The Sangh School of Falsification

Praful Bidwai, Frontline

Whenever the Sangh Parivar is criticized for its sectarian intolerance and bigotry on the basis of facts, it resorts to slander and personal attack. Its treatment of Communalism Combat is the latest example.

However one assesses Atal Behari Vajpayee’s record – and this column admittedly takes a dim view – it is undeniable that the Bharatiya Janata Party is pursuing a much larger agenda than what is contained in the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) shoddily drafted, slogan-oriented, manifesto, "For a Proud, Prosperous India". As its own leaders have unabashedly said, the BJP is guided by a certain vision of India, which goes far, far beyond this policy or program, this or that tactic or manoeuvre. This vision encompasses more than the mandir-Article 370-uniform civil code "trishul", which the BJP says it has for the time being put in abeyance, but which it also keeps raking up. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chieftain Rajendra Singh is the latest to revive the nasty demand that Muslims should hand over the Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi "temples" to Hindus. Parivar leaders have been raising these issues through out the past month.

The RSS-BJP vision, with its unique coherence, is that of a primarily Hindu India, resurgent after centuries of "foreign domination", an India fiercely nationalist, strong, in keeping with a tradition going back, according to its upholder, all the way to the vedic period. Whether this vision is called "cultural nationalism", civilisational patriotism, or plain Hindutva, it radically differs from our liberal, secular, pluralist Constitution. Its emphasis on hierarchical Hinduism, and on a puritanical interpretation of its texts, provokes understandable fears about Hindutva attitudes to issues relating to Dalits, adivasis, women, family, education, morality, knowledge, science and culture. After all, sanatanism has retrograde positions on all these matters.

No wonder social activists, as distinct from political leaders, have voiced such fears and concerns and often warned the larger public of the Hindutva menace and associated politics.

The latest example of such a civil society or non-governmental initiative is the public education campaign launched by Communalism Combat, a Mumbai-based magazine, in the form of a series of 10 newspaper advertisements. These make a scathing critique of the BJP’s claim to being "normal", tolerant or democratic. The campaign systematically demolishes a number of myths about Vajpayee, the RSS and the BJP. It cites unimpeachable facts – mostly their own quotes to back its contentions. It ruthlessly exposes the BJP to be a party of bigots, male supremacists, rabid casteists, who are against non-Hindus, indeed against Hindus at the lower rungs of the social hierarchy. The BJP emerges as a party that is so cynical in pursuing power that it can communalise the armed forces. It lavishes undeserved concessions on its cronies and is supremely indifferent to the masses. It is a threat to all that is healthy and valuable in Indian society. The Combat campaign has been effective at least partly because it fights the BJP on the favorable terrain of the mainstream national media, with its predilection (for the most part) for soft Hindutva, and its fear of attacking the BJP, especially after it has bestowed such favors as FM radio channels upon it, and used questionable methods to pressure it. Combat does not hide the fact that the space bought is "sponsored", presumably by anti-BJP political and business interests. Such sponsorship may not be to everybody’s taste: many non-governmental organizations hesitate to accept it. But few would deny that the campaign has bite: Rajendra Singh could not have relished being reminded that he called Gandhi-assassin Godse’s intentions "good" and "motivated by the idea of Akhand Bharat". Nor can Vajpayee deny that he said "the Sangh is my soul" and that he wrote to the colonial government denying that he played an active role in the 1942 Quit India Movement.

 

Combat is especially devastating on the Sangh’s vile anti-women attitudes. It cites BJP vice president Vijayaraje Scindia’s defence of sati (1987), Mahila Morcha president Mridula Sinha’s rationalization of wife-beating and dowry (1983), and the recent beating up of an 18-year-old college student for raising a question during Vajpayee rally in Muzaffarnagar. Combat involved a number of women’s organizations such as the Forum against the Oppression of Women, Manushi, Kali for Women, Ankur and Women’s Centre’s (Bombay) in this campaign.

The Combat advertisements have stung the Parivar hard. But rather than factually disprove its well-substantiated charges, the Parivar has characteristically launched a personal, ad hominem attack on Combat Communalism’s editors and Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat who it claims is on the board of directors of the magazine. The RSS mouthpiece, Panchajanya (September 12) carries vividly captioned "interviews" with , or quotations from, senior journalists like The Indian Express Shekhar Gupta, and The Times of India’s Dileep Padgaonkar, to create the semblance that they agree with the Sangh Privars tendentious charges against Combat. On close examination, it turns out that unlike hard-line sanghis, for example, Chandan Mitra, Kanchan Gupta, and N.K. Trikha, these journalists have refused to comment on the advertisements.

 

Panchajanya fails to answer even one of Combat’s 20-odd charges in its two page feature, but instead maliciously say that the magazine is financed by shady interests. It questions Combat’s credentials: an organization with out "address", and so on. But this is hardly more relevant than the provenance of the Parivar’s own finances, some of which remain mired in either mystery or in North America. Panchajanya’s profile of Communalism Combat and its parent Sabrang Communications, is that they are dark, semi-secret, "anti-Hindu" and "anti-national" organizations devoted to destroying communal harmony and hence deserving of attack. (Such profiles have been used in the past to provoke Parivar fanatics into attack or abuse.) Remarkably, it is joined in this by the Samata Party’s Jaya Jaitley who adds her own anti-Bhagavat angle to the slander.

Now, Combat editors Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad are both seasoned journalists. Anand was a staffer with The Observer group, and Setalvad broke one infamous story about the Bombay police’s partisan role during the January 1993 riots, publishing transcripts of a conversation in which an officer asks his men not to rescue Muslims from a devastating fire started by the Shiv Sena. According to them, the Panchajanya feature is substantially wrong. Admiral Bhagwat is not a director of Combat or Sabrang. And the Combat motto is "Hate Hurts, Harmony Works".

