"The BJP Manifesto released on 3 February, 1998 serves to set all speculation about its 'liberalisation' at rest and to put a seal on the ideologically anti-secular  character of the party which is no more than the political front of the RSS to promote and implement its long-term mission to transform the Indian state into Hindu Rashtra.

As disciplined foot-soldiers of Hindutva, the BJP has finally toed the line and exposed its real face. As far as the religious and linguistic minorities are concerned, the Manifesto confirms the communal and majoritarian character of the BJP and strikes them as 'old win in the old bottle with a new label'. Far from announcing any positive and concrete programme for the progress and development of the minorities, the Manifesto maintains eloquent silence on the future of the PM's 15-Point Programme, the Minorities Finance and Development Corporation, the Abul Kalam Azad Educational Foundation, the Abul Kalam Azad Urdu University, the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 and the place of Mother-tongue in the Three Language Formula. On the other hand, the BJP threatens to erode Religious Freedom by announcing reformulation of the Muslim Personal Law, in the name of gender justice, in an extra-religious framework.

On the Babari Masjid question, the BJP reiterates its well-known position and confronts the Muslims with extra-constitutional legislative expropriation, if they do not agree to sign on the dotted line. On this question, the BJP blatantly ousts the Jurisdiction of the judiciary because it is a question of faith!

On Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP seeks to reverse the current of history on Special Status with Autonomy for the State and expand the area of conflict with Pakistan.

While paying lip service to the State's duty to protect Wakf properties, the Manifesto seeks to stir class conflict  and remains silent on the vacation of existing encroachment of hundreds of thousands of Wakf properties, which stand usurped not only by private interests but by the government and semi-government agencies.

The Manifesto seeks to abolish the Minorities Commission on the specious plea of 'providing greater protection of minorities through the Human Rights Commission'. In our context, minorities rights, as group rights, are too sensitive a matter to be lumped with the general question of human rights, which largely relate to the rights of the individual.

The Manifesto promises a 'riot-free India'. This a BIP government may well be able to achieve because it is the activists of the BJP and its sister organisations which have always ignited the fire or thrown out over raging fires. oil the Manifesto is totally silent on the day-to-day  harassments, humiliation, pressure and coercion which the minorities daily experience under a majoritarian regime.

While offering a programme for the relief and rehabilitation of the Pandits displaced from the Kashmir Valley, the Manifesto is silent on the proposal for  statutory compensation for loss of life, limb, honour and property in the communal violence like the recent disturbance in Coimbatore and on the need to expedite the prosecution of the culprits of the major communal disturbances like Moradabad (1980), Nellie (1983), Hashimpura(1987), Bhagalpur(1989) and Bombay (1992- 93)

The proposed total ban on slaughter of cow progeny, whatever the age, and on trading, not only threatens to put lakhs of people out of employment but place animal protein out of reach for the common man and impose an unbearable burden on the national economy.

In a word, the BJP Manifesto is true to its ideology of Cultural Nationalism and the RSS vision of Hinduisation of the Indian Society and Polity.

This Manifesto should open the eyes of all secular-minded Indians, some of whom appear to have been mesmerised by the MASK and influenced by the DOUBLE-TALK.