HVK Archives: Why Communists err again
Why Communists err again - Organiser
Raza & Bani Deshpande
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23 June 1996
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Title : Why Communists err again
Author : Raza & Bani Deshpande
Publication : Organiser
Date : June 23, 1996
AT last the United Front has succeeded in forming the
Government at the Centre. The BJP which assumed power
for
two weeks in order to discharge its constitutional
responsibility, submitted its resignation gracefully when
it failed to muster the requisite majority in
Parliament, enhancing its social and political prestige
as a national party as never before. It was accused of
every sin under the sun from religious bigotry to
casteism, from fundamentalism to communalism and of
being
a Fascist
organisation striving to capture power in the Nazi style.
UF cart before Congress horse
The third force, now called the United Front, was in
reality relegated to the third place in Parliament by
the voters. Yet the United Front has accomplished a
political miracle of Putting the cart before the Congress
horse, with CPI-M, walking behind along with the
Congress while a conglomerate of over fifteen parties
including the CPI huddle together in the cart, with a
view to carrying out the people's mandate.
As a matter of fact the Congress has been positively
rejected on nearly four hundred seats by the voters and
yet it claims or is bestowed the moral right by, the
third front to support its United Front Government. The
only redeeming factor being the selection of its driver
Shri Deve Gowda who happens to be an honest and ablest
leader among the opposition, taller than the provincial
Jyoti Basu or the self styled Prime Minister V.P. Singh.
BJP, the single largest party
Question arises, what factors or social forces brought
about such a miracle in the political situation by the
1996 poll?
The emergence of BJP as the single largest party in
Parliament shocked every political formation in the
country and woke them to reflect on the new situation.
But all their efforts reflect total ideological and
political bankruptcy of our leaders and hollowness of
our western-educated elite, the socalled core group of
thinktanks influencing major political parties. Irony
was that the Marxist intellectuals, basking under the
benign benevolence of Nehruvian and Rajivianlegacy,
miserably failed to grasp the social forces released
specially in the post-Rajiv era. Obsssed by their
traditional thinking of the Stalin era, they remained
alienated from the history philosophy and the cultural
traditions of the multi religious and multiethnic
character of our country was asserting and becoming the
main driving force of our modern developing society.
Their political assessment continued to be haunted by
perverted outlook since the forties, their post-mortem of
self-criticism from time to time not withstanding. If
they could not visualise, they even refused to learn from
the voting patterns of our electorate for over two
decades, until, the voters slapped the BJP majority on
their face and shook them from their slumber of self-
conceit and illusion of being the high Preiests of
progressive political thinking.
Secularism-its historic significance
Reading of the statements, political analyses, critical
and self-critical appraisals and the conclusions
drawn from the situation by leaders of all political
parties and intellectuals in the first week after the
election results, as they began to recover from the
shock make very interesting reading. It is worthwhile
noting that every possible cause from rampant corruption
to mis-governance, from high prices to social injustice,
which is not a novel accusation.
What is new and of historic significance is the emergence
of secularism as a new factor on the political scenario
which consciously or unconsciously, runs through like a
silver thread of every political review in the post-
election period. What is new is the realisation in
various degrees that there was something wrong with our
very concept of secularism. Strangely enough, they still
are unable to realise that what we called secularism was
in reality an inverted image of secularism, installed in
our minds, an illusion which could never become a
reality, both in theory and practice. This created an
inreconcilable contradiction in the social behaviour of
the polity for the past two decades, particularly since
1977, which our so-called intellectuals and Marxists
alike failed to understand.
Perverted secularism
It was this perverted notion of secularism which brought
forth the unity of all fundamentalists, religious
fanatics, like the Pesh-Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid and
Shahabuddin, casteists and communalists like Mulayam
Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav, the oppressors of the
dalits and the OBCs like V.P. Singh and his tribe of
Thakurs and Jats and other feudal left-overs and support-
ed by the Communists. They along with the Congress began
to sermonise the Indian people on secularism.
The incongruity of the situation was that the word
dharma, as understood in Indian subcontinent for
thousands of years has been misconstrued to mean religion
as it is understood in the Western sense from
Christianity and Islam, and, that it was the British and
the English educated Indian elite which carry forward
this colonial legacy. They failed to understand that the
secular outlook is an intrinsic part of the cultural and
philosophical tradition and history of the Indian
subcontinent.
Real face of anti-BJPism
That such a realisation is dawning on the minds of Some
of our intellectuals is clear from the statements of the
Congress spokesman Shri V.N. Gadgil, when he said : "The
time has come to re-examine the Congress concept of
secularism. An impression has gone deep in the minds of
Hindus that Congress pampers Muslims." New Wave
weekly
comments in its issue dated 19 May, 1996 that, "the
amusing thing is the revival of Muslim anti-Congressism
and the illusion that the Muslims would rule India by
proxy by siding with illusory OBCism and dalitism. This
illusion is conjured up by a phony communal Milli
Parliament." Dr. Girish Mishra, another intellectual
writes, "the BJP cannot be fought with old methods and
approach... for this there needs to be a thorough
knowledge of Hindu scriptures, culture and tradition
which none of the anti-communal warriors have. All the
time painting the demon-like character of the BJP in
order to frighten the Muslims cannot stop it from coming
to power. In fact the BJPs communalism appears to be a
unifying force as compared to the divisive casteism of
Mulayam and Laloo supported by the Communists." Shri
Ganesh Shukla, the tallest and most revered of our
intellectuals writing on the BJP's confidence motion in
Parliament said, "No one on the anti-BJP benches wanted
to be reminded of the full and true story of how the road
to demolish the Ayodhya mosque was cleared by the
Congress itself on the one hand and the masjid bachao
agitators on the other." Tavleen Singh writes in her
column in Indian Express "The very leaders who reviled
the BJP in the Lok Sabha tell you privately that they
believe Mr. Vajpayee's Government would have done a good
job of governing India and they do not think Mr. Deve
Gowda's Government will... In fact the only real members
of the fear-and-loathe-BJP club are our Marxist comrades
and our caste chieftains."
