Hindutva's Last Gasp

The attacks on Christians and their places of worship in the Dangs tribal district of Gujarat are deplorable. But the wholesale condemnation being heaped on the bjp will not further the cause of secularism in India. It might do the exact opposite. The outcry among intellectuals and the media creates the impression that the entire Sangh parivar, including the bjp, is indulging in or abetting the attacks. Since the bjp is in power in Gujarat, it is being assumed that the state itself is terrorising the Christians. For obvious reasons, the Congress is doing its best to propagate this view. This is a grossly distorted version of what actually happened and what the bjp's response has been.

Let us free ourselves from the rhetoric of secularism and Hindutva that the media, the vhp and political parties have loaded on the conflict and examine what really happened. The violence at Ahwa and elsewhere has been perpetrated by groups of Hindu and Christian tribals on each other. The police and the district administration made mistakes initially, but once they had clear directives, took swift action to bring the situation under control.

Turn to the national level: the virulent condemnation of Christian missionary activities in Dangs and threats against Christians elsewhere in India by the vhp drew strong criticism from prime minister Vajpayee and home minister Advani. At the bjp's national executive meeting in Bangalore, Vajpayee announced his intention to visit south Gujarat, and did so a few days later. Home secretary B.P. Singh criticised the state government and district administration for allowing a rally of the Hindu Jagaran Manch (hjm) on Christmas day. Nowhere in this pattern of events is there any lapse from the correct and established procedure for dealing with social disturbances. Thus, any charge that the state administration and more specifically the central leaders of the bjp have encouraged, let alone instigated, attacks on missionaries and Christian communities is completely unfounded. Those who are making such charges, like the Congress and now Laloo Yadav, are doing so to harvest political capital at the bjp's expense. This is only to be expected in a competitive democracy, but it will not help the cause of secularism.

We can further the cause of secularism only if we identify the true root of communal intolerance and help those fighting it. The root is not the bjp but the lunatic fringe within the Sangh parivar, the vhp and the Bajrang Dal. It does not take much acumen to identify the hjm as an offshoot of the former, and the arsonists who are burning churches and prayer halls as cohorts of the latter. These people are monsters who, if they had their way, would plunge India into a sea of blood and make it disintegrate within less than a decade. But the threat they pose has been recognised by the leaders of the bjp. And they have not minced words in condemning their actions despite the fact that they all spring from the same stable.

Ever since the bjp came to power, its leaders have been marginalising this lunatic fringe and the pace has picked up in recent months. Today, its economic prescriptions have been decisively rejected. Its members have been scrupulously kept out of government bodies like the National Security Council and the prime minister's councils of economic and industrial advisors. No vhp or Swadeshi Jagaran Manch leader has been appointed governor or ambassador. And that is the true cause of the attacks on Christians, the burning of Husain's paintings, the sporadic crusades against inter-communal marriages, and the so far unsuccessful attempt to revive the anti-mosque agitation in Mathura and Varanasi.

These are not signs of Hindutva's revival but of its imminent death. By revealing its innate lunacy and bankruptcy, the lunatic fringe is destroying itself. We should help it to do so. Lumping the bjp, Vajpayee and Advani together with the Singhals, Katiyars and Gurumurthys of the Sangh parivar weakens the former and strengthens the latter. When the Congress, in particular, goes on the rampage against the entire bjp and starts washing the country's dirty linen in front of foreign leaders, it pushes the moderate leaders of the bjp into the arms of the lunatics, lends respectability to their raving and, worst of all, turns Sonia Gandhithe best leader the party has had in a long timeinto a vulnerable target of Indian jingoism.

Those who truly wish to serve the cause of secularism should do the following things. First, highlight the schism between the moderates and the lunatics in the Sangh parivar and strengthen the hands of the former in dealing with the latter. Second, concede that the violence has not been entirely one-sided. At Ahwa, the actual stone throwing was begun by Christian youths. This does not exonerate the hjm, but neither does it the youths. Third, concede also that the hjm wouldn't have got its chance had the church in south Gujarat not been playing with fire by converting minors to Christianity. This opened it to the charge that it was doing so without taking the permission of their parents, which is in any case a violation of the law, and gave the hjm the springboard it needed. Fourth, affirm and insist that conversion, per se, to any religion is an individual's right, and remind the people of India that Christians are as Indian and as patriotic as any Hindu.

One has only to look at the manning of the armed forces, and to think of the people who have laid down their lives for this country to realise that a disproportionate number of them are, in fact, Christians. Add to this the missionaries' contribution to education and their programmes for social uplift in a country where the caste system insulates most people from humanity towards the poor, and we have much to thank Christianity for.