India's Minorities Better be on Guard!

On December 23, 2007 the Hindu-majority state of Gujarat, in Western India, completed the process of holding elections to its state legislature where the results have shown that Gujarat’s fascist, Neo-Nazi ‘Modiutva’Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under Chief minister Narendra Modi, will retain power in the state, albeit with a significantly slimmer majority of up to 117 seats out of 182, down from 128 it had won previously following the anti-Muslim February 2002 Gujarat pogrom. In that bloodbath over 3, 000 members of the unarmed Muslim minority – mostly timid traders - were murdered, and over 100, 000 made homeless, in a state-sponsored ‘ethnic-cleansing’ exercise. That mass murder exercise in Gujarat was very similar to an earlier November-1984 state-supervised anti-Sikh nation-wide pogrom in which over ten thousand innocent members of the Sikh minority were murdered/ burnt/ raped by thugs of the ruling Congress party who had been mustered, for the murder spree, following a ‘wink and a nod’ from none other then the then newly appointed Indian Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi – an evil man.

This December ‘Modiutva’ victory is likely to bring Gujarat Chief minister Narendra Modi, a Neo-Nazi Mussolini clone, closer to his goal of leading the fascist ‘All India’ Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), (which has been in disarray since it lost power at national level in 2004) despite talk of opposition to him within the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the party’s powerful grass-roots organization, whose leadership up to now have been thinking aloud that, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) cannot win the next Indian general election solely on a platform of Hindu nationalism, as espoused by Mr. Modi. Recognizing this, the BJP recently nominated the 80-year-old Lal Krishna Advani (he is no ‘dove’either) as the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the next election to the Lok Sabha - the lower house of parliament. For decades Mr. Advani has been the second most powerful party leader after the former Prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee (who is currently unable to engage actively in politics owing to age-related ill health). The decision to appoint Mr. Advani to lead the BJP was an attempt to preserve its national appeal, but it came at the cost of postponing, yet again, the handover to a younger, second-generation leader like Narendra Modi whose election victory in Gujarat will most likely trigger a rethink in the Bharatiya Janata Party about electoral advantages of well-timed pogroms against the Christian, Sikh, Tribal and Muslim minorities in Hindu-majority India. The Muslim minority in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh states, both states currently ruled by the BJP, better be ready for state-sponsored pogroms a la Gujarat!

The dynastic Indian National Congress party, (which is currently ruling the roost in Delhi at the federal level, under the leadership of Mrs. Sonia Mainu Gandhi the widow of the November 1984 mass murderer of the Sikhs, Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was the son of Prime minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi and grandson of Prime minister Jawahar Lal Nehru) has won only 59 seats, in the latest Gujarat election, (despite a massive ‘big-gun-led’ election/media campaign) compared to 51 seats the Congress party won in the 2002 Gujarat election – a small gain of 8 seats. “For the Congress party, the electoral loss in Gujarat”, the London Economist Intelligence Unit Views Wire had predicted on 20 December, 2007, “could potentially undermine its continuing struggle to hold on to power at the national level. In mid-December Prakash Karat, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)—the largest element in the Left Front—issued an ultimatum to the government demanding that it withdraw from negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency by the end of December or face an early general election (a poll is not due until May 2009). In effect, the mainly communist Left Front parties—which support the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in parliament but oppose the US nuclear deal—have threatened to render the UPA a minority government by withdrawing their support.”

