[Reader-list] On Gujarat

[anilbhatia]

Modi might soon be the only guy spouting Newton 



FOLK THEOREM / ABHEEK BARMAN

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2002  1:44:15 PM ]




 





ANATICAL mobs are taking over the country and the government is asking them, �Is that all you guys want? How �bout a second helping?� Through last fortnight the Ayatollahs of 21st century Hindutva have stomped across the landscape, a little riot here, a little murder there, a whole lotta shaking going on.

Who are these Paramhansas, Acharyas, Togadias and Singhals? Who gave them the right to unleash their goons on the nation? What keeps them out of jail after they start a riot? What sort of government just whimpers a little and rolls over when these thugs take to the streets?

I�m trying to get over my revulsion to the horrors of this last fortnight and make some sense of what�s happening in India today. This places me in a privileged position.

I can sit with a drink and watch other people�s homes going up in flames, their children maimed or killed, their livelihoods destroyed even when their lives are spared. You and me, we�re lucky because none of these things have happened to us yet. Because Narendra Modi is far from where we are.

So we imagine that when the fanatics finally come to knock, it�ll always be somewhere else. And from our privileged vantage point, we�ll continue to watch this other bizarre spectacle that�s taking place: a whole government is getting hijacked, live on TV.

The BJP-led government has been taken over. The takeover has been engineered by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu fundamentalist holding company of the BJP. The organisation that is taking over is the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), another subsidiary of the RSS created in 1964 to create trouble in the name of religion, staffed by atrociously dressed people who set down deadlines to break the law.

Normal governments, faced with takeover attempts, put up a fight. The BJP cannot fight because it is being taken over by a sibling. Lie back and enjoy it, says the RSS, it�ll be over in a minute.

So, home minister L K Advani plays three monkeys as Gujarat burns. Law mantri Arun Jaitley is a Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat. On March 3, five days after the Godhra incident, the society page of this newspaper carried three photos of him � two at a polo match, one playing cricket against a team of judges. He also watched a one day cricket match in New Delhi.

On March 10, as riots raged through his state, the number of Jaitley photos on our society page came down to one, but we didn�t miss him � he was on every television channel all the time. And Prime Minister Vajpayee took such a long time to say anything that most people lost track of what he was saying by the time he finished his sentence.

Meanwhile, the VHP is telling everybody that it�s going to bash its way into Ayodhya, that faith doesn�t care two hoots about jurisprudence, that the government let it down.

The RSS is �mediating� things between the VHP and the government. The Shankaracharya of Kanchi is �mediating� between the VHP and a group of Muslims. And the minister of state in the home ministry, one I D Swami, is saying that VHP lumpens will be allowed to travel to Ayodhya in a �peaceful� manner.

Only two things stand out clearly: the tilak on Ashok Singal�s forehead and the holiday mood in the BJP.

This is a terrifying thing, for it shows that the line between religion and the state is being wiped out by this regime. Hindutva fanatics can do just what they want, for they know that nobody in power will lift a finger in protest.

Suddenly, the entire BJP leadership has started looking like Narendra Modi and the madmen of the VHP look like they run the show around here. This should never have happened. Once you mix up religion with governance and the law, an abyss opens up below.

The Romans knew this and Europe learnt this lesson after hundreds of years of war and anarchy. By the 12th century, Germany emerged as the first country to separate Church and state, followed by most of northern Europe.

Historians say this is why the Enlightenment and the commercial and industrial revolutions took place in Europe. With religion separate from governance, law, business and learning, there�s room to think and argue things over without getting into trouble with god�s representatives on Earth.

The Islamic countries � till the 15th century richer than any Western nation � didn�t get it. So the West came from behind and forged ahead and the Caliphates declined. Nor did pre-Independence India, where rational enquiry, appearing sporadically, was always swamped by superstitious nonsense.

That is why Vedic mathematics remains a figment of Murli Manohar Joshi�s imagination. And why despite the RSS� claims of inventing everything from tissue transplants to aircraft before anybody else, India had to wait till the early 19th century for Christian missionaries to import the first printing press from Europe. If the fundamentalist putsch succeeds, then soon the only guy talking about Newton�s third law will be Narendra Modi.

"=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=" wrote:



Dear Reader,

Are you with me?


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