Poet Of The Reich

It's terrific when a prime minister is a poet. It's terrible when a poet is the PM. And it's terrifying when a poet-prime minister indulges in doublespeak. He isn't confusing, he is scary. The contrary voices, words, emotions emanating from Vajpayee in Gujarat when he spoke to Muslim refugees and in Goa when he addressed BJP members is positively dangerous.

It's dangerous because the nation can no longer trust him. He has given oxygen to fascist Hindutva, the same Hindutva that he recently said we should distance ourselves from. The most dangerous consequence of Vajpayee's Goa theatrics stems from his failure to do what even US president George Bush did so clearly and emphatically—draw a distinction between jehadis and ordinary Muslims. Moreover, Vajpayee tacitly condoned the use of state machinery to attack Muslims. India will pay a huge price for Vajpayee's sins—because Hindu fascists are already targeting ordinary Muslims exactly the way the Nazis went after the Jews.

History repeats itself. The history of Germany in the 1920s and '30s is now repeating in India. What is alarming is from the '20s the votaries of Hindutva have been inspired by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Just to give a few examples: militarising society by emulating Italian fascist youth organisations like the Balilla and Avanguardisti, indoctrinating youths through propaganda and parades rather than educating them, propagating a doctrine of hatred and cultural superiority, using symbols of past greatness, fostering ultra-nationalism infused with religiosity, excluding religious or ethnic minorities from the nation concept, relegating women to an inferior position, supporting authoritarianism and a contempt for democracy.

Hitler believed in organised violence to achieve his ends. He had sturmabteilungen (storm-troops) to defend his meetings, to disrupt the meetings of liberal democrats, socialists, communists and to terrorise domestic foes. The Hindutva brigade have their Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sainiks to storm assembly buildings, demolish mosques, disrupt Medha Patkar's or Lone's meetings, ransack shops selling Valentine cards, burn Pepsi trucks, vandalise M.F. Husain's paintings, attack journalists. Hitler also used the storm-troopers to persecute Jews, especially Jewish merchants. He Nazified the state apparatus, using it to exterminate six million Jews. Nothing justifies Godhra. Nothing justifies the riots either. The right reaction to Godhra would have been to quickly arrest and bring the perpetrators to justice. But the BJP has shown it will shamelessly use state power to pursue its communal-fascist goals.

History also repeats within when it comes to Muslim-bashing. In attacking the minorities, the VHP, Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal are pursuing a goal set by M.S. Golwalkar who supported Hitler's policies over the Jews. In '93, at the height of the Bombay riots, Bal Thackeray said if Muslims behave like the Jews in Germany, they deserve the same fate. In 1929, Veer Savarkar said the rights enjoyed by Muslims should depend on the magnanimity of the majority. Encore in Bangalore 73 years later. Indulging in a Goebbelsian disinformation campaign, the Hindutva clan consistently typecasts all Muslims as jehadis, violent bigots disloyal to India.

To be fair to them, the Hindutva brigade is open about its motives and goals. The trouble is the secular liberals are in a state of denial. The Hindutva lobby said it would exercise the N-option. Nobody believed them till they went ahead and secretly exploded the bomb. They have declared their animus against Muslims—Bombay and now Gujarat prove they mean business. Gujarat was Hindutva's laboratory and now that they are confident of winning elections there, they will try to replicate the experiment in the rest of the country.To consolidate the Hindu vote, they will create a national psychosis. Chafing against the nda allies' restraining leash, the BJP is intent upon winning a majority on its own so that it can fulfil its Hindu Reich agenda. Their own hero Sardar Patel had accused the rss of spreading "communal poison" and in a letter to Golwalkar dated September 11, 1948, had grieved: "As a result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the incalculable life of Gandhiji." More tragedies will befall India if the bjp now aggressively pursues a communal agenda.

Around the world, there will always be issues that neo-fascists can whip up to grab power. In Europe, immigrants are their current pet-hate. But in all western democracies, and especially in Germany, neo-Nazi groups are banned. The state cracks down on them promptly, nipping them in the bud. If the state is strong, Indian fascists can't go very far. If not, the need is greater for all secular liberals to stop being browbeaten and defensive and come out vigorously against their hate agenda. The ranks of the silent majority should also join in. Post-Gujarat saw some excellent writing, soul-searching, civic action and litigation by secular liberals. But they need to be visible and vocal on a sustained basis to put the "pseudo-patriots", as Julio Ribeiro scornfully labels them, on the defensive. Likewise, NGOS must propagate communal harmony as part of their mainstream work. Instead of launching into an anti-communal tirade, which is a negative message, they could emphasise the positive effects of peace, togetherness, good governance and rule of law. Secular liberals must be proactive to prevent India from skidding into an era of violence, intolerance, authoritarianism and economic slowdown that experts now derisively call the Hindutva rate of growth. The unalterable truth is that nowhere has fascism and ultra-nationalism worked—not in Germany, not in Italy, not in Sri Lanka. Such misguided policies have wreaked havoc for decades, bankrupting the nation and robbing the future of entire generations of both the minority and majority communities. That's the kind of history we don't want repeated in India. Along the way, some of us may have lost our dreams. But this is a nightmare worth fighting against.