Bury this 'Riotous Nationalism'

The outcome of the Gujarat debate in Parliament has been more or less on expected lines. The BJP had tried its level best to stonewall the debate and therefore the very fact that the debate was eventually held under Rule 184 itself marked a moral defeat for the BJP. Saffron spokespersons like Uma Bharti and George Fernandes also tried desperately to deflect the course of the debate. Yet there could be no hiding the fact that after fifteen hours of heated debate, it was the BJP which stood all the more exposed and isolated on the floor of the Lok Sabha. The government's sense of desperation was also evident from its decision to avoid a live telecast of the debate. If April 30, 2002 would go down in Pakistan history as a day of mockery of democracy, in India too it would be remembered as a day when the political managers of the ruling coalition disgraced the spirit of democracy.

The link between the physical violence perpetrated by the saffron brigade in Gujarat and the verbal venom unleashed by leaders like Vajpayee could be seen again so clearly in the course of the debate. Vajpayee once again attributed the severity of violence in Gujarat to an allegedly inadequate condemnation of Godhra by Parliament. If this is how Vajpayee wants to justify the post-Godhra pogroms in Gujarat, he has to take the blame all on himself for as Prime Minister it is he who carries the designation of the leader of Parliament. He also heaped part of the blame on the media, and in Gujarat saffron goons and the state police are already targeting mediapersons.

If Vajpayee tried to justify the pogroms in Gujarat, George Fernandes tried to trivialise Gujarat as just yet another riot in a country which has witnessed as many as 15,000 riots. The whole world knows that Gujarat belongs to a qualitatively different category, rightly compared by the European Union to racist violence practised in South Africa during the Apartheid era or ethnic cleansing witnessed in Hitler's Germany, yet Fernandes has the gall to call it just another riot. More dangerously, when he talks about all those 15,000 riots, he actually tries to redefine the nation and nationalism in India in terms of communal riots. Indeed, the road to Golwalkar's Hindu Rashtra can only be paved with millions of riots, and all who stand for a secular and riotfree India must summon the courage and strength to crush the designers and defenders of communal riots with a heavy hand.

Talking about mustering necessary courage and strength against communal forces, the Congress-led bourgeois opposition and for that matter even most of the non-Left opposition has always wavered on this score. If the Congress wants to present itself as a secular force today, it will have to begin by criticising itself. From the 1984 anti-Sikh violence to the Congress' past role on Ayodhya and even its present role in Gujarat, there are indeed too many skeletons in the Congress cupboard and at every critical hour it will be haunted and handicapped by its history of inconsistencies and inglorious compromises. The story is the same with much of the non-BJP non-Congress political spectrum in this country as well. We have parties like the BSP which comes to the rescue of the BJP at this critical hour, the Trinamul Congress which critricises the government on Gujarat yet sides with it on the vote and a regional parties like the TDP, National Conference and the AIADMK which can only go so far as to abstain from the voting.

Undoubtedly, if communalism exposes its ugliest face in saffron, red remains the most consistent colour of secularism. The debate in Parliament may be over for the time being, but the battle in national political life has just begun. The debate in Lok Sabha has only given us the latest information as to who stands where.

Down with the saffron brigade's riotous nationalism. Intensify the battle for a secular democratic India.

Campaign against Communal Fascism and for People's Unity
May 4-10, 2002

The Sangh Parivar has launched a virtual civil war against the minorities. And a new offensive against all those who stand for democracy and secularism, and for peace and communal harmony. By the rekindling politics of hate and confrontation over Ayodhya, they have plunged the entire nation into a crisis. Gujarat, gruesomely set afire by the communal flames, is still simmering. The Vajpayee government at the Centre is shamelessly obliging the Saffron hordes on Ayodhya while the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat is nakedly sponsoring massacres of minorities.