Vilification of secularists, based on willful falsification, is an old, well-rehearsed, parivar tactic. It has repeatedly used it in its desperate attempts to muzzle and malign individuals. I speak from personal experience too. Organizer and Panchajanya have repeatedly attacked me. An example of this Sangh School of falsification is their campaign in 1991, at the height of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, when I was Senior Editor with Times of India. On February 9 that year, I participated in a panel discussion organized by a small cultural organization, Jana Sanskriti, in New Delhi, along with Professor K.N. Panikar, Gyanendra Pandey and C.P. Bhambri, and Justice P. Subramaniam Poti.

I sharply criticized the anti-Babri mosque campaign as majoritarian, hate-driven and against the very foundations of India’s secular-democratic-constitutional order. I said its leaders must be dealt with firmly in accordance with the law and prevented from spreading hatred. Several news papers reported my remarks. Patriot distorted them, its reporter adding his own twist that Parivar leaders must be "disciplined to the point of being killed". Organiser seized on this, and, without checking with me or Jana Sanskriti, flashed the front-page headline: "Times editor’s fatwa to kill BJP men."

The story falsely linked the then Times editor Dileep Padgaonkar (alleging he too had "railed against" the Organiser on television) to the panel discussion and baselessly alleged that this was part of a larger plot: "Observers wonder whether the messianic zeal of the Times men is goaded… by their… proprietors’ business interests in the Gulf countries and Pakistan…". It accused me of having "taken to public forums to preach murder against BJP ‘obscurantists’… (and demanding) that BJP should be prevented from contesting elections…" This was a pure fabrication. The Organiser also equated secularists with "Islamic fundamentalists".

I was appalled. I published a clarification in Patriot on April 3, carried without comment or rebuttal. Padgaonkar sent a letter to Organiser refuting the malicious allegations against himself and me which the journal published with a vile editorial "Leftist Gunners", which further compounded its error. It refused to publish a clarification from Prof. Panikkar and Justice Poti. Meanwhile, a number of scholars and writers launched a signature drive. It said the Organiser’s attacks are "irresponsible and odious", and reminiscent of "witchhunts and campaigns of character assassination" aimed at muzzling "critical voices". "Distressingly Mr. Bidwai and others have received several physical threats and abusive calls too. No one who claims to believe in democracy and freedom of expression can condone such intimidation," it said.

The letter was signed by eminent persons, including Romila Thapar, Rajni Kothari, S.Gopal, Bipan Chandra, Prabhat Patnaik, L.C. Jain, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, Swami Agnivesh and Bhisham Sahni, Anil Agarwal, Lotika Sarkar, Madhu Kishwar, Habib Tanveer, Vivan Sundaram and several other teachers and citizens. Instead of publishing it and apologizing, Oragniser maliciously claimed that the letter was "a fraudulent document" and a "forgery" – merely because the copy sent to it had some overlapping signature, common in repeatedly photocopied circular letters.

This was exasperating. A manufactured story was published to malign someone. When 22 people of eminence protest against it, the letter is declared a "forgery". This would put to shame even the likes of Goebbels. Against such falsification, there is no defense – barring perhaps a prolonged criminal case. Such methods bear testimony to the fanaticism of the Parivar, and its paranoia about independently minded mediapersons and secular scholars.

There is a special edge to the calumny being hurled at Communalism Combat today. The BJP is no longer sure that it can pull off a victory in the elections. Its twin tactic of exploiting Kargil and attacking Sonia Gandhi on the issue of "foreign origins" has not worked. The party is only left with the rather shop-worn appeal of Vajpayee’s "image" which is confined to the upper middle class, which does not count much for numbers. Campaigns like Combat’s undermine even that appeal. They carry a special weight because they are not directly launched by the BJP’s party-political opponents.

The BJP has a huge stake in the present election. If it performs worse than it did last year, with say 20 to 40 seats less, its claim to lead the NDA decisively and hegemonically will be weakened. It is not good if the NDA does better than in 1998. To call the shots the BJP itself has to do better. Anything less would give it the image of a declining force – no longer unstoppable in the decade-long "forward march". Parties like the BJP need the upbeat image for the "bandwagon" effect: many people vote for extreme right-wing forces because they are in the ascendant. If this changes, the BJP stand to lose more than just seats.

No wonder the BJP’s campaign is a full-throttle, maximalist, no-holds-barred one. It is leaving nothing to chance. Unlike the Congress, which for a while fumbled, and made many tactical mistakes, the BJP has conducted itself in a planned, organized, purposive, manner. It can accept failure – indeed anything other than a big victory – only with the greatest of difficulty and with the least grace. What is on test is not only the party’s appeal, but its will to power.

That is precisely why the BJP has polarized the political situation, packing educational institutions breaching electoral norms, shamelessly trying to politicize the armed forces, and resorting to slander. In some respects, it has followed a political scorched-earth policy, doing many things on the assumption that it might not return to power. The BJP’s legacy translates into a terrible choice for its successor, which will be called upon to dismantle the damage that the communalists have done – in ways that (wrongly) look like replicating the same methods. This culture of confrontation is not exactly what India needs, but there may be no alternative to it if Hindutva’s soldiers battle on in their utterly unscrupulous ways.

The choice that confronts the Indian voter is in some ways simple, even stark: either a politics based on Paranoia, calumny, half-truths and lies – necessary to sustain a hateful exclusion-, or an inclusive, pluralist, secular and democratic politics that believes in healing social rifts, in caring and shaping, in building a humane future for our people.