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Confessions of a BJP Supporter ....... by Saima Alvi 05 June 2002 15:47 UTC |
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Confessions of a BJP Supporter by Parag Vohra ------------------------------ I had always looked upon my days of union baazi as a youthful aberration. My involvement with the anti Mandal agitation was based on a vague and perceived sense of injustice, but it materialized into a hooliganism which passed with time, and a few well earned persuasive lessons from the Police. The subsequent Rath Yatra and the Mandir movement per se were qualitatively different for me. As anyone familiar with the political shifts of the early 1990s will recall, the Mandal issue directly brought the largely upper caste urban middle class into conflict with the government of the time. Even though it was the Congress which was the main opposition party, it was the BJP which was most affected by the Mandal issue. The carefully cultivated Hindu vote bank was disintegrating into a morass of inter-caste conflict. Something needed to be done and soon. The answer was a masterstroke of political strategy, the Rath Yatra to begin at Somnath in Gujarat and to end at Ayodhya. The rank and file of the BJP as well as affiliated wings such as the ABVP were energized about the Rath Yatra as it took attention away from the Hindu dividing Mandal commission, and it unified Hindus over a historical wrong. Since a majority of youngsters in the ABVP were not religious in the first place, an outsider might be surprised at the depth of feeling the Ram Mandir evoked. The Mandir issue however was never a religious issue; it was a communal one. It addressed the Hindu Kaum to support the rectification of an insult which had been caused by invading outsiders. The reader at this point will probably start wondering about the stupidity of rectifying an insult which was supposedly made 450 years ago, and this response is probably the sensible one. My own response to the Ram Mandir movement was initially cynical. Sure, I had grown up listening to stories of Partition, but those stories hardly ever painted the Muslims to be the villains of the piece. Those stories tended to paint the Congress Leaders as villains, more so of ineptitude rather than malice. It did generate a healthy skepticism towards the secular politicians who seemed to direct all their secularism towards Hindus. Gandhi being such an example, where his hunger strikes would be weapons of blackmail directed at Hindus alone. The modern secularists would lecture Hindus on keeping religion personal, but would line up outside the Jama Masjid to ask for Fatwas of Muslim votes. The Rath Yatra meandered its way across India, and we went around asking for donations and pitting up posters of “Mandir Wahin Banayengey.” By the time the Rath Yatra reached Delhi, the public was charged and as we went to temples of South and West Delhi neighborhoods, we would see a massive outpouring of support. There were a few in our crowd who were hardcore Hindutvawadis, the majority being people like me, in it for the fun, but with a vague sort of allegiance to the cause. I remember using some of the money for food on beef kebabs at Nizamuddin, but not feeling any guilt about it. The Rath Yatra ended in Bihar when Laloo Yadav’s government arrested LK Advani and prevented the procession from entering the state of Uttar Pradesh. Yes, we were still putting on a brave face and laughing about it saying that we expected this to happen. But this time the laughter was a bit forced. After Advani’s arrest, the BJP withdrew support to the ruling Janata Dal and elections were announced. The Mandir was one of the main issues, and as is usual, politicians of the main parties were given time to put forth their perspectives on national television. The conversion from cynic to true believer came for me from one speech. Mulayam Singh Yadav had emerged as the savior of Muslims in UP. He had openly threatened to fire on any BJP/VHP supporters who dared to enter Ayodhya. This particular speech was aimed at a national audience, and he asked if there was any proof that Bhagwan Ram was born at that very spot. An innocuous and perfectly logical question one might say. But his actual language was insulting and even designed to inflame; “Kya Ram ka kiraye ka parcha hai ? Kya Ram key naam ka wahan Ration Card banna hua hai?” (Is there a rent receipt for Ram? Is there a Ration Card in the name of Ram for that place?) I was stunned. Here was this chap, openly insulting a figure of respect for so many million Hindus with abandon. How many Muslim countries could he go to and get away with saying the same thing about Prophet Muhammad? Yes, we are Indians, and should not compare ourselves to countries that have chosen different paths, but secularism in India had degenerated into trashing the icons of the majority community and applying