Facing one electoral defeat after another, and seeing only a bleak future for the BJP, the Sangh Parivar is on a desperate offensive. They are tearing apart the social fabric of the country. They are challenging the rule of law and defying courts with impunity while their representatives in power are blatantly subverting democracy and secularism from within. They are pitting Indians against Indians, and thrive by making people kill each other. Their Hindutva barbarity has made the nation bow down its head in shame before the world community. They are repeating exactly what Hitler did in Germany.

But this time their evil intentions are clearly visible to all of us. We have seen what miseries they have brought upon the people in the last four years of their rule. We are also witnessing their murderous games now. It is high time that all the peace loving people who cherish secularism and democracy rise up to resist their dangerous designs.

We have so many real problems to attend to, we are waging a grim battle for survival, and we are facing onerous challenges of development. The RSS, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and the BJP wouldn't even let us live in peace. They are the enemies of the nation and tormentors of our people. We can't let them go on. Rise up to isolate and defeat them before they further defile our motherland.

Save Democracy! Save the Nation!

Modi and Vajpayee Must Go, Before Gujarat is repeated all over India!

The state-sponsored communal carnage which continues in Gujarat today is a flame which threatens to engulf our beloved motherland and its democracy. The RSS-BJP-VHP have shown that they will do anything to turn India into a Hindu Rashtra modelled on Hitler's Germany.

What happened in Gujarat, the "laboratory of Hindutva" was not a "spontaneous riot". The Sangh Parivar's well-oiled riot brigades had been provided with trishuls and swords in public ceremonies months before Godhra. Fully geared up for communal violence over the impending March 15 drama at Ayodhya, these brigades plunged into action two weeks ahead, using the Godhra massacre as a welcome excuse. The Godhra incident was barbaric and inhuman, and all democratic citizens, including minority institutions, had demanded stern punishment for the guilty. But instead the Sangh Parivar is using Godhra as an excuse to perform hundreds of Godhras.

Despite the huge evidence that BJP MLAs masterminded the killings from Police Control Rooms, that Sangh leaders distributed leaflets asking people to wipe out Muslims, that the police machinery actively aided the rioters, not a single Sangh-BJP leader or police official has yet been arrested. Instead, those few police officers who tried to arrest rioters, have been punished with transfers by Modi. Evidence now shows that the 40 so-called 'rioters' shot in the first round of police firing were all Muslim youths shot point-blank! Clearly, the protectors had turned into butchers.

But by far most dangerous is the attempts by Modi and Vajpayee to justify this planned communal holocaust. Modi quoted Newton's Law and said the violence was a "mass movement" in reaction to Godhra. Vajpayee shed crocodile tears on his visit to Gujarat, but publicly expressed confidence that Modi could uphold 'raj dharma'. That was a deliberate slap in the face for the democratic opinion in the country which was unitedly demanding that Modi's killer rule must go. But in Goa, Vajpayee gave a speech worthy of Hitler. He said that wherever Muslims lived, all over the world, they "caused" violence. Who could miss the invitation implied in these words - "wipe out Muslims if peace is to be restored"?!

The BJP in power has become the number one threat to our unity and survival as a nation. Vajpayee and Modi, who justified communal violence as "reaction", must now face the democratic and secular backlash of the nation. Only if these killers are thrown out from power, can Gujarat's guilty be punished.

No more bloodshed in the name of Ayodhya!

Every time the BJP loses elections, they remember Ram! Then they rake up the Ayodhya issue, fan up communal passions, and push the country into crisis. Defying court orders, the Sangh Parivar demolished the masjid on 6 December 1992. The matter is pending since then in the courts, and the Supreme Court has ordered maintenance of status quo. Knowing it could not be allowed, the VHP fixed a date for temple construction (March 15), simply to further the Sangh Parivar's political agenda.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, by cooperating with the VHP's armtwisting at Ayodhya, behaved like a swayamsevak rather than the PM of a secular state with a composite culture. It is well known that even entering the land under court control is illegal, leave alone performing puja on it. Yet, the Govt., acting like a spokesperson for the VHP, asked the court to allow the VHP to perform a "symbolic puja" on the land! The Court, rightly, rejected it. Then Vajpayee sent a personal emissary, on behalf of the PMO, to receive the Shiladaan!

