Arun Shourie
"The secret of success is sincerity," reads The Cynic's Lexicon, "Once you can fake that, you've got it made." How hard Sonia Gandhi is trying to reach success by that route!
A flood in Assam? Visit the area. Have yourself photographed. Pronounce: Government's relief measures are wholly inadequate. An earthquake in Kumaon? Visit the area. Have yourself photographed. Pronounce: Government's relief measures are wholly inadequate. Cyclone somewhere? Visit the area. Have yourself photographed. Pronounce: Government's relief measures are wholly inadequate. Fighting in Kargil? Visit hospitals at a safe distance. Have yourself photographed with injured soldiers. Pronounce...
Upon checking with persons conversant with the areas she has visited for the photography -- government officials in UP, student leaders in Assam, journalists -- I find that, the visit over, there has been no effort to even ascertain what eventually happened to the victims of the disaster, to say nothing of doing anything substantive for them.
Though conditioned to this pattern, I have been appalled by the depth to which she and her dependents -- Natwar Singh leading the lot -- have stooped on Kargil. For weeks and weeks, they have been casting doubt, casting aspersions, throwing dark hints: "We have questions to ask on Kargil." Why are you waiting? Ask them now. "We have forty two documents." Disclose them now. The people will see what equipment was being sought year after year after year -- for fifteen years -- by the defence forces, by agencies like RAW, and who denied it to them. People will see who sought kudos from international lobbies for their "path-breaking disarmament initiatives", for their "decisiveness" in cutting allocations for defence.
We have questions to ask, Sonia repeats -- rather, reads again from pages written by someone -- convene the Rajya Sabha, she demands. Talk of security is an "excuse" to "shut up the people", she declares. That "shut up" with appropriate emphasis -- the sound byte for the evening bulletin on Star News.
She is not a member of the Rajya Sabha. Whether the session is convened or not does not affect her ability to ask questions. There is one forum which would be ideal for her to ask the questions, the all-party meetings. These she scrupulously dodges. She has been invited to choose any joint-forum of her choice to debate every aspect of the Kargil matter with some representative of Government or the ruling party. There has been no response. Perhaps because responding to such invitations is beneath what her dependents have convinced her is her dignity!
On the other hand, the Leader of her party in the Rajya Sabha, Manmohan Singh, and its Chief Whip, Pranab Mukherjee, have attended the all-party meetings. What their questions are worth can be gleaned from the list they have themselves circulated to the press.
The Pakistani intrusion points to grave weaknesses in the system of gathering and interpreting intelligence data and arrangements for border surveillance, and that is a very serious lapse, they say. And so, "the Congress(I) wants an assurance from the Government that steps have been taken to plug the loopholes." The standard demand, if I may say so. It never fails to amaze me: on the one hand, critics of this kind assert that the assurances of the Government are worthless, and on the other the only thing they can think of demanding is another assurance from the same Government!
"The Congress(I) wants authoritative information on the present military situation...., and the Government's assessment of the unfinished task...", they say. Information -- even in regard to on-going operations -- is being given every single day by the concerned officials. The Chiefs of Staff themselves briefed all who were present at the all-party meeting. For one and a half hours. With maps, slides, and the rest. Not "authoritative" enough?
"The party wants a coherent policy statement on diplomatic initiatives, particularly the Government's assessment of the US's views on de-escalation," they demand. Unable to bring themselves to acknowledge the success that has attended the Government's efforts in presenting India's case the world over, this is all they can spot as missing: "a coherent statement"! And there is a word of advice also from their "experienced diplomats" about how the "coherent policy statement" should be drafted: rather than "unwarranted euphoria", these would-be back-seat drivers pontificate, the Government's assessments of its "success" should be based on "solid, hard-headed analysis". And, of course, they will decide whether the analysis is sufficiently "solid" and "hard-headed"! As solid and hard-headed as it was in referring the Kashmir issue to the UN? As it was in returning the territories and heights our forces secured in 1948, and again in 1965, and yet again in 1971? As it was in returning 93,000 prisoners, and in signing the Simla Agreement without getting Pakistan to agree to a solution on the Kashmir question? As it was in stoking Bhindranwale? As it was in first arming the LTTE? As it was in then sending the IPKF to finish the LTTE? As it was in ousting Farooq Abdullah's Government, and thereby leaving the field free for the Jamiat-e-Islami, and Pakistan? As it was in packing Bangladeshis on to voting lists in Assam for winning elections, and then killing over eight hundred boys and girls for doing no more than demanding a stop to this treachery?
Government spokesmen have been making contradictory statements in regard to the likely duration of the conflict, and on crossing the Line of Control, they say. "The Congress(I) has urged the Government to speak with greater consistency, restraint and clarity," they say. That is a good suggestion. It is the sort of suggestion which several of us in newspapers too have been making -- the papers have not needed a Rajya Sabha session to do so!
