People's Democracy

  Rajasthan: What The RSS Is Doing To The State

Nalini Taneja

THE tragedy of this decade for the Indian people, and for the same reason a challenge for the Left, is the perfect partnership between the social and political forces pushing through the agenda of economic liberalisation and Hindutva. They operate in two ways through all bourgeois political parties. At one level, the Congress turns a blind eye to the BJP’s anti-people economic policies, particularly in the states where it holds the government, while the BJP decides to do the same for the Congress both in the states where it rules and in the Centre. Most other bourgeois political parties open their mouths only as and when they can push forward their caste interests or assert their dominance in a particular state. At another level, within each party as well the right wing consensus between political conservatism and economic liberalisation is getting more properly cemented. All bourgeois parties are to a very great degree prepared to go along with both anti-people economic policies, even if they oppose the BJP in electoral politics. The right wing fascist agenda of the RSS demands this a gradual, but steady shift, interspersed with quick sudden attacks on peoples livelihoods in the form of implementation of specific policies or attacks on minorities, to a politics where the alternatives are controlled by variants of the Right.

It is in this context that one has to see what has been happening in states like Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh, both BJP ruled states today. And one can clearly see how the Congress through its anti-people policies paved the way for the RSS in these states, which BJP could simply take over.

ATTACKS ON THE MINORITIES

In Rajasthan, during the tenure of Vasundhara Raje there have been attacks on both Christians and Muslims in the space of a few months. We wrote about the attacks on Christians in our earlier columns. More recently, in the beginning of this month the state home minister, Gulab Chand Kataria, himself instigated violence against the Muslims in the Bhilwara district, which lies in the south eastern part of Rajasthan. According to a PTI sourced news on website indianfo.com (April 9, 2005), the hoisting of a flag atop a mosque in Bhilwara on April 8, morning triggered a communal clash prompting police to open fire in the air and lob teargas shells to bring the situation under control. One person was injured in the communal flare up that ensued in Mandal area, some 15 kms from Bhilwara, and there were processions and counter processions, at the end of which the police arrested 25 Muslims. Kataria’s visits were instrumental in vitiating the atmosphere.

A team from Sadbhav Manch and Muslim Forum visited the town later on April 15 and found the Muslims there in a state of shock and terror, being targeted by both, the communal outfits of the Hindutva and the police. Many who were forced to migrate from their surrounding villages due to the communal tension, found it difficult to return to their homes. At a press conference the team stated that Kataria had given clear signals to the police not to take action against the rioters who burnt a dozen shops of the Muslims in Mandal, damaged two mosques-including the jama masjid-and two tombs in the town and drove Muslims out of several villages. In short, the state home minister, completely abdicating his constitutional obligations, acted like a hard core RSS activist during the entire month, and troublemakers felt visibly encouraged every time he visited the town. In some cases there is evidence that policemen actually provided kerosene and diesel to the arsonists. Shortly after when some Muslims allegedly stoned a post-Holi procession, the police allegedly raided the homes of Muslims in a locality situated far from the trouble spot and smashed household goods and took away cash, mobile phones and jewellery, besides humiliating women and elderly people and beating up a large number of youngsters, arresting 25 of them on charges of attempt to murder. (Hindu, April 19, 2005).

The details show the familiar pattern of government and police complicity in attacks on Muslims and intimidation of the victims and encouragement to Bajrang Dal and VHP goons. The pattern is all too familiar, and not less dangerous for being so. Similar incidents can be sited for preceding few years as well, as detailed reports in Communalism Combat and Milli Gazzette will show: Asind (Bhilwara) and Kalinger (Banswara) and in Sarada village of Udaipur district were part of these many trial tests.  And it is generally such small sequences of communal attacks which constitute building blocks for calamities, as Gujarat has shown only too well.

HINDUISATION OF TRIBALS

This is essentially a tribal region where it has been easy to exploit the vulnerability of this oppressed tribal population to conduct an insidious social and political engineering. The region is subject to regular droughts accompanied by the inevitable scarcities of jobs and food, resulting in acute hunger, malnutrition, disease and migration. The tribals here have either no or very small agricultural holdings on hill slopes with little productivity due to poor soil and rains. Mainstream development has bypassed them. Irrigation projects, industries, mining, and transport routes have displaced them. They work as industrial, construction and mining workers at a pittance. For food and seeds they are burdened with loans at high interest rates from traditional moneylenders. A very large number migrate to industrial towns in Gujarat - earlier in textile mills and now in hazardous chemical factories, living in hovels, suffering from alcoholism, diseases like TB, skin disorder or AIDS. In this context, during the last decade and half, under the garb of "social, cultural and educational" activities, the VHP armed with government and foreign funds has conducted systematic programmes for ‘Hinduisation’ of these tribals. (M Hasan, formerly at Raj. State Inst. of Pub. Admin., Jaipur in Milli Gazzette, Oct 1-15, 2004).

ENGINEERING COMMUNAL CONFLICTS

VHP has had a very deliberate policy of engineering dalit-muslim and tribal- muslim conflicts in the region, with frequent programmes of jalabhisheks. Dargahs and other places of syncretic worship have been deliberately targeted by them and styled as poojasthals during these many years. Market places have been communalised and used for isolating Muslims, hitting out at their livelihood (Commualism Combat, November 2004).  A PUCL report on the distribution of trishuls is an eye opener. It shows that more than 6,000 trishuls were distributed in Rajasthan soon after the 2002 carnage in Gujarat, and the pace of arming people increased rapidly after the BJP victory in Gujarat. More than 2,600 people were armed with trishuls in Rajasthan in less than 35 days in 2003. In the next 20 days, 9 other such ceremonies were conducted. By now such distributions, along with the accompanying hate campaigns and distribution of communal literature have been ensured by them in almost every district of Rajasthan. The year 2002 saw 21 incidents of communal violence and riots in Rajasthan as compared to 5 in the year before, and the VHP’s selection of time and place for trishul distribution in 2001 and 2002 clearly brings out the linkages between communal violence and trishul distribution programmes in the state.

The linkages between trishul distribution and mobilisation of dalits for the Hindutva agenda is also clear. The programmes directed at dalits invariably have banners proclaiming “all Hindus are one”: the dalits are being allowed to be armed, a right traditionally denied to them, and then they are motivated to use them against Muslims. One will recall that Dalits were similarly mobilised by the VHP in large numbers in Gujarat. 

GUJARAT STRATEGY PURSUING

Before our very eyes we can see the RSS led Hindutva forces carrying on with their strategy which succeeded in Gujarat. The communalisation of the state machinery, particularly harbours great dangers for the democratic movement in the state, needless to say, as state actions on peasant protests in the state have shown. But it is also leading to the communalising and brutalising of society as such, which cares little as the poor get excluded from the fruits of their own labour: increasingly deprived of education, health, and even food and water resources.

A survey by Rajiv Gupta of private and government school textbooks used in Rajasthan schools shows that the BJP lost no time in bringing back its own versions once it took over the reigns of government from the Congress in the state. It also shows the wide adaptability of the private publishing world to the nuances of government policies. The Hindutva agenda is reflected not just in the government school texts, but in the privately published textbooks as well, which means there is little by way of alternatives that is available, and also the deep penetration and hegemony of the communal agenda in the field of education in BJP ruled states.

In such a context, an alternative vision of society and struggle can come only from aligning the fight against communalism with the struggles against the anti-people policies of the ruling class. Only a people with an alternative secular vision, can become soldiers in the fight for democracy: without it discontent can equally take a right wing turn.