An Equal Reaction

On one of the Interact boards, RSaxena referred to VHP as India's KKK. That really hit home hard. Somewhere along the way, a bunch of harmless old farts has turned from an amusing sideshow into a virulent menace that could destroy all that India

stands for. How did this happen?

Somewhere deep down, forget all the holier-than-thou “we Indians” bullshit, was the genuine belief of many that Hindus were never the aggressors. All that's now vanished in a puff of burning train smoke.

We don't know WHAT happened at Godhra. How a 2000 strong mob was let loose on a bunch of helpless Hindus, mostly women and children, is something that is unfathomable. There were stories about how the karsevaks "taunted" the largely Muslim chaiwalas at Godhra and the earlier stations, thereby provoking them to violence. But violence on THAT scale? 2000 people responding the way they did? Sounds implausible.

What’s even more implausible though is that the supposedly Newtonian reaction to this was the massacre of over 600 Muslims in different parts of the state. And that’s just the official figure.

In the aftermath of Godhra, what was most shameful was the response of senior VHP leaders to the incident. Vishnu Dalmiya gave a television interview where he repeatedly referred to "them" as the aggressors --- when pressed as to who "they" were, he said quite simply: "the Muslim side". There were incredibly stupid remarks ---most later denied rather unconvincingly---on how a "provoked" Hindu populace would "inevitably" react. Narendra Modi claims now that all his statements were “misquoted” and he smugly challenges reporters today to “produce sound bites of those statements.” Reports that police stood by doing nothing or even in some cases actively supporting the looters and arsonists are not that difficult to believe. Having lived through the horror of Mumbai ‘92-93 and then reading the Ramkrishna Report much later: it’s not inconceivable that under duress, men in uniform can be as partisan as the rioters themselves. Why should that be so hard to believe? Is there anybody naïve enough to assume that the kind of person who lets you off for jumping a traffic signal by palming a tenner as chai-pani is not capable of looking the other way when his righteously angry Hindu brethren attack and burn Muslim homes and bakeries?

The BJP since taking over power at the centre has done what it reasonably can to dissociate itself from the Hindu fundamentalist viewpoint. But it’s a link that’s being fast tested to the limit. Sooner or later, a clean break must be made. The swamis need to be made aware --- and quickly--- how irrelevant they are in the context of what a progressive India needs. They have taken the credit for the BJP’s electoral successes long enough. It’s time somebody called their bluff.

This may be difficult for a lot of people to understand – especially Pakistanis who are always fed the Sonia-Mulayam view of things—but when the BJP first rose to power, “mandir wahee banayenge” might have been a nice tagline that worked, but to many young educated voters, the BJP represented a bunch of respectable elder statesmen who promised a cleaner, better society. That they chose to call it “Ramrajya” mattered little because it was bound to be a better state than the unholy mess 40 years of Congress rule had left us in. Those youngsters have grown up today. But the BJP, it seems, hasn’t.

Sadly the “clean” image has fast eroded and today the BJP stands exposed for what it has become- just another political party with gangsters on its rolls and power-grabbing on its mind. And while senior party members may bemoan this in private as political necessity, surely they have to accept that the Sangh Parivar connection has played a large role in the BJP’s decline. Having nurtured the VHP puppy from its infancy, they now cannot cope with the bloodthirsty hound it has turned into. Well, the fangs are bared now, and Vajpayee, Advani and the rest of them are doing what they do best. Nothing.

It’s so disgusting to see the wounded looks in the “Hindu” leaders’ eyes as they weep about the Godhra massacre and promise 2 lakhs each to the families of those who died. People have questioned why a Hindu life is worth 2 lakhs and a Muslim life just half that. That is not even the point.

Which is? The VHP has to take responsibility for its actions: what happened at Godhra and subsequently all over the state was a consequence of what the VHP is doing at Ayodhya: building a temple over the ruins of a mosque. No amount of bending the truth can change that. “There was no direct provocation,” one says. “We are only using the undisputed land around the site for temple construction,” says another. Yeah right.

It’s bad enough that many Hindus who mouth platitudes of equality in public will, in the safety of their homes and offices, say the most outrageous things and practice the worst kinds of discrimination against Muslims. The tragedy is the VHP and its political supporters have made it fashionable to be that way. It’s disgusting that a fair percentage of those that burned Gujarat in the aftermath of the train incident were educated, even "English-speaking" middle-to-upper-class, educated and presumably thinking individuals. Is it possible that such people would take to the streets indulging in killing and looting just by the mere "provocation" of Godhra? Isn't it more likely that the average Hindu would mutter his prayers a bit more frequently then usual and stay indoors while things return to normal? What was it that gave these violent mobs the idea that what they were doing was somehow morally righteous and justifiable?

Or maybe I’m over-generalizing. After all, Mumbai is peaceful. But then we had the riots. And the blasts. We’re thinking as human beings now. Scared for our lives. Like a journalist friend of mine says, when the bodies start piling up under the stairways outside the morgue, you stop caring if they’re Hindu or Muslim. I hope that isn’t the price we all have to pay for peace. Somehow I doubt it. All it takes is some sound, decisive, responsible political leadership. Is that too much to ask?.

If Narendra Modi has an ounce of shame, he will resign immediately as CM of Gujarat, says one side. If Sonia and Mulayam have an ounce of shame between them, they will stop trumpeting their "skoolar" values and get real, says the other. Without realising that what's happened is a tragedy, the after-effects of which India will have to live with for a long time to come. Why on earth did it all have to happen? Just so uninformed idiots like "management guru" Jack Trout, in Mumbai conducting a 20,000/- a head marketing seminar could mouth platitudes about foreign investments being low in India because of "this kind of instability"?

So in the end, this is what it boils down to: the filthy politicians have played their dirty power games and thousands of innocent people have died. But how innocent is innocent? If you have the freedom to elect your own governments and switch them around at will, you surely also have the opportunity to vote the right people into power. Or enter the fray yourself, for all the right reasons.

Somehow that thought is what keeps hope alive. Viva le democracy.