The dividing line between old and new in Ahmedabad is the decrepit wall erected in the 15th century by its founder Sultan Ahmed Shah. Today, it's called the 'Berlin Wall' because it has become, over the last decade, both a physical and an emotional-psychological barrier, separating Hindu settlements in spanking new areas from Muslim clusters in the walled city. Those who, consciously or otherwise, choose to defy this segregation do so at their peril.
Senior journalist Ashraf Sayeed ... tried to purchase a house in posh Gandhinagar, his prospective neighbours forced the Hindu property owner to rescind the deal. Today, he lives in ... a Muslim neighbourhood.
Similarly, Hanif Lakdawala ... could not rent space for their Institute for Initiatives in Education ... The obverse is equally true: Hindus in Muslim areas face a backlash ... The state which produced the apostle of non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi, is a simmering cauldron of hatred. The few who care are mocked at. Meanwhile, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh utilises the Bharatiya Janata Party's being in government to relentlessly push its divisive agenda.
The public has been so co-opted that the state government's recent decision to lift the ban on its officials joining the RSS was met with indifference. Similar was the response when banners declaring, "VHP welcomes you to Hindu Rashtra's village" mushroomed in several villages following the anti-Christian incidents in Dangs in 1998.
"Only a few decisions are taken publicly," says former chief minister Shankarsinh Vaghela, once a leading light of the RSS in Gujarat. "The rest is a covert RSS operation, deftly planned and executed. In doing this, the RSS can go to any extent, even kill."
But killing is usually unnecessåry. Threats and intimidation are enough to hasten ghettoisation. When this fails, minorities, especially those in petty business, are boycotted. This is precisely how Muslim autorickshaw drivers were driven out of Bardoli last year.
State home minister Haren Pandya protests that "a communal hue should not be imparted to local issues." He euphorically cites statistics to show that the number of people killed in communal riots has dipped during the BJP's five-year tenure.
A senior bureaucrat counters: "The idea is to exert constant pressure on the minorities, and make them realise that the terms of their existence will be set by the majority. Since the government is a party to this, you don't have to achieve this through riots and killings."
Adds Lakdawala, "Even the recent Christian bashing was well-planned. You could read slogans like pehle kasai, baad mein isai - first butchers (Muslims), then Christians - on public walls in interior Gujarat way back in the Eighties." Why is the RSS using Gujarat as a laboratory for its Hindutva project? And when did this process begin? Replies Achyut Yagnik, coordinator of the Centre for Social Knowledge and Action, "It began with the 1969 riots in which nearly 2,000 people were killed. The involvement of the RSS, Hindu Dharma Raksha Samiti and Jan Sangh was brought out by the P. Jagmohan Reddy inquiry commission."
Gujarat politics underwent a change in the Seventies. The hegemony of the powerful Patidar (Patel) community, exercised through the Congress, was being increasingly challenged. Following the famous Nav Nirman Movement against Congress chief minister Chimanbhai Patel, the party realised that, post-Emergency, it needed a new social alliance to stay in power. Consequently, it forged the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) coalition and stormed to power. When Madhavsinh Solanki formed his Cabinet, Patidars found themselves out of favour. Says Yagnik, "For the first time, there was a divorce between political and economic power. It was an impossible situation." Looking for new patrons, Patidars found their opportunity in the anti-reservation struggle that began a year fater. The BJP, whose earlier incarnate, Jan Sangh, had built a strong upper caste base through the RSS, grabbed the leadership of the movement.
The picture was now clear: upper castes were drifting towards the BJP; OBCs, Dalits and Muslims towards the Congress. (Dalit-Muslim unity was easily forged because the strong influence of vegetarianism ... forced them to live in the same neighbourhoods.)
In 1985, Solanki increased OBC reservations from 10 to 28%, incurred the wrath of anti-reservationists – and bagged 84% of the seats in the election that year. The Sangh, now fearing that its patronage of the anti- reservation stir would alienate it from lower castes, gave a communal twist to the movement. A series of riots inexplicably broke out in the walled city.
The focus shifted. A section of OBCs were wooed and coopted into the Sangh's upper caste alliance. Simultaneously, Solanki could not uplift the marginalised sections among the KHAM alliance – and disenchantment set in. Thus, in the late Eighties, the BJP began invoking religious symbols to cash in on the dissatisfaction. Since tribals (7%) and Dalits (15%) constituted a substantial vote bank, the Sangh's myriad outfits ... started working among tribals, providing relief and indoctrinating them. The attempt to break tribal-Dalit-Muslim unity succeeded in 1987 when, during a riot in Virpur on the Kheda-Panchmahal district border, tribals attacked Muslims for the first time. KHAM had given way to the politics of religion. This mobilisation was complete when Advani's infamous Rath Yatra was flagged off on September 25, 1990 from the Somnath temple, its place in Hindu-Muslim communal history acting as the catalyst.
In 1990, the BJP's alliance with VP Singh's Janata Dal helped it increase its seats and enter the coalition government. And in 1995, the BJP was in power on its own. Gujarat was thus a successful test case for the BJP, proving the virtues of wooing the middle classes and gobbling allies. But why is the average Hindu Gujarati inclined towards extreme and divisive politics? Yagnik traces this to the rapid urbanisation of Gujarat: "This led the middle class to see itself as a block. It realised that the Hindu identity could counter KHAM."
