Editorial
A Spectre Haunting Advani
"Naxalism is the enemy of the Indian dream. We must together vanquish the enemy and realise the dream."
Here we hear two voices synthesised into one: of Hitler, who worked up the "Great Aryan-German" dream to launch his fascist project and made the revolutionary communists his first target; and of Mccarthy who branded communism as un-American and proceeded on his infamous witch hunt on that basis. But who is this able synthesiser?
None other than our formidable home minister, addressing the top bureau-crats, IB officials and chief ministers (belonging to different parties) from the ‘Naxal-infested’ states who recently met at Hyderabad on the initiative of the union home ministry. Advani advised the states to invoke existing Acts like NASA and frame new ones on the lines of the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act, 1998 (arguably no less draconian than the TADA), to use helicopters where necessary and so on. Invoking the mythological idiom of Hindutva, Advani spoke of a "demonology created by Naxalites", thereby justifying any and every act of state and private (a la Bathanitola and Bathe) terrorism to crush the demons. The Centre will partly reimburse the money spent by the states on these sacred activities, he promised.
Did you think Advani’s vitriol was directed against Naxalites alone? You are mistaken. The BJP ideologue called Naxalism a "perversion", but added that it "had its roots in the ideological concepts like class struggle and class violence". The implication is clear: the crackdown may well start with the extremists as targets, but ultimately it must cover all protagonists of class struggle, all leftists. However, the ironman would not stop at that. "To describe it (Naxalism) as a socio-economic problem or problem of development is to give it a certain kind of legitimacy it does not deserve", he observed, and went on to complain that Naxalism often "tends to be romanticised in certain intellectual and media circles". Such efforts at legitimisation will no longer be tolerated, he told the meeting, and stressed the need to "cut the few roots of legitimacy still left in our social soil in which the tree of Naxalism still rests and thrives."
From "left wing extremism" to the broad left to the press and other democratic sections. Such is the course, reminiscent of the ’70s, that BJP’s most authentic ideologue charts out for the saffron steamroller to roll. He also paid due attention to properly packaging and marketing the fascist agenda, saying that nationalism is the best antidote to naxalism and adding the eloquent slogan we have quoted at the top.
Does the nation endorse this distorted vision of nationalism which de-viates from our anti-imperialist nationalist tradition and targets communists and Muslims within India and in neighbouring countries? Or do we rise up to protect democracy against dictatorial onslaughts (central teams visiting opposition-ruled states being an early signal), to demand bread instead of bomb, to actively promote secularism in the face of the conspiracy to install a mostly prefabricated Ram Mandir at the very site where the Babri Maszid stood for centuries, and to press for a foreign policy that is friendly towards neighbours and upright against the bullying big powers? The people of India must take a deci-sion, and the decision must be quick, conscious, comprehensive.