The 20th December, 2007, Economist Intelligence Unit Views Wire, in its excellent write-up, further goes on to say that, “Despite Congress party’s apparent failure to win in Gujarat, calling an early election probably remains the party’s least unattractive option (assuming that the Left Front sticks to its ultimatum). If a national election were to be called soon, opinion polls suggest that Congress could win seats from the BJP. As the tensions between Mr. Modi and his party indicate, the BJP remains riven by the internal disagreements that surfaced after the party lost power at the national level three years ago. Waiting to call an election would only give the BJP time to regroup. Congress’s chances of re-election are also set to diminish progressively as India’s economic environment becomes less favorable over the course of 2008, providing another incentive to hold an election sooner rather than later. The UPA’s only other alternatives are to defy the Left Front and function as a minority government until the scheduled date for a parliamentary poll, or to sacrifice the nuclear deal in order to keep the Left Front’s support in parliament. Neither option is particularly appealing. In the first, the loss of the Left Front’s votes in parliament would be likely to cripple the government’s policymaking ability. In the second, the abandonment of the nuclear deal would severely damage the government’s international credibility. Both of these scenarios would prolong the UPA’s time in office at the cost of significantly reducing Congress’s chances of getting re-elected in the next national polls.”

Prolific writer, one B. Raman, an old RAW operative, (who retired as an Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India) and who is presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, from where he churns out an Op-ed piece nearly every day for the Indian print media has in an article published on 24 December, 2007, in the OUTLOOK magazine, raised some interesting but alarming  (http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20071224&fname=raman&sid=1) points about the Hindutva Modi-craze among his admirers specially the Hindu youth which Sikh compatriots ought to make note of so as to be prepared to defend our religion, our Homeland and our people. Modi showed his anti-Sikh attitude when he cancelled the Gujarat state holiday for Guru Baba Nanak’s birthday which he later reinstated after vigorous Sikh protests. He was also reported to have passed some remarks about the Darbar Sahib which also offended the Sikhs. Raman writes that, “for large sections of the Hindus—young and old, even more among the young than among the old— he (Modi) gave them a sense of pride in their identity as Hindus. They feel that he removed from their minds long habits of defensiveness as Hindus carefully nurtured by the self-styled secularists. As if to proclaim one’s Hindu identity and to assert one’s rights as Hindus in their own homeland in which they are in a vast majority (80 per cent of the population) is to be communal, is to become an ugly Indian. For these self-styled secularists, a pretty Indian is a Hindu, who is all the time on the defensive, fights shy of proclaiming his Hindu personality and asserting his rights as a member of the majority community. They would have noticed that Modi is becoming the icon of a growing number of Hindus not only in India, but also in the Hindu diaspora spread across the world. The support for him is not confined only to the Gujratispeaking Hindus of the world. It is spread right across the Hindu spectrum—whatever be the language or ethnicity or place of origin of the Hindus concerned. They would have noticed that in the Hindu diaspora in the West, more young people admire Modi than grown-ups. Many of his young admirers in the US were born and brought up there and had the benefit of the best of secular education. In spite of this, there is a sense of pride in them that the Hindu community has at long last produced a leader of the calibre of Modi. It is Modi’s rejection of this hypocrisy of the self-styled secularists, which makes him stand apart as a Hindu leader with a difference in the eyes of his admirers.” Raman concludes by writing that, “The growing legion of Modi’s admirers in the Hindu community, all over the world, are saying: “Hindu Enru Chollada, Talai Nimirndu Nillada.” “Say You Are A Hindu, Hold Your Head High.”

It is not surprising that as a result of this new ‘Hold your head High’ arrogant attitude, mobs of emboldened Hindutva (Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal) elements, according to India’s NDTV, have attacked a dozen churches of the Christian minority in the Kandhamal district of Orissa state on 24th December, 2007, resulting in one death and injuries to twenty five Christians. Twenty people (http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20070036901) have been arrested. Thanks to Narindra Modi’s victory in Gujarat the Hindutva elements did not wait long to ‘hold their head high’! One hundred and eighty seven Christians were forcibly converted to Hinduism in Sundergarha district of Orissa state on Christmas day. Where (and whom) will the armed Hindutva elements strike in India next? Another possibility currently being discussed in the Indian media is that the BJP victory in Gujarat will have its impact on Punjab politics as it will certainly make the BJP, which is otherwise a junior partner of the SAD in the Punjab government, more assertive and powerful to seek its political pound of flesh from Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.

Maybe India’s mosques and Gurdwaras could be on the VHP/ Bajrang Dal Hit list next !