Blah, blah, blood
By Rajmohan Gandhi
The Hindustan Times
04 July , 2003The following is an account, gathered from eyewitnesses and
published in Communalism Combat of a VHP meeting held on April 16 in Roha in the Konkan region of western Maharashtra, attended by about 1,500-2,000 young men and women at the grounds of a college:"The backdrop was a huge picture of the projected Ram mandir at Ayodhya flanked by a larger-than-life poster of the encounter between Shivaji and Afzal Khan in all its gory detail with steel claws, daggers and blood. Smaller colour posters of the Shivaji-Afzal encounter were distributed free to all those who attended.
"The primary message of speeches by Acharya Dharmendra and his colleagues was that the holy duty of Hindu youths was to kill and finish off the Muslims scattered across the Konkan region and elsewhere, 'the offspring of the traitor Afzal Khan'.
"Muslims breed like rabbits and their population would soon overtake that of the Hindus. Until now, we Hindus had been moderate in our demands but now we will be demanding all the 30,000 masjids."
Acharya Dharmendra said: "Muslims can continue to live here only provided they all become HindusS In this land of Shivaji, we should all follow Shivaji's example and finish off all the descendants of Afzal Khan just as Shivaji did."
It was in January that I had first read in Navbharat Times of the
VHP's plan to use the Shivaji-Afzal Khan picture as a weapon. One of its UP organisers, Mr Sachan, had declared that the colour picture would be distributed in lakhs at VHP rallies in the state, especially in areas where Muslims lived in large numbers. Obviously, the plan is not only to hold up the Afzal Khan killing as an inspiring example of what Hindus should be doing, but also to provoke Muslim violence which would serve as a pretext for a pogrom of the post-Godhra kind.Also billed as a speaker for the Roha rally was Praveen Togadia.
Though he did not turn up, this is what he had said in Mumbai on
March 16: "Remember Bhagwan Krishna. He told Arjuna to kill Karna [unfairly]. Did anyone till Krishna that he had followed a path of adharma?" Togadia added: "Do you know how we even killed Bheeshma, using tricks, how we killed Duryodhana? I remember all that with my proud Hindu heart. This is my proud Hindu heritageS"One symbol can sometimes capture the essence of a large enterprise. The Shivaji-Afzal Khan picture and the words that precede and follow it tell us everything about the VHP's strategy. Portray the Muslim as a traitor. Ask for his blood. Glorify trickery as the means to get it. Frighten Muslims. Provoke them into violence. At an apt moment, unleash a pogrom.
The ennobling of trickery is most revealing. When it becomes safe to do so, the demolition of the Babri masjid will be publicly claimed as a historic example of successful deception. Today, of course, the demolition is explained as a spontaneous and even 'unfortunate' eruption.
Flooding India with the gory picture defames Shivaji even as it
pretends to glorify him. One debatable incident from his life,
occurring when he was young, is selected; the essence of a remarkable hero is reduced to a single act of successful deception. Left out are all his exhortations for equality and for the good treatment of Muslim women. Left out are the Muslims who soldiered for him and the Hindus who fought against him. Left out is his challenging word to Aurangzeb that god was the god of all, Hindus and Muslims.But the reputation of Shivaji is the last thing on the VHP's mind.
When what you want to see is blood and fire on the Indian landscape, you care a whit for Shivaji, or Asoka, or the Taj Mahal. Or for temples.Let us note some other elements in Togadia's March 16 speech.
(Communalism Combat, May 2003, carries the full text). For a start, he called for the silencing of secularists: "The secular madrasa's name is the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Lock it up, close it down."Next, he asked Hindus to nurse a persecution complex: "In this
country, there are human rights for dogs, for donkeys, for cats, for
Muslims, but no human rights for Hindus.We have no right to liveS My mother, travelling in a local train in
Mumbai, she has no rights to return safely, alive."Imagine that a Bin Laden emerges. What will happen to us? To our women? 'Accept Islam or we will cut you up.' And Hindu women will be distributed among them. There is a real danger of this happening."
Finally, he sought to terrify - terrorise - Muslims: "Oh my Muslim
brothers, remember Narasimha Rao could not save Babri masjid. He promised to rebuild it. Has he done it? He has not. He could not do it. Sonia Gandhi is your beloved. If she were to promise rebuilding of the masjid, will she do it? Is Mulayam Singh promising this to you? Oh Muslims, name one leader to me who can promise this to you? Is anyone promising this?"Muslims, you are orphans, you are aloneS I challenged Sonia Gandhi: Name a single village in Gujarat where during communal violence a Congress worker has saved the life of Muslims. In Karnavati [Ahmedabad], there must be at least 10,000 Congress workers. Ahsan Jaffrey was phoning all Congress workers desperately. Howmany Congress workers came to protect him? Not even one.
"Who will come to protect you? Babur and Ghazni? If Ghazni comes, we will crush him beneath our feet. The politics of reconciliation embodied in Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru no longer survives. We dictate the politics in this land now. This is the land of the pure Ganga and Yamuna.
"And you place bombs here and there? If I can perform the last rites for my father as a Hindu son, and cremate him by the flames of agni, I can set fire to this entire dharti." As another example of what Hindus were capable of, Togadia spoke of the burning of Lanka by Hanuman.
More conscious of the children, women and men living around them, others are less enamoured of blood and flames. Long ago, in May 1947, three months before Partition and shortly after several Hindus and Sikhs had been killed in his beloved Frontier province, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan spoke in the village of Shabqadar, not far from his Charsadda home:
"We are passing through critical timesS Some people mislead you in the name of Islam. I feel it is my duty to warn you against future dangers so that I may justify myself before man and god on the Day of JudgmentS
"What gains will Islam and the Muslims reap from these riots and the slaughter of children, women and the aged? And how are the Pakhtuns going to be benefited? These happenings are against the tenets of the Holy Koran and the sayings of the Prophet. To lay hands on an innocent poor man goes also against Pakhtun tradition.
"The other day an old Sikh pedlar was murdered on the road in spite of his willingness to embrace Islam. Is it done for the sake of
Islam? I warn the Muslim League brethren that the fire they kindle
will spread in wild blaze and consume everything in its way."A similar warning is in order today in India. And profound concern,
too, for Messrs Vajpayee and Advani have shown no inclination to put out of business, or even to rebuke, allies of theirs calling for
blood and fire across the land. Competing with Messrs Togadia and Dharmendra are people like Vinay Katiyar of the BJP and the Bajrang Dal, who hurtles across UP to identify one mosque after another that should be 'handed over'. There are others.Vajpayee has given indications of some interest in what history may say of him. We must assume that Advani too would like to justify himself to posterity. Can they credibly ask Musharraf and Jamali to eliminate terrorism from Pakistan if they are unwilling to put down its Indian version?