Why To Rout Communal Forces Is Essential

 Harkishan Singh Surjeet

COMING close on the heels of Maharashtra assembly polls, the soon-to-take-place assembly polls in Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana give the people of these states a chance to inflict yet another body blow to the Sangh Parivar’s designs by thoroughly routing the BJP and its allies. And if the people of these states do so, and it is more than likely that they will do so, they will be further strengthening the trend that began in the May 2004 Lok Sabha polls and continued in Maharashtra assembly polls a few months thereafter.

One cannot but emphasise here that one has to view the upcoming assembly polls in the context of a war against the communal, fascist forces. These polls constitute a part of this very ongoing war that is being waged in the electoral arena and in many other ways, in all the spheres of life.

HISTORY OF DECEPTIONS

THE need of this war can by no means be underestimated. It is not that the country is facing the threat of communalism only today. The threat was there even before independence and this very scourge led to India’s vivisection, accompanied by most horrendous events and one of the largest and bloodiest transfers of population ever recorded in history. Then, these forces lay low for some time after their heinous role in the Mahatma’s assassination, but soon they began to raise their heads again. In fact, in only one and a half decades of independence, the situation had become so critical that the then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, felt by 1963 the need of constituting a National Integration Council.

In this context, one has also to note that the communal forces have been trying every means at their command to capture power in states as well as at the centre. The fact is that whosoever has pursued the history of the RSS and its brigade, has come across numerous examples of the deceptions practised by these forces --- so numerous that one may compile a whole dossier of what conspiratorial tools the fascist forces have in their arsenal.   

The history of the RSS and its political outfit, the Jan Sangh, is full of such kind of deceptions. In 1967, for example, they joined the SVD governments in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other states without any consideration of ideology for the very purpose of controlling the levers of power.

Then, during the run-up to the March 1977 Lok Sabha polls, they merged the Jan Sangh in the newly created Janata Party and captured some important positions, including the information and broadcasting ministry, in the Morarji government that these polls threw up. At the same time, the Jan Sangh group of the Janata Party colluded with another constituent, and the two divided the state governments among themselves for the June 1977 assembly polls in 9 states. At the same time time, the Jan Sangh elements persistently refused to bring the RSS under the Janata Party’s discipline. On the contrary, they continued to pledge loyalty to the RSS even though they were formally the Janata Party’s members. This is what gave rise to the dual membership controversy and finally led to a split in the Janata Party, followed by the fall of its government in July 1979.

AFTER JANATA PARTY’S FALL

AFTER the Janata Party’s defeat in the January 1980 Lok Sabha polls, former Jan Sangh elements quit the party that they thought was now quite useless for them. In its stead, they formed the BJP and toyed with Gandhian socialism, integral humanism (whatever that may mean!) and some other ideologies so as to dupe the masses. But nothing worked and their Lok Sabha tally came down to 2 in January 1985. Finally, their desperation forced them to pursue a strident communal agenda and they raked the Ramjanmabhoomi/Babri Masjid controversy that culminated in the Babri demolition in 1992. Earlier, pursuing their nefarious agenda, they had not hesitated to bring the V P Singh government down, even though they had increased their strength by clinging to the VP led Janata Dal’s apron.

The net result of all these Sangh Parivar moves was that the late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed a sharp communalisation of society, which went to benefit the Parivar. Moreover, the BJP also capitalised upon the discontent generated by the new economic policies which the Narasimha Rao government initiated and the two United Front governments continued. It is another thing that, after the March 1998 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had to hurriedly cobble together a coalition with diverse kinds of parties, which came together on just one platform --- of sharing the spoils of power. Even then, this coalition, called the National Democratic Alliance, could come to power only after the Telugu Desam Party extended it outside support, in return for a heavy price. More or less the same situation continued after the Lok Sabha polls in 1999, following the fall of the Vajpayee government in April 1999.   

What is notable is that, compared to March 1998, the BJP did not gain a single more seat in October 1999; its seat tally remained pegged at 182. The strength that accrued to the NDA was due to the better poll performance by its allies.

HORRIFYING EXPERIENCE

BUT these six years (1998-2004) of the BJP rule in the NDA’s name were also the worst period in the country’s post-independence history --- insofar as national unity and communal harmony are concerned. The government not only vehemently pushed the saffronisation agenda ahead in fields like education and culture, in order to produce a generation of bigoted youth who could be the Parivar’s cannon-fodders in future. This was also the period that saw the most barbaric attacks on the minuscule Christian community in various parts of the country, followed by a veritable genocide of the Muslims in BJP ruled Gujarat.