But the questions remain:

What is the need of a puja where hundreds of innocent lives are violently sacrificed? Does any true bhakti or religion encourage women to be raped and children burnt alive in its name, as the VHP-BJP have done in the name of the Ram Mandir? The mandir of their dreams rests on a foundation of human corpses. Who, after all, are these VHP goons, and what gives them the right to represent Hindus? The vast majority of even Hindus do not support their violent methods. Even most of the people in Ayodhya, including the majority of sants, want them to be thrown out of Ayodhya.

We cannot afford to allow our country to be torn apart by these Sanghi goons. Ayodhya must immediately be freed from the clutches of those who are using the mandir issue for political gains. Whoever plays politics with Ayodhya is playing with fire. Worse, they are playing politics with human lives. Whoever plays politics with Ayodhya should be crushed with an iron hand. If this is done, if VHP-BJP leaders are put behind bars and stopped from communal meddling in Ayodhya, surely our society is strong enough to resolve the Ayodhya issue amicably.

All democratic, patriotic Indians must come together and raise their voice to ensure that the Court verdict remains accountable to the principles of secularism. They must ensure that, in the name of 'out of court settlement', various fronts of the Sangh Parivar are not allowed to indulge in the dubious pressure tactics, as they did prior to March 15. Any out of court settlement should come only through a transparent and credible process. Would it not be welcome if various citizens, including such religious leaders of all communities, jurists and historians who declare their commitment to the strict separation of religion and politics, were to form a panel to explore solutions to the Ayodhya issue through mutual dialogue?

A powerful popular movement to oust the BJP-led govt. is the need of the hour. Such a movement alone can safeguard democracy, secularism and national unity. Come forward to hasten the doom of saffron!

Hold High the alternative Legacy of Ayodhya:
The Land of the United Hindu-Muslim Resistance in the freedom Struggle of 1857!

The Sangh Parivar has turned Ayodhya into a rallying cry for its fascist hate campaign against minorities. In the name of Ayodhya, they want to divide our country through communal bloodshed. But we cannot allow Ayodhya's name to go down in history as synonymous with communal violence.

After all, wasn't Faizabad-Ayodhya the soil where thousands of nameless patriots, both Hindus and Muslims, laid down their lives in India's first War of Independence in 1857? Wasn't Awadh a witness to the united struggles and martyrdom of Mangal Pandey, Maulvi Ahmadullah, Begum Hazrat Mahal and the brave Udabai?

In the name of Ram, the Sangh Parivar wants to spread hatred. But they cannot make us forget the legacy of the saint Baba Ramchandra Das, who mobilised thousands of peasants of Awadh against British policies and feudalism in the 1920s.

The BJP says the Ram Mandir is the symbol of "national pride". We cannot let the BJP sell communal hatred in the name of nationalism. Ayodhya itself has the powerful legacy of 1857 to offer -- where India started her journey as a nation, and where the foundations of our unique composite culture mingled with anti-imperialist resistance, and people for the first time fought the enemy and died shoulder to shoulder as Indians. If we come together to demand a national memorial to the martyrs of 1857, at Ayodhya itself, won't it be the greatest possible tribute to our nationalism?

Don't let the Sangh Parivar divert the nation's attention from the real problems of the people. Peace and harmony are prerequisites for progress and development.

The people of India are facing several real issues in their day-to-day lives. The Vajpayee regime has made life difficult for a billion people because of its policies of liberalization-privatisation-globalisation. Jobs are hard to come by. Minimum health care is unaffordable. Quality education is beyond reach. Bare survival has become difficult. It is only to divert the people's attention and escape from their ire, that the Sangh Parivar is dividing people through its communal politics.

We will not let them succeed in their nefarious designs!
We will not let them go unpunished!