Thus we see that the malady afflicting the body politic
is very close to being diagnosed by our thinking elite
but even now its cure will remain out of sight because
of their perverted out-look on the Indian people. The
inevitable conclusion will be to unite all the
communal,1, casteist fundamentalist and divisive
elements this time along with the Congress and the
Communists and once again, "paint dw demon-like character
of the BJP in order to frighten the Muslim under the
illusion of isolating the BJP."
Path of ethnic divide
In spite of such a humiliating defeat at the Hastings our
Marxist intellectuals appear to be incapable of
understanding the political and cultural ethos of the
people. Such a position will inevitably lead them on the
path of more religious and ethnic divide, to conditions
of more social anarchy and political chaos, threatening
the integrity and sovereignty of the country. Shri Saeed
Naqvi in his column has already declared that after
thousands of years for the first time political power has
passed from the Aryans to the hands of the Dravidian
stock!
The way to such a state is already paved by the hypocrite
and self-styled Messiah V.P. Singh by introducing the
caste system in the Christian and Muslim society in India
in order to undo exactly that great achievement of Christ
and Mohammed in human history brought about by the great
Christian and Islamic revolution. It should be remembered
that the secular outlook is firmly rooted in the people
of our country irrespective of their religion and
language from the hoary past when no record or any
religion exists in the world except the Sanatan Dharma
in India. A strange coincidence few perhaps know that
the Raja of Manda is a direct descendant of Jaichand
who had invited Mohartuned Ghori (his name was also
Shahabuddin) to attack Prithviraj Chauhan and promised
all help from the rajas of the Solanki clan. What a
glorious path to tread for our Marxists under the benign
leadership of a reactionary feudal creation-the Raja of
Manda.
True dharma
It is very necessary for our intellectuals to understand
that dharma in India as qualitatively different from
religion. In India dharma is based on a very scientific
dialectical outlook which looks to everything in the
world as ever-changing, in the state of constant flux,
governed by the law of utpatti, sthili and laya. There is
nothing permanent, nothing immutable in life or nature.
In the Western sense the word religion means a system of
faith and worship based on a particular scripture with
reference to the path leading to next-world happiness.
While in India. the word dharma is understood in a
restricted sense of social and personal duty, indicating
the limitations of wordly morality such as rajadharma,
rashtra-dharma, desha-dharma, matru-dharma, pitru-
dharma, etc. Thus when we show respect to a person
because of his age or wisdom we do it but of a sense of
duty or dharma but not of a religious injunction.
Since the word dharma has such a broad connotation,
Hindus using the word dharma in the Western sense of
religion, always qualify it by the word moksha. When they
talk of four ideal duties of a person, namely, the
purusharthas, they are known as
dharma-arthakama-moksha,
in which dharma and moksha are clearly defined separately
and independently. This renders the concept of a Hindu
theocratic state not only meaningless but superfluous.
Pseudo-secularism exposed The reality was the
courageous
attempt by the BJP for the first time since Independence,
to attack the pseudo secular policies of the Congress!
and the Communists which suddenly gave vent to the long
pent-up feelings of the people, who felt something was
wrong with the body politic but did not know what. It
was the bold exposure of the fraud the Congress, the
Communists and their western oriented intellectual elite
were playing on the people of the country in the name of
secularism which evoked a responsive chord in the hearts
of millions of countrymen and helped BJP widen its base
and jump from two to hundred and ninety-four seats in
Parliament. The exposure of the perverted concept of
secularism as practiced in India moved the masses,
cutting across all barriers of religion and caste,
language and territories, educated and illiterate. It
would be naive to believe that the millions of Hindus,
Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Buddhists, the OBCs and
others who voted for BJP were suddenly convinced of the
greatness of Ram and the correct interpretation of the
word Hindutva.
And yet if the Congress and the Indian Marxists insist on
their outlook, it may mean that they are deliberately
trying to mis-interpret religion as dharma, like the
British imperialists, in order to drive a wedge between
the Hindus and the people of other religious to placate
them for votes and their own political survival.
India is secular
We cannot lose sight of the fact that India, irrespective
of its multi-religious character, is secular not because
its great men desired it but because its philosophic and
cultural edifice stands unshaken on a secular foundation
from times immemorial and all its great men were
themselves its prerepresentatives. Thousands of years of
influence of this most ancient Hindu culture and
civilisation embraces the entire people of the Indian
sub-continent including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri
Lanka as a result of which a theocratic state is
untenable to the mental state is untenable to the mental
and cultural upbringing of its people even though, taking
advantage of the religion. and people's economic
backwardness, they may have been declared a theocratic
state by their clergy and the feudal war-lords. The very
emergence of women (out of purdah) as rulers in those
countries against their religious injuction is a direct
manifestation of the contradiction between the secular
aspiration of the Muslim people under the influence of
their ancient civilisation and a theocratic state.
Communists err again
Without holding any brief for the BJP it must be said
that the Indian Communists have erred once again at the
most critical turning point of our history in not
supporting the BJP government from outside. If not
participating with it to govern the country. They should
know that "Dharma you bad hate dharmo na sa dharma
prakirtitah avirodhut tu yo dharmak sa dharmah
satyavikarmah" (Mahabharata) meaning -a religion which
opposes another religion is not a true religion. True
religion is that which does not come in the way of
another religion."
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