head the Film Censor Board.

7. The BJP regime appointed Mrs Sarita Prasad as additional secretary in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. The move was made at the instance of former home minister cum deputy prime minister L K Advani, as her husband Ajay Prasad was an OSD (officer on special duty) under Advani. Surprisingly, the UPA government elevated her to the position of secretary in the same ministry.

8. Former minister Satya Narayan Jatia appointed P K Jajoria as director in the same ministry as the latter happened to be close to the RSS-BJP.

9. Kireet Parekh, yet another BJP-RSS man, continues in his key position in the Indian Council of Philosophical Research. And so on.

Apart from these individuals, there are still numerous who continue to be in key positions in important institutions like the University Grants Commission, NCERT, Indian Council of Social Science Research, Indian Council of Historical Research, Prasar Bharati, National School of Drama, Sangeet Natak Akadami, Publications Division, Press Information Bureau, Archaeological Survey of India, Central Hindi Directorate, National Museum, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, National Commission for Minorities, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (Shimla), numerous universities and other leading bodies. The list may indeed be so much prolonged that one wonders whether the RSS left any institution untouched during the BJP regime.

THERE IS NEED TO SEND A MESSAGE

SURPRISINGLY, contrary to what was promised in May after the UPA assumed power, its government has so far failed to act steadfastly in such cases. The case of Rajput is illustrative. Though this person did everything to push the RSS agenda ahead in the field of education, the UPA’s human resource development minister preferred to wait till July 13 when Professor Rajput’s term as the NCERT director was to end. On the other hand, the real need of the day was that Rajput should have been sacked forthwith, as that would have sent a clear-cut message to the secular and democratic masses of this country that the UPA government is serious about removing the venom of communalism from our body politic. 

More recently, the union home minister adopted the same sit and wait policy in case of the census registrar general J K Bainthia who was appointed by the previous BJP regime and, instead of giving him the marching order, preferred to wait till his term expired and he left on his own. To be true to reality, the game Bainthia played amounted to a deliberate mischief as he presented the census figures in a distorted manner to show that the Muslim population in the country had increased by a whopping 36 per cent during the decade 1991-2001, up from 32.9 per cent during 1981-1991. What Bainthia did for the purpose was to deliberately ignore the fact that the census had not taken place in Jammu & Kashmir in 1991 due to the disturbed conditions there, and therefore the 2001 figures for Jammu & Kashmir should have been kept out of consideration in order to compare the 1991 and 2001 figures for the Muslim population. Nay, very soon the reality was out and, after adjusting the 2001 figures for Jammu & Kashmir, it came to be known that the real growth rate of the Muslim population was not 36 per cent but 29.3 per cent, which was below the decadal growth rate of Muslim population in 1981-1991. 

The Census Department’s misdemeanour under Bainthia only gave the communal combine a chance to once again raise a big hullabaloo that Muslims were out to so much increase their population that they could relegate the Hindus into a minority position. That this old and worn-out RSS propaganda is patently false has since long been evident. Yet the Sangh Parivar eagerly clutched the distorted figures and same day BJP president Venkaiah Naidu even held a press conference to pontificate about the supposed danger to India from the Muslims. 

In sum, Bainthia was a fit case for sacking, which could have sent a powerful message across. But precisely this was not done by the union home minister.

In case of the NCPUL, its vice chairman Professor Gopichand Narang was simply asked to tender his resignation and go, instead of being sacked. Right now, in the Sahitya Akadami, there are allegations of bungling against him. Though he is the elected chairman of this premier body, one fails to understand what prevents the government from instituting an inquiry into these allegations. 

Yet, as Bainthia’s misdemeanour demonstrates in plain terms, these thousands of RSS men sitting in various positions all over the country are capable of doing incalculable damage to our secular ethos and composite culture. In fact, this is one of the most serious dangers facing the Indian nation today, and the UPA government will have to take determined steps to meet this threat. One may recall here that L K Advani slyly inducted thousands of RSS men into the radio, television and other media when he was the union information and broadcasting minister in the Morarji Desai government during 1977-79, and these very people were responsible for giving the whole of Indian media a communal orientation in the later decades. The situation in media had so much worsened during 1985-2003 that a number of newspapers were publishing communally motivated reports and even distorting facts for the purpose, so much so that the Press Council of India had had to pass severe strictures against several of them. But the thing to bear in mind is that many times more RSS men have penetrated into various institutions and not just the media, and are capable of doing a lot more damage. Any illusion on part of our UPA ministers that these RSS men would remain loyal to them personally or to our secular body politic may cost them dearly. The need is to act against them, and act promptly, vigorously, steadfastly.