"The Army Chief, General V P Malik, has spoken of shortages of equipment," they observe, and demand, "What is the Government doing on this score?" I just do hope that the Government will in fact answer this question in detail: it must prepare a list of the equipment that the forces have sought -- year by year over the last fifteen years, and what which government did about each item.
The BJP's crude attempts to politicise the conflict, particularly its Kashmir Day advertisements are highly offensive and should be discouraged, they say. Fine. I am sure their advice applies all round.
"The Government should make credible arrangements to look after the families of those who have laid down their lives and for rehabilitation of those who have been disabled," they pronounce. Typically vacuous counsel. Urging the obvious for the sake of saying something. Commitment would have required that the party study what is being done, and advance specific suggestions about what more should be done.
Vacuous, but entirely in line with what the Congress has been doing on every issue of the kind. Each time L K Advani tried to alert the country to the designs of Pakistan, of the ISI in particular, Congress spokesmen cried that he was a war-monger, that he was vitiating the atmosphere of peace which the Prime Minister was trying to build. When the atomic tests were held, they first shouted, sub-continent put in jeopardy, tradition of Buddha and Ashoka abandoned, sub-continent plunged in arms race.... Their incisive expert on foreign policy, Natwar Singh was the lead-shouter then also. Within days, the thesis shifted: actually this is nothing but a continuation of what we had done under Indiraji, they declaimed. The next week, the thesis shifted again: the atomic tests are terrible, but it is a glorious achievement of our scientists! And that very week their Working Committee passed a resolution scolding the Government for not having gone in for "nuclear weaponisation"!
They continued to berate the Government: for spoiling relations with Pakistan one day, for causing India to be diplomatically isolated the next. But then suddenly the Lahore Resolution etc. came. At first they belittled the entire episode: Natwar leading the chorus as usual, with, as usual, the major pretensions of a minor feudal! But within days, the public response stopped them: and so in the Rajya Sabha, they joined everyone in welcoming what had been done. And now: "The PM went on a ride, he was taken for a ride" -- that little witticism produced after so much cogitation by Natwar Singh!
Whatever will do for the day, do! So today "We have questions to ask," "Convene the Rajya Sabha". The line has nothing to do with the war-effort: quite the contrary. As persons who have attended Rajya Sabha sessions can testify, another session will not yield a single operationally useful suggestion, what it will yield is another bout of shouting and mock-fury. The line is pushed on calculation -- the PR Advisors' calculation that putting out such vague hints, that making such demands can be triply useful: it can lead people to believe that the other fellow is responsible for what is happening and make him forget what you were doing all the while; it can lead people to believe that you have some secret knowledge; and at the same time it can enable you to snatch a halo of responsibility: see, we are so responsible, we are refraining from saying things that may demoralise the forces in this hour of trial. In fact, if anything will demoralise the forces it is the vague, dark hint -- one that cannot be nailed precisely because nothing definite has been said.
That the "questions" will be forgotten the moment the invaders have been ousted is evident from the record. Have you heard of the Jain Commission recently? Yet Sonia and her advisors brought down two governments because of what they said that report contained. Have you heard of Bhagwat or of Mohan Guruswamy recently? Yet they paralysed Parliament for weeks on end because of what they said were "serious questions" these two had raised.
But in this Sonia is truly following the Congress tradition. Have you heard recently of the "international conspiracy" to kill Mrs. Indira Gandhi? Of the Report of the Commission they themselves appointed to unearth the conspiracy -- that of Justice Thakkar? That conspiracy was played up too. Dark hints were put out about what they alleged the Thakkar Commission Report contained. The Report was kept from the courts. Even from the Supreme Court. Kehar Singh was hanged as a consequence... And the aura of martyrdom was created. When the Report was published, the people learnt that what the Congress and its leaders had been saying was the exact opposite of what the Judge had said -- he had concluded that the one angle which needed to be examined was whether an inside aide had a hand in the conspiracy... And the last act of Rajiv Gandhi before he demit office was to sign orders dropping all charges against those accused of that so-called larger conspiracy!
When assassinations can be put to use, why not floods and earthquakes? When the assassinations of one's own can be milked, why not the deaths of unknown soldiers on some distant front?
And every day, a spin to belittle every initiative. "Don't be taken in by these claims of Pakistan having been isolated diplomatically," sneered Natwar Singh at a television discussion the other day. "It is nothing of the kind. The P-5 are just waiting for the operation in Kosovo to be over. The UN General Assembly will begin in September. Pakistan will bring up the matter in the General Assembly, and..." Weeks have passed. The isolation of Pakistan is now even more visible. Natwar Singh has moved on. He is using his having held jobs to spin other nonsense. "Pakistan is interested in stretching the war to September, and...", he said this week. Last week the thesis was that the BJP is interested in stretching the war to September so as to postpone the elections. And the month before that the argument was that the elections must not be held early.... The heat of May and June, the monsoons...