As for the latter, though the Parivar’s goons perpetrated this genocide in the name of Godhra train tragedy of February 27, 2002, there is enough ground to believe that for months in advance the Parivar had been making preparations for some such massacre. Of late, an interim report of Justice U C Banerjee committee has said that Godhra was just an “accident” and “not a deliberate attempt,” and has demolished the “inflammable liquid theory” that the RSS-BJP and the Modi government had been propagating to justify the subsequent massacre. Yet, the fact is that the report only confirms the conclusion the two forensic reports had reached in May 2002. 

It is thus clear that the Sangh Parivar only exploited the Godhra incident for its murderous game, and that it would have used some other plea for the purpose even if Godhra had not been there.

As for economic policies, though the BJP capitalised upon the discontent generated by the World Bank-IMF policies, it followed the same policies after it came to power --- and all the more stridently. In this game, the regime made itself so utterly insensitive to the people’s travails that dozens of hapless villagers starved to death in Orissa but the central government sat tight upon the record store of foodgrains in its godowns. The BJP led government also dismantled our time-tested foreign and defence policies, and tried its best to become the US’s armed goon in South Asia.

As for corruption, the BJP government and its luminaries broke all records, thus paling all the past cases into insignificance. In sum, the said six years were a period of the most horrifying kind of experience for the people of this country.

STRONG FEELINGS 

IT was thus no wonder that our people came to develop strong feelings of revulsion against the BJP and all that it stood for. The Sangh Parivar leaders remained blissfully unaware of the undercurrent of hatred that was developing against them (nothing surprising, as they were extremely cut off from the real masses) and unleashed a high voltage “India Shining” propaganda barrage. But the masses were definitely thinking something else, without giving an inkling of it.

And the result was there for all to see. At the end of it all, the masses did not even give the BJP the largest party status and thus deprived it of the ground to claim that it should be called to form a government and given time to prove its majority. All its allies except a few also suffered --- most of all the TDP. 

It is evident that if our people have only recently rid themselves of the communal, fascist threat after six years of harrowing experience, any accrual of strength to the BJP, howsoever small, would help the Sangh Parivar in reviving the same threat.

Here, one has to note that May 2004 was no ordinary transfer of power in the sense we understand it; it was like getting rid of a demonic force that was holding the country’s future to ransom. For, as the CPI(M)’s 16th congress had noted in October 1998, the BJP was not like other bourgeois landlord parties; it was a communal party behind which stood the fascistic RSS aiming to convert India into a theocratic state. Hence, thrashing the communal forces is an essential condition for forging the policy struggle ahead. Any chance these forces get to divide the people on sectarian lines only relegates the struggle for alternative policies to the background. The coming elections in three states need be viewed in this light.

LONG-TERM PERSPECTIVE

YET, as Marxists, we cannot confine our vision to electoral arena alone and will have to adopt a long-term perspective centred on the country’s regeneration. And this explains why we are so much interested in these elections even if we do not have much at stake in Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana in electoral terms. For, as said earlier, a setback to the BJP in these states would mean one more setback to the RSS design of foisting a theocratic state upon the country. This is essential because desperation is forcing the Sangh Parivar to try to rouse base passions and divide the people --- in a repeat of its post-1985 strategy.

But this also means we have to adopt tactics that help us move towards a change in the correlation of class forces at all-India level. Right now, our strength is concentrated in only three states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, with some pockets of influence in Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu and a few other states. And if we take the electoral performance as a rough indicator, the Left strength as a whole is not more than 10 per cent of the population. But, needless to say, this situation cannot continue forever. If we do not move forward, we can only slide back.

For the CPI(M) and the Left, the need to move forward gets further heightened in view of the heavy responsibilities the turn of events has devolved upon them. Today, the people have great expectations from the Left and we do have to do our best to fulfil them. But this cannot be achieved by mere statements. Determined struggles on issues facing the people --- jointly where possible, independently where necessary --- have to be launched, and the results shown in concrete terms. This is absolutely essential so that the people learn the efficacy of struggle by their own experience, realise the need of uniting with other sections, and get mobilised for still bigger struggles. If at all, this is the only magic wand available for effecting a fundamental, pro-people change in the correlation of class forces, without which no regeneration of the country can even be imagined.