Politics of the Grotesque

As the world is entering the last year of this millennium, a theatre of the absurd is being enacted in India and its dramatist personae are moving ahead with the inexorable dynamics of a Greek tragedy. An atmosphere of intolerance is being systematically created in a country, which has been known over the millennia for its tolerant ethos and respect for the other's point of view. This intolerance expresses itself in almost every walk of life and is striking at the very roots of democracy.
As is well known, democracy is not only a system of governance but also a way of life. No society can progress without allowing differences, be they of religious denomination, caste, language, region, race, culture or thought. The collapse of the socialist system of the Soviet Union is a case in point. But, ever since the Hindu fanactics came into free play in the mid-1980s after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and later the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), launched a fierce campaign on the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri mosque dispute, leading to the eventual demolition of the Barbri Masjid on December 6, 1992, the tendency to force one's viewpoint into the throat of the other has rapidly grown.

The theatre of the absurd being enacted in front of our eyes these days dates from this phase of free India's contemporary history. Shiv Sena, an ally of the ruling BJP, known for its explicit philosophy of retributory violence, has also joined these forces. In fact, it has begun to compete with them. Its activists have vandalised cinema halls, destroyed property and tore off posters of Deepa Mehta's film Fire in Delhi and Bombay. Their allegation is that the film, which shows how two women neglected by their husbands find solace in each other and strike a relationship with sexual overtones, promotes lesbianism and is against Indian culture.
Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, who has time and again gone on record rubbishing democracy and extolling the virtues of dictatorship, issued a diktat that Pakistani cricket team would not be allowed to play on the soil of Maharashtra. Later, he included the whole of India under the purview of his fatwa and activists belonging to his party dug up the cricket pitch in Delhi at the express instructions of Shiv Sena MP, Madhukar Sarpotdar. Since the BJP is a junior partner of Shiv Sena in the State Government of Maharashtra, and itself happens to be genetically programmed for such actions, it did precious little to protect the pitch. In Delhi, the police, which is under the direct control of the Central Government, watched passively as the Shiv Sainiks dug up the pitch.
This, however, is nothing as compared to what is happening in the BJP-ruled State of Gujarat. The problem of communalism has been dogging India for the past more than a hundred years, leading to the subcontinent's division in 1947. Yet, what is being witnessed now can only be compared with organised anti-Jew pogroms that have dotted the history of various European societies. And Gujarat, Mahatma Gandhi's home State, has been turned into an arena where aggressive Hindu fanatics have unleashed a reign of terror on the minorities, mainly Muslims and Christians. While Hindu-Muslim conflicts have a long history, never before were the Christians as a community made a target of physical attacks and intimidation as was done during 1998.

According to a preliminary estimate, 33 incidents of violence involving Christians as victims took place between 1964-96 in the country. However, the year 1997 witnessed a sharp upswing and 15 such incidents were recorded. The number rose to more than 75 in 1998. Barring a few, all of them took place in Gujarat. Militant activists of VHP, Bajrang Dal and Hindu Jagran Manch, all front organisations of the ruling BJP, have openly led the anti-Christian violence. These include desecration of burial places and destruction of churches.
The demolition of the Babri mosque was also the handiwork of these forces professing by aggressive Hinduism, which they term as Hindutva. Ever since the BJP-led Government came to power at the Centre, the Hindutva brigade felt enormously emboldened. While the Gujarat Government turned a Nelson's eye to the well-organised attacks on the Christians and their places of worship, the BJP and the Central Government did everything to play down these violent incidents. The Central Government sent a team of two senior officials of the Home Ministry to study the situation. The team met Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel and other officials but did not find it necessary to meet the victims. This provoked the National Minorities Commission to send its own fact-finding team.
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, widely viewed as a moderate man trapped in a party of Hindu zealots, too pooh-poohed the anti-Christian violence by dubbing it as a "conspiracy" hatched by those forces which were out to destabilise his Government. He simply does not blame it on the VHP and the Bajrang Dal which are a part of the BJP's Hindutva brigade.

Both Keshubhai Patel and top national leaders of the BJP such as M. Venkaiah Naidu and K.L. Sharma have been harping on their complaint that the Gujarat incidents have been blown out of proportion. The VHP and Bajrang Dal have repeated their mindless allegations Christian missionaries were forcibly converting the Hindus. VHP supremo Ashok Singhal went to the extent of alleging that the conferment of the Nobel Prize on Amartya Sen was part of an international conspiracy to 'christianise' India. He also found Sen's advocacy of literacy and education as a morale booster to the Christian educational institutions that, according to Singhal, do nothing but convert Hindus, by allurement or force, into Christianity.
No wonder that given the atmosphere of communal hatred, deliberate falsehood and brazen aggressiveness, attacks on the Christian community, their educational institutions and places of worship are on the rise despite the glib assurances offered by the State and Central Governments. When the ridiculous infringes upon the sublime in this fashion, one truly feels out of depth. The BJP, since its inception in 1980 and even in its earlier incarnation as Jan Sangh, has been oscillating between a moderate and a hard-line approach. Its electoral successes after active participation in the anti-Muslim Ramjanmabhoomi (Babri Masjid) campaign gave a boost to its radical front organisations like the VHP and the Bajrang Dal.
However, the party soon realised that while it managed to emerge as the single largest party in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Indian Parliament), it could not dream of forming a Government on its own. Not that it did not try to form one. It tried in 1996 and failed. Compulsions of power politics forced the BJP to take Atal Bihari Vajpayee out of the closet and project him as its Prime Ministerial candidate, ignoring the fact that he had played virtually no role in the political ascendancy of the party during the 1985-96 period. It was due to Vajpayee's moderate image that the party was able to break out of its political isolation and form a coalition Government in 1998.
While the BJP wants to retain its hard-won power at the Centre, there is re-thinking in the Hindutva clan. It is no coincidence that the attacks on Christians acquired a new ferocity after the party faced electoral rout in assembly elections in as many as three states which went to the polls in November last year. One can forget at one's own peril that the BJP took to an aggressive Hindu agenda only after its strength in the Lok Sabha had been reduced to two MPs in the December 1984 parliamentary elections. So, understandably, there is a sizeable section both within the party as well as its front organisations such as the VHP which feels that any dilution in the so-called Hindu agenda takes its distinctiveness away and leads the party to suffer electoral reverses. That seems to be the only reason why even a moderate leader like Vajpayee is not too harsh on those who are making the lives of the Christians in Gujarat and elsewhere miserable.

Where do we go from here? Will the last year of this millennium leave a trail of destruction, hatred and barbarism behind it? Will we be able to stand with our heads high as a democratic society and polity? Will there be place for democratic dissent in the India of future? It is difficult to answer even one, leave alone all, of these questions. So far, the Indian society has displayed enviable resilience. How much force its secular fabric can withstand before falling into pieces is yet to be seen.

First they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Next they came for Communists
But I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for Trade Unionists
Ann I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade Unionist.
Then they came for Catholics
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a catholic

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak for me.

Pastor Martin Nimoellor
A priest and Intellectual and a victim of the Nazi ascendency in Germany in the 1930s

Mahatma Gandhi an ardent Hindu, was the biggest champion of communal harmony, but alas, he was killed by somebody in the name of Hindutva.
The Mahatma said ìIn India, for whose fashioning I have worked for all my life, every man enjoys equality of status, whatever be his religion. The state is bound to be wholly secularî (Pg. 87.Gandhi and Communal Problem, CSSS). He also said that ìreligion is a personal matter and it should not be mixed with politics and National affairsî. (Same book, pg 90)