The Beast HeDidn't Know

Narasimha Rao’s virtues were the same as Neville Chamberlain’s: both preferred appeasement over conflict and confrontation. They acted from the highest of motives: "peace with honour". Their failings too were the same: they failed to assess the nature of the beast. They believed the other side to be like themselves, reasonable men with reasonable objectives—and, therefore, apt to resolve a resolvable issue. What saved us from Germany’s fate was India’s inherent secularism, a secularism running deep and true that recoiled in horror at the outrage in Ayodhya and ended forever the BJP’s hopes of turning this India of all religions (and no religion) into a "Hindudom"—Savarkar’s own translation of his own coinage, "Hindutva".

The crux of Rao’s position is stated on page 48: "The BJP’s pseudo-religious movement could not have sustained itself on a purely religious plane; it needed a political reaction, to flourish politically. I cannot escape the uneasy feeling that we Congressmen (while in government) supplied it with just that. We also let our own religious susceptibilities go by default, with the same subconscious inhibition that any expression of religious sentiment on our part, even if we felt strongly, would be seen as ‘non-secular’. As a result, the BJP became the sole repository and protector of the Hindu religion in the public mind."

This, of course, is indistinguishable from the BJP’s perception of itself. This country of 85 per cent Hindus has never regarded the BJP as the "sole repository and protector of the Hindu religion". That is why, not even at the best of times for the BJP have they been able to win anything more than a fifth of the Hindu vote. Hinduism does not need a self-appointed "protector". It has the strength and resilience to protect itself, a genius to synthesise and evolve, a proven track record of five millennia of flourishing in diversity. There is no question of a political party being the "repository" of Hinduism. Hindus know that the only enemy to broad-minded Hinduism is narrow-minded communalism. The quintessential Indian ethos is not "Garv se kaho hum Hindu hain" but "Garv se kaho hum Hindustani hain". We Indians are secular not because someone has asked us to be but because we are. Period.

Moreover, it just is not true to say that secularists "let our own religious susceptibilities go by default". Was Gandhiji ever overtaken by a "subconscious inhibition" that proclaiming himself a Hindu would be ‘non-secular’? Did Indira Gandhi’s rudraksha mala hide her beliefs? I was with Rajiv Gandhi on all those 13 campaigns through Tamil Nadu where he was unfailingly taken to every temple of any significance, besides hours at the Om Shakti ashram at Melmaruvathur. And as for Jawaharlal Nehru’s known agnosticism, he confesses in a letter to Gandhiji from prison in 1933 how easy it is for the likes of himself and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru ("neither of us has any religion worth talking about") to carry their secularism on their sleeve. Implicitly, the greatness of the Mahatma lay in his being both religious and secular, indeed in his deriving his secularism from his spiritualism.

But when it came to religious bigotry challenging the secular order, Nehru insisted that principle must override all other considerations, including petty electoral apprehensions. In consequence, he won every political battle—worsting the doubting Thomases within the party and driving the likes of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee to form the Bharatiya Jana Sangh where it mouldered for 32 long years and continues now to moulder after a brief and unhappy stint in office. Let none of us ever forget Gujarat ’02. Nehru’s life and work show that in India hard, uncompromising secularism is not only sound idealism but practical politics. In the real India of unity in diversity, as distinct from the Hindudom of the Hindutva fantasy, secularism yields the big political dividend, communalism a momentary triumph.

Rao could have easily been both religious and secular, as most Congress leaders are—religious in his personal beliefs and secular in his political thought and action. But he thought, quite erroneously, that to politically prevail over the BJP, it was necessary for the Congress to rival the BJP as "protector and sole repository of the Hindu religion". Thus, he allowed those whose political convictions were based on their alleged religious beliefs to trick him into trusting them.

Rao describes in detail the unravelling of his misplaced trust. Although it had become obvious from as early as July 1992 that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad et al were determined to move ahead on building the temple where the masjid stood, even as late as October-November 1992, the prime minister remained deeply convinced that his coming triumph lay not in determined action by the State to maintain public order, even if this meant dismissing the Kalyan Singh government, but by remitting the resolution of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid to a conclave of men of religion. So, while the sadhus and the sants had a field day being escorted in and out of Race Course Road by ministers acting as escorts in the full glare of television cameras, hubris, as in a Greek tragedy, lay just round the corner. For, notwithstanding every measure and half-measure that Rao took to appease Advani and his merry band of savants and shankaracharyas, UP chief minister Kalyan Singh and his cohorts repeatedly asserted that nothing in the law or the Constitution or the courts would be allowed to stand in the way of the oath they had taken: Ram ki saugandh hum khaate hain/Mandir wahin banayenge, "wahin", of course, being the merab of the masjid which must needs be destroyed if the garbha griha of the temple was to come up there.

Thus, after an utterly hypocritical intervention at the National Integration Council meeting on November 2, 1991, at which he "gave an assurance" of his government’s commitment "to protect the structure", reiterated at the nic meeting on July 18, 1992, Kalyan Singh, in his one-on-one meetings with the prime minister on November 18-19, 1992, "refused to budge from his stand that the only comprehensive solution to the Ayodhya dispute was to hand over the disputed structure to the Hindus". The UP government then objected to central forces being stationed at Faizabad for use in the event of the kar sevaks transgressing their limits. The Centre responded by piling up yet more forces knowing full well that Kalyan Singh had repeatedly made clear that he just would not use them, whatever the provocation. These acts of defiance were capped by Kalyan Singh declining to participate in the next "short-notice" meeting of the nic called on November 23, 1992. That emergency meeting, through a unanimously adopted resolution, "extended its whole-hearted support and cooperation in whatever steps the prime minister considers essential in upholding the Constitution and rule of law and in implementing court orders". That was the moment to act. He had all of a week before him in which he could have taken over the state government, deployed the central forces to ensure that the kar seva was conducted within the bounds prescribed by the Supreme Court, and sent the kar sevaks home before they wreaked any further damage. Instead, Rao got himself coiled in niceties of constitutional propriety. The missed opportunity could not be retrieved.

He tells in his book of his address to the Congress parliamentary party meeting on the morrow of Black Sunday. I was there. I recall listening in bewilderment as he explained how the kings of old would always seek the views of religious gurus, but the gurus would then defer to the king’s decision once the decision was taken. This time the gurus had betrayed their king. It was this misplaced concern for "religious susceptibilities" in matters of state, this parleying with sants and mullahs in the mistaken belief that they represented the real India, that paved with good intentions his road to Nemesis. Instead, he should have heeded the words of his great predecessor Nehru, who, while fully respectful of religious sentiments that he himself did not share, placed his trust in the essential and unflinching secularism of the Indian people: "If any person raises his hand to strike down another in the name of religion, I shall fight him to the last breath of my life, both as head of the government and from outside."