For God's Sake, Beware!

THE murder of Graham Staines and his children is unforgivable. The loss that his wife and their surviving child have suffered can only be comprehended by those who have themselves suffered irreparable loss. The damage our country has suffered is substantial, and some of it may prove irreparable, for whatever traits Hindus and Hinduism may have been known for, extreme bigotry was not among them. Even in a violent land, Staines death holds a special quality of betrayal. He was no innocent bystander caught in events beyond anyones control. He chose to be in India. He dedicated his entire life to India. He loved India and its people and, miracle of miracles, his wife still does. But India made him pay for his love with his and his children's life. And blighted the lives of those he left behind.

The outpouring of anguish and anger by President Narayanan, and virtually everyone else whom one respects, has done little to assuage our sense of shame. That's why so many of us feel an urgent need to identify a culprit, to put the blame on some group, and to punish it. The impulse is natural: throughout history, human beings have tended to deal with acute social trauma by going into a frenzied search for causes. Too often, however, the search degenerates into a hunt for scapegoats, for when a society is unable to identify or remedy the true cause of trauma, it often chooses to cauterise itself instead by killing the diseased part. Surrender to this impulse is the greatest danger Indian secularism faces today.

The danger is real, for even before the alleged culprits have been interrogated; even before the alleged mastermind, Dara Singh, aka Rabinder Pal Singh, has been caught, virtually the entire intelligentsia has concluded that the murder was the work of the Bajrang Dal. So great is the need to blame, and so great the hostility to the Bajrang Dal, that anyone who even cautions against jumping to a hasty conclusion, or suggest there might be another explanation and another culprit, is being accused of condoning the murder. Inevitably, these include bjp leaders and indeed the entire Sangh parivar. This is not only wrong in itself; it belittles Graham Staines by leaching the poignancy out of his death and turning it into a symbol.

The Bajrang Dal is far from blameless. To it, and to its supporters in the Sangh belongs the responsibility for creating, over the past year, the climate of imagined grievance, and of lawlessness and terror. None of them can therefore escape vicarious responsibility for the foul deed. But a vast divide separates vicarious from original responsibility. That should be crossed only after the killers have been identified and their affiliations exposed. Today it is not willingness to condemn or condone the Staines death but willingness to cross or not cross that divide that separates the secular from the Hindu intelligentsia. Be it Vajpayee, Advani, Kushabhau Thakre, or Murli Manohar Joshi, not one bjp leader has condoned the murder. On the contrary, they have said that the guilty must be apprehended and punished. It is only in their unwillingness to accuse the Bajrang Dal without more proof that they have differed from other political parties, and from the secular intelligentsia. This is where anguish and shame are leading the secular intelligentsia astray. For in crossing the divide without further proof, they are offending the principles of justice and putting not only themselves, but the cause they wish to serve, in the wrong.

This is not to imply that the Sangh's refusal is born out of a high-minded concern for justice. On the contrary, the various shades within it reflect the extent to which they are prepared to accept vicarious responsibility for the murder. From Madan Lal Khurana who has openly accepted it, and Vajpayee who seeks to atone for it, to S.K. Jain of the Bajrang Dal and Giriraj Kishore of the vhp who reject all responsibility and seek to put it on the missionaries instead, the reactions mirror the Sanghs terrible internal conflict. It is imperative for the others not to jeopardise the outcome of this conflict, for in that may lie the salvation or damnation of the India we cherish. Yet that is what the urge to condemn threatens to do.

There are good reasons, other than an abstract concern for justice, for refraining from hasty condemnation. There is a world of psychological difference between the holding of threatening rallies designed to provoke reactions from hostile groups, and then burning churches or mosques and committing murder. The first has been the Sangh's way of politicising an issue. The second has never been its way because all of its moves have been designed to gain political support, and murder defeats that purpose.

BUT it's possible that the Bajrang Dal is indeed involved. Had it (and the vhp) been fully under control of the rss and the bjp, such a tactical mistake could not have occurred. But the gradual secularisation, particularly of the bjp, has turned the more rabid elements into renegades. If this has happened, the best way to deal with the Bajrang Dal is to insist that the guilty be booked. This will expose it, and its supporters, and strengthen Vajpayees hands.

But there is yet another reason to avoid haste. It is not impossible that the murder was commissioned by some entirely different agency. Thakre's accusation of the Congress can be dismissed, but local rivalries can't be ruled out. Nor can another, more sinister possibility. The effects of six months of Christian-baiting have demonstrated how easily the issue of conversions to Christianity can destabilise the government. Can we be sure that those who do not want Indian democracy to stabilise, who have watched the gradual decline of religious conflict and the evolution of the bjp into a centrist party, and the emergence of a stable bipolar democratic system, are not behind the killing? The theory is far-fetched, but history is replete with such examples.