Condoning crimes

THERE is, of course, no historical evidence in support of the legend that the Roman emperor Caligula (A.D. 12-41) nominated his horse as a tribune, revealing a profound contempt for the people. But that very sentiment alone can explain the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) supremo Mohan Bhagwat's nomination of Nitin Gadkari as president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It marked the culmination of a process of riveting the RSS' control over its 30-year-old progeny. Gadkari will be more obedient than Rajnath Singh, his predecessor who was appointed after L.K. Advani was shown the door in 2005 by K.S. Sudarshan, the then RSS boss. But how did Bhagwat expect his BJP to be taken seriously if it is headed by Oliver Hardy?

Mohan Bhagwat succeeded Sudarshan as the RSS sarsangchalak on March 21, 2009. Only the day before, he had directed RSS cadres to “ensure 100 per cent voting” in “the interest of Hindus” during the general elections to the Lok Sabha in May ( The Hindu, March 21, 2009). Manmohan Vaidya, the RSS' prachar pramukh, warned against the “division of Hindu votes” and said, “The Sangh is pleased that the swayamsewak [Advani] is the prime ministerial candidate” ( The Telegraph, March 21, 2009). So much for communal vote banks.

But the BJP lost, once again. The Sangh has no time for losers. It has always been a bad loser. Advani is notoriously worse. What caused panic was the grim realisation that were the second United Progressive Alliance government to last until 2014, the BJP would stand no chance of returning to power and that it had lost its last chance of grabbing power.

Advani could have followed the British precedent of retirement after electoral defeat. He preferred, instead, Chandra Shekhar's model of clinging to power despite repeated defeats, not to mention repeated humiliation at the hands of the RSS. All of 2009 was spent in shuffling party posts on the diktat of Bhagwat. Advani's flight to Nagpur by a chartered plane to pay obeisance to Bhagwat, the day after his assumption of office, proved to be of no avail. The RSS is cold-blooded. It demands results.

The reshuffle was complete before the year was out. On December 18, Advani filled a post specifically created for him, that of the chairman of the BJP's Parliamentary Party. He nominated Sushma Swaraj as the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha and Arun Jaitley its leader in the Rajya Sabha. On November 6, Bhagwat predicted: “The new leadership will be someone other than these four” – [Sushma] Swaraj, Jaitley, M. Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar ( The Hindu, November 7, 2009). He was as good as his word. On November 19, Gadkari was appointed BJP president.

We need not catalogue Gadkari's use of foul language or his theatricals. He performs as to the manner born. What concerns Indian democracy is the character of this major political party, its ideology and the tactics it has pursued in the wake of electoral defeats, since 2004 and 2009. The RSS' ideology thus acquires added relevance.

Bhagwat gave a dose of it on October 25, 2009, at Jaipur: “Sangh work is like sweetness of sugar that cannot be experienced without tasting it. Therefore, instead of trying to understand the Sangh from home [sic], join its activities, as the whole world today needs Hindutva, the prime ideological source of RSS.” He added that Hindutva is the tatva that has the solution to most of the problems of the world. It has “an effective solution” for global warming as well as fundamentalism ( Organiser, November 2, 2009).

The BJP's leaders are men of the world. They may cynically ignore this as the “usual stuff”. Do they seriously expect the young Hindu to swallow such nonsense? The young Hindus, like the young of any other community, see the country prospering, its prestige rising and its problems baffling for reasons that have nothing to do with the wicked Muslim. The RSS and its Advani cannot forget to target Muslims even on national anniversaries. On the 50th anniversary of Independence, Advani issued a “Four-Point Appeal to Muslims of India” ( BJP Today, June 16, 1997). On the “150th anniversary of the 1857 War of Independence”, the RSS' general body in a formal resolution (Resolution No.1 of 2007) belittled the Muslims' sacrifices and argued that the 1857 war was followed by the “mindless appeasement” of the community culminating in the partition of India in 1947.
http://www.frontline.in/stories/20100813271602200.htm