Asia Times: Destroying the house that Gandhi built


	March 15, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Destroying the house that Gandhi built
By Uwe Parpart, Asia Times Online Editor

The train that on February 27 carried 58 Hindu activists to their death at the hands of a Muslim mob at Godhra, Gujarat state, on their return from the holy city of Ayodhya was called the Sabarmati Express. The community and complex of simple dwellings in Ahmedabad, commercial capital of Gujarat, that Mohandas K Gandhi built in 1917 soon after his return to India from South Africa is called the Sabarmati Ashram (though it's now commonly referred to by the Mahatma's name). The historical irony couldn't be sharper.

From the banks of the Sabarmati river flowing through his home state, Gandhi launched his non-violent freedom struggle for India's independence, which finally occurred in 1947. Fearless adherence to religious tolerance was an abiding and indispensable principle of his fight. But now 700 or more are dead - mostly in Gandhi's home state - in the worst religion-inspired violence to hit India in nearly a decade.

The last time Hindu-Muslim clashes on the present scale occurred was in 1992/93 in the aftermath of the razing of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya (Uttar Pradesh, UP for short) when over 2,800 people were killed nationwide. The issue now and then is the same: Hindu fundamentalists claim the site once occupied by the mosque was previously - some 500 years back - the site of a temple to Indian deity Ram; they are determined to rebuild that temple.

At the forefront of the movement for (re)construction of the Ram temple (mandir) is the fundamentalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or World Hindu Forum, which is closely associated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The VHP has vowed that it will hold a prayer ceremony puja in support of the construction project at the Ayodhya site on Friday and called on Hindus across the country to join similar ceremonies. VHP leader Praveen Togadia told a news conference - and appears undeterred by a Wednesday supreme court ruling banning the puja - that "The entire country will become Ayodhya."

He may well be proved right. There is every chance that the type of chaotic communal violence that emanated from Ayodhya in December 1992 and was just replayed on a smaller scale in Gujarat could engulf large sections of the country if Vajpayee and his government fail to rein in the BJP's extremist followers and shock troops and reassure India's 120-million strong Muslim minority (12 percent of the total population). Even with the best of intentions, that won't be easy - not for a prime minister who in a recent election campaign in UP arrogantly claimed that the BJP didn't need the Muslim vote and lost; not for a Home Minister (Gujarat Member of Parliament Lal Krishna Advani) in charge of security who in 1992 acted as leader of the Hindu activists that destroyed the Babri mosque.

In 1992/93, the central government in New Delhi was led by the secularist Congress party engaged in an ambitious economic liberalization program overseen by finance minister Manmohan Singh. It got the communal violence instigated by Hindu extremists under control. Rapid economic growth spurred by the Singh reforms helped to further re-stabilize a volatile political situation. But that was then. Center-oriented, secular India is no more. The Hindu nationalist BJP rules in Delhi with an unwieldy coalition of two dozen (literally!) regional and caste-based parties.

After February state elections it controls just four states (including riot-torn Gujarat) and suffered heavy losses in the key state of UP, home to eight of 12 prime ministers since independence and, with 166 million, more populous than Pakistan. Unhappily, though, it's not the only other party of national significance, the opposition Congress, that defeated the BJP in UP, but regional-level, caste-oriented political entities. Regional, ethnic, linguistic, religious and caste differences are forcefully reasserting themselves half a century after independence to the detriment of national unity and purpose.

The BJP is not alone to blame. After an initial reform push precipitated by near national insolvency in 1991, Congress, bending to powerful anti-liberalization constituencies in its own ranks, all but abandoned economic restructuring after 1993. Scandals and factional infighting destroyed its appeal to voters. A crushing electoral defeat in 1996 was the consequence, opening the doors to rapid BJP ascendancy at the national level (it had only four seats in parliament in 1988) and ever more pronounced centrifugal tendencies in major states. Still, rather than responsibly exercising its growing national political power and transforming itself into a unifying force in accordance with the Indian constitution's secular mandate, the BJP counted and continues to count on polarization as the most effective means for consolidating and growing its political clout.

Given its history, its ideological orientation, and the nature of the social movements it relies on for core support, this is not surprising. The BJP is the successor organization of the Janasangh, a party founded in 1950 by members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or Association of National Volunteers, a proto-fascist Hindu nationalist, paramilitary-type (khaki shorts/white shirts) organization founded in 1925 and modeled after Mussolini/Hitler/Franco black/brown/blue-shirt outfits. (RSS co-founder B S Moonje met Mussolini in Rome in 1931 and subsequently structured the RSS on the lines of the Fascist Academy of Physical Education.)

The RSS exists till this day and is some 4.5 million strong. Not only firebrand Advani (who joined the RSS in 1942 at age 14), but also soft-spoken, professorial prime minister Vajpayee and numerous other present BJP leaders (75 percent by some counts) came up through its ranks. RSS chief ideologue KN Govindacharya, who has been edged out of the office of BJP secretary-general, says that Vajpayee's softer image is only a mukut (mask). If and when the chips are down, he will be on the RSS side.

The man who killed Mahatma Gandhi in January 1948 for seeking conciliation with Pakistan, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, at one time belonged to the RSS. That's part of the Sangh's legacy. And it has not only spawned the VHP, but numerous other radical organizations backing the BJP, notably the Shiv Sena (Shiva's Army) party of Bal Thackeray, a self-declared Hitler fan. Shiv Sena, in coalition with the BJP, ruled the state of Maharashtra from its capital Mumbai (Bombay) from 1995 to 1999 and remains a powerful force there.

When Pradeep Dalvi's Mi Nathuram Godse Boltoy (I, Nathuram Godse, Speak) theater production based on Godse's court speech in defense of the murder of Gandhi, was put on stage in Mumbai during that time (1998), it played to overflow crowds and violent protests until it was outlawed at a worried central government's insistence.

"Hindutva" (Hindu-ness) and "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindu nation) are the cultural supremacist and political nationalist RSS dogmas and policy guides of the BJP. Their principal appeal is to the upper castes in India's socially debilitating and inhumane caste system, the worst excess of which, untouchability, Gandhi valiantly fought to eradicate. (And let it be noted that historically large numbers of India's Muslims are of lower-caste lineage and converted to Islam to escape that stigma).

Such are the ideological precepts for the new India the BJP is building - and for the deconstruction of the secular, tolerant India the republic's founding fathers envisaged. Gandhi would be horrified, Jawaharlal Nehru more so.

But the likely (and tragic) outcome will be different than the Sangh parivar (cohorts adhering to the RSS creed) envisages. It will be an India torn apart, an India bent on self-destruction. Gandhi's and Nehru's Indian National Congress is not likely to make an early political comeback to effect a turnaround.

But perhaps it will get help from a most unlikely source: Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf. He has embarked on an ambitious program of turning back the tide of fundamentalism and creating a progressive, secular Pakistan. His quest has just begun. Success is uncertain. But if and when his project moves closer to realization, India may rationally want to respond to that external nation-building challenge.

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