* Home Minister LK Advani must resign for his failure to prevent communal carnages in the country and for colluding with those very fascist forces;
* Narendra Modi government must be immediately dismissed for its abetment of the Sangh Parivar's war against minorities;
* All Sangh Parivar leaders who led mob attacks on minorities and their properties must be arrested immediately;
* All guilty police officials in Gujarat who sided with the rioters and failed in their duty must be dismissed from service and arrested;
* The VHP and Bajrang Dal must be banned immediately;
* Hold high the alternative legacy of Ayodhya, build a memorial at Ayodhya for the heroes of 1857, the great martyrs of India's first war of independence.
* Defeat the Sangh parivar's divisive design of communal nationalism and capitulation to imperialism - hold high the banner of national unity and anti-imperialist nationalism.

Emergence of Indian Fascism with Religious Facade

A multitude of factors, viz., the collapse of the Nehruvian economic model, growing public disgust with the political systems, real and imaginary threats to national unity and international environment of rightist and fundamentalist resurgence, have contributed to an atmosphere conducive to the upswing of communal ideology and politics. And the political opportunism practised by the mainstream political parties -- Congress(I), Janata Dal, CPI, an CPI(M) all included -- at one or another junctures in relation to the BJP has further fuelled the latter's growth.

It must be clearly understood that Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute is not a simple Mandir-Masjid dispute between Hindu and Muslims. The shrewd leadership of RSS and BJP has persistently projected the Babri Masjid as monument of Muslim invasion of Hindu India, which deserves to be demolished to restore the Hindu glory. Ram Janmabhoomi thus became a very specific symbol for the long- term RSS philosophy of a Hindu Rashtra... Behind the Facade of religion what really mattered was politics and ideology.

The BJP has thus boldly moved to fill the ideological-political vacuum created by the retreat of Marxist and various other socialist ideals, as well as the disgrace suffered by the Congress(I), to emerge as a communal alternative. Fascism, the representative ideology of the most Conservative section of the bourgeoisie and landlords, is by its very nature, aggressive. .BJP is not a party which can rest content with power in one or two states.

Dare to March Independently With the Masses!

"The menace of communalism and its representative party, the BJP, is no doubt threatening the very fabric of the Indian society. The left parties have made it the sole plank of their propaganda thrust. We must not forget that in practical politics this is a clever ploy to sell their line of trailing behind this or that bourgeois-landlord combination. The parallel efforts to unite and mobilise the masses on their basic issues, in the democratic struggles and militant mass movements--the traditional and time-tested forms of the left's most effective challenge to fundamentalism and communalism-- have been given a go by and they are not even considered as forms of struggle against communalism. Therefore, whereas the opportunist left rests its hope on bourgeois politicians in anti-communal struggles, and keeps itself busy with facades like human chains, seminars etc., fundamentalism continues to spread its tentacles into the minds of people at grassroots.

"This ideological environment, the grim and hopeless economic crisis, the erosion of national identity built during anti-British struggles-- all prop-up religious ideology as a force: Religion brings solace, Hindu identity appears as the only means of preserving national-identity and the BJP goes marching ahead towards its die-hard anti-communist and fascist goal. Revival of left's legacy, its ideological and political offensive, its course of militant mass movements on basic and democratic issues is only way to take on communalism. It is the backward social conditions, the lack of democratic consciousness, and economic desperation that provide fertile ground for the rise of fascism. The same conditions are also conducive to the advance of revolution provided the communists shed off all social democratic and parliamentary illusions, if they dare to march independently and with the masses.

"While keeping our doors open for any tactical, temporary and transitory alliances with secular and liberal forces of the bourgeoisie, let us march independently. The revolutionary situation has advanced in a favourable direction. The ruling classes are facing deep political instability. Instead of confining our activities within the bounds of parliamentarism and formalism, the time has come to boldly arouse the masses and daringly go in for militant mass struggles. Let us hold high the banner of independence and of mass struggles."