The Wages of Impunity by K. G. Kannabiran

Author:K. G. Kannabiran
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Orient Longman
Published: 2020-08-07T16:00:00+00:00

16

Narendra Modi’s Hindutva Laboratory

Oppression does not stand on the doorstep with a toothbrush moustache and a swastika arm band.173

It was in the fall of 1944 that Himmler realised that the war was coming to a close; the game was up and the extermination facilities at Auschwitz and the other concentration camps had to be dismantled. As he told Adolf Eichmann around this time, ‘If up to now you have been busy liquidating Jews, you will from now on, since I order it, take good care of Jews, act as their nursemaid.’174 That echoes Vajpayee’s conversation with Modi, to whom K.P.S. Gill was sent instead of Article 355. This peace process was, like all such initiatives, as loosely structured as possible, promising no redress, no justice, but an abundance of pity for the plight of the victims of the great ‘experiment’—not my description of the macabre events of February, March, April and May 2002. Gujarat, the RSS had announced, would be the laboratory of the Hindu Rashtra.

From the time they captured power in Gujarat through the electoral process, they have been true to their declaration. The BJP began its rule in the state by removing a ban imposed earlier on public servants being members of the RSS. The violence in Gujarat shows that the bureaucracy at various levels has turned into a Hindutva brigade. The state was preparing the people for the Hindutva experiment. This adroit move became possible because all our institutions had been destroyed by Mrs. Gandhi’s experiment in authoritarian rule. Also, none of her successors were leaders; they were plagued with one desire, and that was to be the Prime Minister of this country, however long it took. With this kind of image, the voters returned one hung parliament after another.

In its previous incarnation, as the Jana Sangh, the BJP had no presence in Parliament. Only after the 1975 Emergency did they join the movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan. They rode into parliamentary politics after the defeat of the Congress (I) in the elections held immediately after the revocation of the Emergency, gaining some seats but as part of the Janata Party headed by Morarji Desai. The latter was a motley crowd of politicians who ended up giving an opportunity to the BJP to enter the power structure. That was the beginning of their fascist manoeuvres within the parliamentary framework, leaving it to a fractured left to uphold the Constitution.

There was a systematic assault on the Constitution and democratic values in the form of the anti-reservation stir and the Ayodhya Rath Yatra. In the course of my stay in Gujarat, I learnt that Advani’s Rath Yatra was Narendra Modi’s brainchild. In the context of failing welfare and democratic politics, with no threat from leftist movements, concerted attempts were made by the religious majority to capture power in order to ensure governance at the centre. Successive prime ministers after V.P. Singh facilitated this capture of power by the theocratic forces led by the BJP. The first ten years of

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