India Connect
July 6, 1999
Showing posts with label lk advani. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lk advani. Show all posts
Sunday, May 25, 2008
"Arey Bhai, Masjid Hai Hi Kahaan�?"
Arun Shourie
"But why do you refer to it as a mosque at all? Where is the mosque, my friends, when the namaz is not performed? When for forty years idol worship is going on there, what kind of a mosque is it? That is just the temple of our dear Ram."
That is not L K Advani talking to V P Singh. It is V P Singh talking to several RSS leaders.
The elections had not yet been announced. V P Singh had traveled to Bombay to meet the RSS leaders. Persons I know intimately were present throughout the meeting, which was held at his request in Mr Ramnath Goenka's penthouse at Express Towers. V P Singh said then that as the structure was valued by the Muslims and the site was sacred to the Hindus, he was for Rajmohan Gandhi's proposal -- i.e., for shifting the mosque bricks to another site and constructing the temple at the site.
This is in essence what the VHP and the BJP came to espouse, with the improvement that the Hindus shall raise the funds to bear the entire cost of shifting the structure.
Later, too, I know from one of the senior most leaders of the BJP, one who measures every word he says, Kidar Nath Sahni, V P Singh used the exact expressions of the BJP leaders.
Later still -- and I know this directly from my friend Jaswant Singh, the BJP MP and today the Chairman of the Estimates Committee of Parliament - he used the very expressions to Jaswant Singh. To him V P Singh added that as the structure was a mandir in any case, why "demolish" it?
"Where is the need for demolition?" V P Singh had asked, "One shove and it will crumble. If each of you were to carry just one brick home, there will be nothing left there."
The Formula
Nor was there any change in the ensuing months. I know -- again from persons who were directly involved that V P Singh did not just endorse the three-point formula which was worked out, he actively participated in devising it.
Under it the entire property -- i.e. the structure and the land -- was to be acquired by the government. The structure was termed Part A, and the land around it Parts B and C, for reasons we shall just see.
As for Part A, the Supreme Court was to be asked to determine the character of the structure.' Till the determination was handed down, VHP etc., though continuing their movement, would not touch the structure. The lands around the structure were divided into two parts - and only because the method of acquiring them had to be different. The lands around the structure which were owned privately had to be acquired under the Land Acquisition Act. In normal circumstances to acquire these, notices of up to two years would have to be given. The notices were dispensable in emergencies, but even then it was necessary to give notices of three weeks or so. This latter is what was to be done in the case of this land.
The rest of the land was Nazul land. This the Government could, and therefore would, acquire immediately.
The lands had some structures on them -- a temple, a dharmashala, an office, etc. It was decided that for the time being the government would keep these intact.
The lands per se were to be made over to the VHP, etc., and they were to commence construction from the spot where the shilanyas had been done last November.
It was then noticed that actually the entire land could be acquired by Government under a special ordinance. There was therefore no reason to hand over the Nazul land one day and the privately owned land three weeks later. It was all to be done in one go.
All this was worked out between V P Singh and others between Monday, October 15, and Thursday, October 18.
George Fernandes met Bhaurao Deoras and Atal Behari Vajpayee on the night of Thursday, October 18, and confirmed the arrangement. As did P Upendra. V P Singh confirmed it on Friday, around 11 am.
At 3 pm that day two minister, Madhu Dandavate and Subodh Kant Sahay, met Moropant Pingle, the RSS strong man overseeing the VHP, and reconfirmed the arrangement. Pingle expressed the VHP's reservation: it would accept the formula, but it would not give up its right to continue its movement for shifting the mosque, he said; however, he agreed, it would not disturb the structure for the time being in any way.
Then came a stormy meeting of Muslim leaders with V P Singh. And so around 5 pm V P Singh let it be known that he had changed his mind. What was the "disputed structure became the "disputed land". And all lands, the titles to which were in dispute before the Allahabad High Court were now to be taken to be covered by the expression "disputed land".
As nothing was to be done to disturb what was "disputed", this change meant that nothing could be commenced anywhere, not even at the spot where the shilanyas had been done.
"But once Government acquires the land," the law officer of the Government explained to him, "all disputes about its titles would end. There is thus no reason for going back on what has been agreed -- about commencing construction."
"Then I won't acquire the land," said V P Singh.
The Ordinance
That night however came the Ordinance. It did not make the distinction which had been agreed to originally between the structure and the land. Government did not spell out what exactly was to be referred to the Supreme Court. And there was nothing about transferring anything to the VHP. Even so, the Ordinance had at least acquired the land.