different standards for minorities. If the secularist politician had made it okay to have iftar parties and seek fatwas for Muslim votes, but at the same time had made it possible for a Hindu God to be insulted on TV, then we knew that secularism was not for us. I found out later, the effect of Mulayam Yadav had the same effect all over North India. Ironically, Mulayam Singh Yadav did more to fuel the Ram movement than any other Jan Sanghi leader. Post elections, Chandrashekhar came to power supported by the Congress, I had quit my liberal arts program and moved on to Hotel school. I was no longer involved in student politics but my sympathy for the Hindutva movement remained and was aggravated by incidents like the firing on unarmed Kar Sevaks by the UP police. One fine day, I was late for college as usual, grabbed the newspaper to glance at the headlines while I was stuffing egg and toast in my mouth. “Babri Majid Destroyed!” screamed the newspaper headline. I could not believe it. I was exultant to say the least. Finally, the Hindu would not be taken for granted. I rushed off to college and from there on to the old student wing headquarters. Everyone was in a mood of celebration. There was condemnation across the board, the media as well as from abroad, which confirmed to us that we had no allies and had to fight in isolation. The subsequent demolishing of temples in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the dismissal of BJP governments in all the ruling states and not just UP hardened our stance even further. We, and by that I refer to people with like minded views, were convinced that many voices spoke for the Muslims, be it the Arabs or the Pakistanis or even the “secular” politicians of India who depended on the Muslim votebank to win elections. As far as the Hindus were concerned, the Sangh could be the only spokesperson. The elections in UP brought back the BJP as well, confirming that we were the true voice of the hitherto unheard Hindu voice. The reader will perceive that I have hardly mentioned the Muslims themselves. That is because, at least at that time, the real enemy was the pseudo-secular government and sundry other political parties who pandered to the extreme Muslim organizations. However, there were specific issues about the Muslims that rallied the Hindutva masses. . The Muslim that we projected was not the rickshaw pulled or the tailor but the demagogues. Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, Syed Shahabuddin, the Imam of the Jama Masjid, all were critical towards demonizing the Muslim community. These leaders had openly declared their contempt for the Supreme Court of India at the time of the Shah Bano case. They had also, in harsh and separatist language, rejected a common Civil Code for citizens of India. The Haj subsidy etc were other examples of favouritism for one specific community. Pakistan was a handy tool as well. The case regarding Pakistan is fairly clean cut for Hindus. It is an enemy country, and the Hindus will by and large support the government in whatever course it chooses to pursue against Pakistan. In case of Muslims, we knew that a lot of Muslims had family in Pakistan. How could you expect a citizen of India to consider another country as an enemy if his brother in law lived there? I had such an experience with a Muslim guest who had come to our house at an Air Force base in Allahabad. This chap, who was a civilian employee of the Air Force, proudly related stories to us about his nephews in Pakistan. I remember being almost speechless at his perceived audacity, whereas the poor chap was probably talking in all innocence. I left India in 1995, and remained a supporter of the Sangh Parivar in my initial days. My initial disillusionment with the Sangh Parivar came about due to the economic policies articulated by the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and not any difference in it’s ideological posturing. My rejection of communal thinking came slowly as I immersed myself in a more individualistic culture. This was also the first time that I was interacting with Pakistanis. Ethnic and linguistic bonds proved to be stronger than religious bonds and I became really good friends with Punjabis from Pakistan. Subsequently, I believed that the BJP was different from the rest of the Sangh Parivar, and it was a nationalist organization not a communal one. Gujarat was the final nail in the coffin of a dead philosophy. As I mentioned to a Muslim friend recently, I feel like one of those Germans after WW2, who insisted they had no idea about the Holocaust, but no one believed them. This is where I’m at right now, disillusioned with the ones I had faith in, yet unable to accept those I had rejected many years before. Posted from http://www.chowk.com/bin/showa.cgi?pvohra_may1302 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? 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