The BJP has grown and thrived by evoking the worst in this country’s citizens. It cannot be the presumption that what has been evoked, and what is on display, will disappear on its own by not facing up to it. This is just wishful thinking. What is the point of an opposition that is afraid to even state that it is fighting for a polity where every citizen is seen as equal, where hierarchies of caste and the exclusion of any community from our politics are not acceptable? Indeed, what is the point of a country where such a statement cannot be asserted with confidence?
Should the Congress have called for a ban on the Bajrang Dal?
The question here is not whether the Bajrang Dal—the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, which has a history of perpetrating communal violence—should be banned but whether the Congress should have called for a potential ban in its manifesto for the Karnataka assembly election. The short answer is a resounding yes.
From as far back as 2007 in Gujarat, I have heard the argument, both in personal conversations and closed-door meetings with eminent civil-society voices, that the opposition should not confront Narendra Modi on the turf where he is strongest: the public use of whatever he means by the term “Hinduism.” Instead, the argument goes, the Bharatiya Janata Party should be confronted on its failures of governance, such as income disparities, slowing growth, inflation or demonetisation.
The problem with such a claim is evident. First of all, it excludes from the domain of governance the fundamental question of the equality of all citizens in a constitutional democracy. What possible idea of governance does not deal with the equal treatment of citizens or the protection of minorities from bigotry and violence? Second, this strategy has never worked. Shying away from calling out the BJP’s bigotry and standing up for the rights of all citizens, rather than the Hindu majority, has hardly ensured the opposition striking success against the BJP. Elections have been turned into communally charged events not because the opposition has given the BJP an opportunity but because the BJP can turn up the heat on bigotry as and when it wants. Not confronting the fundamental problem with the BJP allows the party to pick its weapon of choice to display its idea of Hinduism. When this happens, the opposition is forced to react, reduced to absurdities in its attempt to portray its fealty to some idea of Hinduness.
The situation in Karnataka has worked out differently. There is a lot of reportage around the fact that the BJP has chosen to go with a campaign focussed on issues other than Hindutva. But consider the evidence. The party’s Lingayat problem is centred around the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s ideological belief that prevents it from accepting schisms within its idea of a Hindu community. It has also chosen to be clear about relegating Muslims from a share in power and public life by taking away the four-percent reservation that existed for the community. It has also spent the past year orchestrating a virulent campaign over the use of hijabs by Muslim women in educational institutions.
This is the public manifestation of the domination of BL Santhosh, an old RSS hand who is now the BJP’s national general secretary, over the state unit. As the current cover story of The Caravan makes clear, we are witnessing a transition in the state that parallels what had happened at the centre when the Modi era began. The BJP before Santhosh, like the BJP before Modi, was as invested in the politics of bigotry that excluded and targeted Muslims, but it was only with Modi and Amit Shah that this turned into a strategy where intense booth-level management was combined with a focussed campaign that drew on a host of such issues that were picked up and discarded, narrowing down to those that were evoking a response.
The transition to a new BJP in Karnataka does suffer from a serious problem: Santhosh is not someone who can be the face of a campaign. He is a backroom boy. At best, he is an Amit Shah, with an ability to coordinate and drive the party and the campaign machinery, able to handle the intricate jati-level micromanagement that is a key to the BJP’s success. But he is no Modi, and this drawback is evident as the party works to ease out the Yediyurappa generation—it lacks a local face to charge the campaign.
In this mix, the Congress has shown rare electoral courage by naming the Bajrang Dal and listing the organisation among those that can potentially spread discord in the name of a religion. This evocation of the Bajrang Dal is in keeping with Rahul Gandhi’s oft stated comparison of the RSS with the Muslim Brotherhood. However, if it is to proceed with this line, the Congress cannot do so by sidestepping the core issue in the manner Gandhi has often chosen to do. As is clear from The Caravan’s February cover story on his Bharat Jodo Yatra, he does evoke the hatred in the RSS’s worldview but then prefers to render it in economic terms. “There is a particular vision that the RSS and BJP propose,” he said at a press conference during the yatra. “It’s a violent path. It’s a hate-filled path. It’s a path that is designed to create two Indias. One is an India where there are five or six billionaires, and the other India where everybody else will live in poverty in desperation. That’s their vision.” This is far from the truth—while the RSS’s vision is indeed about two Indias, these are not the Indias of the rich and the poor but the Indias of “Hindus” and “non-Hindus.”
For the moment, in invoking the Bajrang Dal, the Congress has chosen the terrain on which the ideological battle is taking place, and it shows. The BJP’s attempt to suggest that any criticism of the Bajrang Dal is an attack on Bajrang Bali, or Hanuman, is a stretch. The Modi roadshows and the extensive media coverage driven by the BJP’s money cannot take away from the farce of what is on view.
Irrespective of the result, the opposition should not shy away from taking on the BJP head on. The argument that the BJP should not be confronted on its core ideas, despite the repeated failure of this proposition, has been persisted with by claiming that the defeat would have been even worse if the BJP had not been engaged on core issues. This is an argument that can never be refuted because it is an excuse for all times.
It is time to let it go. The opposition has to forego the defensive and stand for a point of view that is not a reaction to the BJP but an assertion of values, of our common humanity. It is against this background that they must choose to attack the BJP on what it considers central to its worldview. The choice requires some adroitness, and should force the BJP into terrain it may be uncomfortable defending.
The BJP has grown and thrived by evoking the worst in this country’s citizens. It cannot be the presumption that what has been evoked, and what is on display, will disappear on its own by not facing up to it. This is just wishful thinking. What is the point of an opposition that is afraid to even state that it is fighting for a polity where every citizen is seen as equal, where hierarchies of caste and the exclusion of any community from our politics are not acceptable? Indeed, what is the point of a country where such a statement cannot be asserted with confidence?
https://caravanmagazine.in/politics/congress-banning-bajrang-dal-courage
****************************
Gandhi’s Assassin. By Dhirendra K Jha
How Savarkar Escaped Conviction for Gandhi’s Assassination
After the truth-shower 