The VHP was furious. It felt it had been taken for a ride, not just by government but the mediators, among whom were two I know and work with intimately. But the impression was given on behalf of Government the next morning, on Saturday that is, that the Ordinance had been just the first step, that the rest would follow within the next two or three days. Moderate leaders, L K Advani and Vajpayee, therefore declared that while the Ordinance was a small step, it was a small step forward.
The initial reactions of the Muslim leaders too were of cautious relief: they had been in what was being negotiated; they did not reject what was announce; they said the details would be studied.
Even on Saturday therefore, the original arrangement was alive.
But by Sunday recriminations had started among the Muslim leaders: you have agreed to a step which will become precedent for taking over waqf properties anywhere and everywhere, charged some about the others.
The hard liners prevailed. And so the Muslim leaders warned V P Singh, if you allow any construction even in the plot in which the shilanyas had been done, the Muslims will spurn you the same way they spurned Rajiv last year.
And it became clear too that Mulayam Singh, who had already outdone V P Singh in chatting up the Muslims, might seize upon the Ordinance as opportunity. It wasn't just that he could, by halting the rathyatra, undo on the ground whatever might have been agreed to in Delhi. It was that a word from him that V P Singh had caved in to "Hindu fundamentalists" would erase the image which V P Singh had been so assiduously cultivating all this while.
The CPM stepped in too, in minatory tones.
These things and nothing else were the spur to the "secularism" which burst upon everyone so suddenly on Monday, and of which we have heard so much in the last five days.
Secularism has not been upheld. It has been given a body blow. The one and only inference which will be drawn from the fact that a Prime Minister of India went back on what he had himself helped put together, and thereafter even withdrew the Ordinance which had been issued in the name of the President of India, and that he did all this because of pressure from secularists like Imam Bukhari, the only moral that will be drawn from this is that Hindus too should raise Bukharis among them.
Not just secularism, the authority of the State has been dealt a body blow. And in the long run no one will be harmed as much by such weakening of the State as the minorities.
The Tragedy of it
I am not so much on what all this reveals about V P Singh: no one has to labour much on that these days, he is doing all the revealing himself day and night. I am on the tragedy of it for our society, and for the Muslims in particular.
Throughout the last few decades the rational course for all citizens has been to work together to strengthen the institutions, in the proper functioning of which alone the security and prosperity of all lies. But section after section has been led to believe by the thekedars in it that its security and prosperity lies in fortifying itself as a group separate from the others. And at each turn the lay members of it have been led to believe that this leader or that -- Mrs Gandhi one day, Bahuguna the next -- was the one and only available guarantor of their security and prosperity.
The real reason behind this has been simply that that leader has won over the thekedars by the customary devices, that the interests not of the poor Muslim masses were secure in the hands of that leader but that the interests of those thekedars had been taken care of by him.
That has been the real reason. But the poor Muslims have been made to fall for the contrived superficials: the achkan with a Lakhnavi or Hyderabadi cut, the cap of this cut rather than that, the person's demeanour at Iftaar parties, the smattering of Urdu in the person's speeches. They have been led to fall for surface promises -- "The Minorities Commission shall be given Constitutional status," "There shall be special financial institutions for the minorities."
It is not only that so many of these promises have been hollow - what is the poor Muslim weaver, his trade being swamped as that of any other weaver by the rush of technology, or the poor Muslim boy toiling away over a carpet like any other poor boy, going to get from the conferment of constitutional status on the Minorities Commission? It is that many of these sops will worsen the lot of the Muslims: Just set up separate financial institutions for them and see the attitudes of managers in ordinary banks towards Muslim clients.
But because a leader has held out such baubles, the Muslim masses have been enticed by their thekedars to repose faith in him.
Of course, the leaders and the thekedars are not the only ones who have contributed to this. The pseudo-secularists have done even more. They have not cared to study the details of any controversy that has arisen � be it Shah Bano or Rushdie's book or the affair on hand. The hand slogan and the smear have been all for them. But these have been let loose ferociously. Every rational solution has thus been drowned.
And the very thing they said they were out to prevent -- Hindu reaction -- has been enflamed.
V P Singh taunts the BJP leaders today, asserting that they embarked on the rathyatra for electoral purposes. Assume they did.
But what is portentous is not the rath they launched. What is portentous is the tumultuous response it evoked. Today no one stokes that reaction more the sudden secularists, V P Singh and Mulayam Singh.
And the poor Muslims are led to believe by the thekedars among them, by the pseudo-secularists, and of course by the two of them that these two are their protectors!
The Indian Express
October 25, 1990
"But why do you refer to it as a mosque at all? Where is the mosque, my friends, when the namaz is not performed? When for forty years idol worship is going on there, what kind of a mosque is it? That is just the temple of our dear Ram."
That is not L K Advani talking to V P Singh. It is V P Singh talking to several RSS leaders.
The elections had not yet been announced. V P Singh had traveled to Bombay to meet the RSS leaders. