Asghar Ali Engineer is a rights activist and heads two organisations, the Institute of Islamic Studies and the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism. He has authored or edited 44 books on such issues as Islam and communal and ethnic problems in India and South Asia in general.

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Secular Perspective (May 16-31, 2000)

 The BJP has just completed twenty years of its existence. It was founded in 1980 after the fall of the Janta government led by Morarji Desai. The fall of the Janta government in 1979 was quite dramatic. It fell on the question of the duel membership controversy raised by the socialists like Madhu Limaye, Raj Narain and others. In fact the Janata Party was formed at the instance of  Jai Prakash Narayan by merging parties like the Congress (O), the Lohiaite Socialist party and the then Jan Sangh. The Jan Sangh, an avowedly communal outfit, not only agreed to merge with other parties in order to defeat the Congress (I) at the hustings but also agreed to adopt secularism and Gandhian socialism as its credo. Not only that it took pledge to the effect at the Gandhiji?s Samadhi in Delhi on the insistence of Jai Prakash Narayan. How far it adhered to its pledge, is a different story. Symbolic of the change in its credo, the BJP, as it was renamed now, made Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee as its president since Vajpayee has a moderate image.

 But this moderate phase of the BJP was short lived. The rapid political developments did not allow the BJP to adhere to its new fangled ideology and it soon began to race back to its original positions. Apart from the breath taking development which were taking place on political scene, the RSS did not permit it to severe its umbilical chord. In fact the duel membership controversy became cause of fall of the Janata party government precisely because the RSS would not permit the Jan Sangh members to give up their RSS membership. At that time all top ranking members of the Jan Sangh were invariably the members of the RSS. When the Socialist members questioned the members from the Jan Sangh stream as to why they were maintaining dual membership (i.e. of the Janata Party and that of the RSS) after their pledge to adopt secularism and Gandhian socialism, the Jan Sangh members had no answer. Moreover the RSS put its foot down and did not allow them to resign from the RSS. Thus in the end they preferred to resign from the Janta party bringing down its government rather than resign from the RSS.

 Thus the RSS factor weighed upon it right from beginning. The BJP apparently retained secularism and Gandhian socialism as its political ideology in the beginning. But needless to say the RSS had its strong reservation about this. But since the Jan Sangh members had taken pledge to that effect they could not have renounced it so soon. They waited for further developments. The RSS, however, was very clear about its ideology of Hindu Rashtra. It considered secularism and socialism as alien ideologies not suited to India. The RSS never compromised on this, not even today when the BJP is in power at the Centre in alliance with several other secular parties.

 Mrs.Gandhi who had lost the post-emergency 1977 election came back to power in 1980 election although with reduced majority compared to pre-emergency elections. She had lost the 1977 general election primarily because of alienation of the Muslim voters from her. And she came back to power with the reduced majority in 1980 elections also because the Muslim voters had not completely reconciled with her. She, therefore, reoriented her political policy towards the Hindus and began to court them to make up for the deficiency in the Muslim votes. This was more than clear from her several elections and other speeches. She even tried to court the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a RSS front, which had become politically quite active after conversion of a few Dalit families to Islam in Meenakshipuram district of Tamil Nadu. She had even planned to inaugurate the Bharat Mata temple constructed by the VHP in Mathura but prevented by sane advice.

 This became a big challenge for the BJP. Now Mrs.Gandhi was operating on its own terrain. She also tried to use the Punjab problem to her own advantage. Thus competitive communalism aggravated the political scene. Mrs.Gandhi became victim of her own policies and was assassinated by her own Sikh body guard for ordering the Blue Star operation. Her martyrdom weighed with the electorate and the Congress (I) won the post-assassination election with two-third majority. The BJP got only two seats in the 1984 elections. This was taken as a proof that moderate policy of Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee would not work and secularism and Gandhian socialism were not a political mantras for it. The RSS also stressed its hegemony at this hour of crisis in the BJP. 

 The BJP now totally reversed its policy adopted in 1980 and reverted to its original communal ideology. Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was replaced by Mr. Lal Krishna Advani who adopted militant attitude and retrieved the original Jan Sangh political discourse. The BJP bosses were convinced that they could win the hearts of hard core Hindus. Thus the BJP put question mark on the Nehruvian concept of secularism under the leadership of Mr. Advani. Who maintained that the Nehruvian secularism was not only influenced by the Western concepts but also amounted to appeasement of minorities. While rejecting the Nehruvian concept of secularism, Mr. Advani propounded his own concept, the ?positive? secularism, and he defined ?positive secularism? as ?justice for all and discrimination against none.?

 The political developments during mid eighties won the BJP popularity among the Hindu upper castes. It would be interesting to note that the Muslim League in pre-partition days and the BJP in the post partition India have lot of similarities. Both these parties catered to the same upper class base. The Muslim League was the party of upper class, ashraf Muslims, mainly Zamindars and their scions, and of upper echelons of bureaucracy, police and army. The latter have been categorised as ?the salariat class? by the noted sociologist of Pakistan Hamza Alavi. It is this salariat class which provided full backing to the Muslim League and the League in turn catered to its aspirations. Pakistan ultimately came into existence to cater to the aspirations of these classes.

 The BJP also was catering to the aspirations of ?upper caste middle class? Hindus with aspirations for higher economic positions and jobs. The Muslim League used Islamic rhetoric and designed its political discourse accordingly. The BJP also used Hindutva rhetoric under the leadership of Mr. L.K.Advani and aroused the feelings of these classes against so called ?over-privileged? minorities specially the Muslims. It greatly pleased the ?Hindu ashraf?. Various developments were exploited to the hilt by the BJP. The Shah Bano controversy and Ramjanmabhoomi controversy proved to be godsends for it. The Muslim leaders exploited the Shah Bano controversy for their own political needs and to negotiate their own political course. They mobilised the Muslim masses taking full advantage of their sense of insecurity created by the BJP Hindutva rhetoric, on one hand, and, by the occurrence of several major riots since early years of eighties, on the other. These riots and high pitched Hindutva propaganda had made the Muslim masses terribly insecure and the ground was ripe for a section of the ?North based Muslim leadership? to exploit the prevalent sense of insecurity among the Muslim masses. More the Muslim leaders adopted confrontationist posture, more the BJP benefited from it. Absurd though it might appear, the BJP even convinced its followers that the majority community had been ?encircled? in its own country by the militant minorities. Many middle class Hindus seriously believed in those days in this theory of ?encirclement?. A BJP supporter journalist even went to the extent of writing a letter to the Bombay based English daily that the best solution to the communal problem would be to disenfranchise the minorities for the next ten years to begin with.

 The BJP leadership further intensified the confrontation on the issue of Babri masjid- Ramjanambhoomi controversy in the post-Shah Bano agitation period. The controversy was fully exploited to consolidate the Hindu votes. In 1989 general election the BJP reaped the harvest by capturing 89 Lok Sabha seats as against mere two seats in 1984 elections. It is true it was partly the result of the seat adjustment with the Janata Dal worked out at the instance of Mr. V.P.Singh to bring down the Congress government under Rajiv Gandhi. Mr. V.P.Singh, at that time was so obsessed with bringing down the Congress government that he did not mind seat adjustments with the militant BJP advocating the Hindutva political discourse. 

 Mr. V.P.Singh formed the government with the support of BJP in 1989 and announced the implementation of Mandal Commission Report on 8th August 1990. That posed once again a serious challenge to the Hindutva forces which had tried to build its political fortunes by mobilising and consolidating the Hindu votes. The BJP tried to meet the challenge by further intensifying the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation and Mr. Advani announced his Rath yatra which, the Times of India described as blood yatra as more than 300 small and big riots took place during its course. Advani was then arrested in Bihar by the government of Laloo Yadav at the instance of Mr. V.P.Singh and as a result his government fell.

 The blackest day in the history of the BJP since its formation was the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6th December 1992, followed by the Bombay riots of December 1992 and January 1993. The BJP demolished the mosque despite its assurances to the contrary in the National Integration Council and its affidavit to the Supreme Court that kar seva would not amount to demolition of the mosque. But these were hazards of such confrontationist and communal politics. But the BJP was determined to capture political power whatever the cost, and it did though ultimately it had to do that by tempering its confrontationist posture.

 The BJP could come to power at the Centre ironically by abandoning its Hindutva agenda and forming alliance with secular parties. The way the BJP adopted Hindutva agenda to come to power (after pledging itself to secularism and Gandhian socialism) and the way it abandoned it without batting an eyelid ? again in order to come to power ? shows the hazards of democratic politics in a multi - religious country like India. The great national leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad tried to use multi religiosity for India?s strength by adopting secularism as its political philosophy. But the BJP thought that the multi ?religiosity of India was its weakness and rejected the concept of secularism. India has been oscillating between these two extremes ever since. But a stable democratic polity can be ensured only through secular and tolerant outlook. The communal challenge can be met only through secular values. Neither common civil code, nor deletion of article 370 of the Constitution nor the building of Ram temple can strengthen our unity. Our unity can be ensured through respect for all religions and a united endeavour to build our nation.