Similarly, at the block and village level, the capitalist growth of agriculture and the White Revolution enhanced the prosperity of the farming community, which now wanted to express itself politically. Upwardly mobile farmers were attracted to the VHP and Bajrang Dal because they provided an alternative to subaltern politics.
This has resulted in the BJP controlling the state's powerful and rich cooperatives. Even tribal and Dalit government officials find the Hindutva ideology resolves their identity crisis in cities, where the upper- caste dominated middle classes scoff at lower-caste identification. Obviously, it also helps to get co-opted.
"Hindutva rhetoric wasn't just meant for coming to power," Vaghela points out. "The idea is to perpetuate it for eternity." For this, the RSS needs yes-men in the BJP and government. This was the reason, claims Vaghela, he was sidelined despite building the party in the state. "I could have posed difficulties for their fascist mechanism of zero-debate," he says.
Vaghela says even PM Vajpayee has experienced the RSS' intolerance for debate. In 1980, he wrote an article, "Whither RSS?", in a national daily. "So furious was the Sangh leadership that it decided to defeat Vajpayee in the 1984 election - and it did. Vajpayee seriously contemplated leaving the RSS, and even wrote a poem, Jayen to jayen kahan. (Where should I go?) But he missed the bus," says Vaghela. But RSS propagandist Mukund Deobhankar ... argu(es) that a Hindu state has its advantages: "If we grow, the minorities will be safe. For, the followers of other religions will have to share our vision of India and its culture. Then, we won't mind accommodating two more gods (Allah and Christ) along with our 33 crore gods and goddesses."
(Says) home minister Pandya, "When the chief minister and I are from the RSS, how does it matter if an employee goes to the shakha?"
But a senior bureaucrat in his ministry warns, "Those Hindu employees who don't join the RSS will be isolated. And your RSS link will become a deciding factor in promotion. I am dead set against the move." ... Gujarat is clearly a laboratory where the RSS is conducting its communal experiments. Gujarat today, India tomorrow? (Source: The Hindustan Times, 16 January, 2000)
Gujarat Lifts Ban on RSS
Editorial, The Statesman, 10 Jan., 2000
What Gujarat does today, India does tomorrow – so says the BJP. Gujarat is the BJP's model state and with its vast cadre network and clear majority in government it is the testing ground for the entire RSS family ... The latest attempt to saffronise the state is the lifting of the ban on government employees joining the RSS. According to civil service rules, government servants are not allowed to be members of any political parties, or have anything to do with 16 banned organisations ... Keshubhai Patel ... has lifted the ban on the RSS saying that ... he cannot find "anything unlawful about its activities".
The first steps on the BJP's real agenda have been taken. There is no denying that many bureaucrats already harbour RSS sympathies, with the lifting of the ban they will be able to wear their khaki shorts over their trousers. The BJP have been trying to legitimise the RSS for sometime ... but all it requires is a single reading of their mouthpiece, the Organiser, to see their communal fangs ... The BJP, in Gujarat first, has embarked on the long-term goal of gaining acceptability for the Parivar. Once the RSS is rehabilitated then VHP, Bajrang Dal and Hindu Jagaran Manch can follow. By experimenting in Gujarat where it needs no allies, the BJP is testing the reaction of other constituents of the alliance ... The NDA partners should serious consider the developments in Gujarat and take remedial action. Tomorrow may be too late.
Steady Implementation of RSS Agenda
Insaf Morcha Convener's Statement, 7 Jan., 2000
'The introduction of a private bill by a BJP MP for introduction of uniform civil code in the last session of Parliament, the lifting of the ban on government servants against association with the RSS in Gujarat and the legislation in UP to subject construction of places of worship and religious instruction to the whims of the bureaucracy are clear indications of the steady implementation of the HIDDEN AGENDA of the Sangh Parivar, under the benign umbrella of the BJP-led governments at the Centre and in the States.
The ceaseless quest of the uniform civil code is an expression of the majoritarian pressure for religious and cultural assimilation so as to destroy the religious identity of the Muslim Indians.
The step in Gujarat is a signal to the administration at all levels not to interfere in the activities of the Sangh Parivar, including the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, as they are all 'innocuous social service organisations' in the eyes of the ruling party.
The new law in UP shall be used by the RSS-friendly administration to harass the Muslims, interfere with their freedom to practice their religion and to establish educational institutions of their choice, on false pretexts of linkage with ISI which has so far remained unsupported by evidence. What is worse the law serves to generate suspicion and distrust in the Hindu mind against all Muslims and Muslim Institutions.
The three, taken together, constitute a matter of grave concern to the religious minorities, particularly the Muslims and to the secular forces. The Insaf Morcha appeals not only to the opposition parties but also to the leaders of the coalition parties including George Fernandes, Sharad Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan, Nitish Kumar, M. Karnuanidhi, Mamata Banerjee and Chandra Babu Naidu to stop Sangh Parivar from playing the vicious game of targetting the Muslims and poisoning the social environment"
