NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

The hidden agenda

Two developments at the Centre are ominous. One is the saffronisation of the council of ministers. The other is the redefinition of education by Human Resource Development Minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi. Both suggest the direction towards which the country is sought to be taken: A society based on the tenets of Hindutva and all that it implies.

The BJP was neither given the verdict not the strength in the last General Election to do so. In the 545-member Lok Sabha, the party has 182, exactly one-third. The 24-party National Democratic Alliance which governs the country consists of 302 members. On the basis of numbers, the BJP's share works out to be 60 per cent. But it has appropriated nearly 75 per cent ministership.

Had the formula devised for equitable distribution been followed, the BJP would have got far less representation in the government than it has secured. The formula was: a cabinet minister for every seven Lok Sabha members and a state minister for every three to six members. For example, the Trinamool Congress from West Bengal won 11 seats. Mamata Banerjee was made cabinet minister and Ajit Panja the minister of state.

There are 28 cabinet ministers, apart from the prime minister and 45 ministers of state, seven of them with independent charge. In all the council of ministers consists of 74 members. Nearly two-thirds of them are from the RSS-BJP parivar and hold key portfolios like home, foreign affairs, finance, education and rural development.

The disconcerting part is that every portfolio, headed by a non-BJP minister, has one or two ministers of state, belonging to the BJP. The non-BJP ministers are literally looking over their shoulders. Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed her unhappiness in public but said that she had been misquoted when Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan pressured her.

No doubt, non-BJP ministers are unhappy over having a Trojan horse in their midst. They can see the BJP mischief. But they love power and patronage so much that they dare not join issue with even Mahajan, much less the prime minister. The reaction of R K Hegde for not being included in the Cabinet is a pointer to how persons like Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan would have felt without ministership.

A few say privately that they will not pass work to their minister of state if he has BJP leanings. But it will not be easy. The BJP will see to it that their nominees have a say in the functioning of the ministry. True, past experience indicates that the importance of minister of state is in proportion to the leeway given by the cabinet minister. But those days the prime minister did not interfere.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who has made the appointments -- Home Minister L K Advani and Foreign Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh worked out the details -- will see to it that the ministers of state are allowed to participate fully. One of them is already strutting about, trying to spread himself all over.

The second development, that of Joshi, giving a new shape to the education system, is more disturbing. In the name of finding a new identity for India, he says he will mix modernity with tradition, religion with secularism. Whatever else it may mean, it places Hinduism at a higher pedestal and pulls down the Gandhi-Nehru doctrine of secularism that has enjoyed pre-eminence since the freedom struggle.

Joshi's thesis fits into the thinking of the RSS-BJP combine that Hinduism should enjoy a 'superior' position. The familiar lingo -- pampering minorityism, pseudo-secularism and India's heritage -- figures in the ideas adumbrated by Joshi. It justifies a purely communal stand.

True, India has 82 per cent of Hindus. But that was the position after the subcontinent was divided in August, 1947. India opted for a secular society because that was the ethos of the struggle for Independence. It was a mass upheaval, without any distinction of caste, creed or class, to oust the British.

It was easy for India to become a Hindu state if it wanted to when Pakistan declared itself an Islamic republic. But leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad were conscious of the pluralistic society that India is. The Constitution, which the country adopted 50 years ago (November 26, 1949) recognised no state religion. Hinduism, Islam and Christianity were all placed on a par, enjoying equal status. How can the very ethos of Independence struggle be changed now?

Joshi appears to suggest that he will go for inspiration and source to old Hindu tradition and culture. There is no bar to it. But why not all cultures? India's is a composite culture. There should be no taboo on modern thought just because it has emanated from the West. Joshi's thinking is exclusivist, not like that of Rabindra Nath Tagore who said, keep all doors open and let the air come from all directions.

Joshi may have a point when he says that the leftist controlled the institutions of learning for a long time. But his own appointments to the various institutions smack of RSS-BJP bias. He goes to the other extreme. One wrong does not justify another. Is it not possible to get from within the country scholars who have no prejudice, no predilections? The nation wants impartial historians so that people know the facts, as they happened, without biased interpretation or analysis.

Keeping aside the question of mandir or common civil code or Article 370 to protect the special status for Jammu and Kashmir is not enough if other actions of the government reflect BJP-RSS policy. The partners in the NDA are bound to realise one day that their supporters are restive. Then they may not keep quiet if the Hindutva agenda is pursued surreptitiously. The public may also discover sooner than later that it has been duped. The majority of the Hindus do not want to follow the Hindutva pattern of society.

One thing is sure: the complexion of the ministry at the Centre and Joshi's "cultural nationalism" will fuel the fear that the RSS-BJP clan has a long-term agenda. At present, it is busy penetrating the government and institutions and putting its own men at right places. They may furrow their way slowly and secretly. And when they have entrenched themselves, they will strike. Where the RSS-BJP combine go wrong is in their thinking that more and more people in India have imbibed their 'values'. This is not true. The BJP has failed miserably in most states. They faced a debacle in Punjab in the north and in Karnataka in the south. The allies in the NDA have helped them reach the tally it had this time. If it tried to depart from what is being perceived the middle position, it would come a cropper.

The Indian approach is that of consensus, not confrontation. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal of the RSS parivar, are on the war path. How strictly and how long they are disciplined will indicate the direction towards which the Vajpayee government is going. Thank God, Kalyan Singh, with his communal agenda has failed miserably. But has he been punished for the agenda or aggrandisement? The real face of the Vajpayee government will be known from the answer to this question.

Kuldip Nayar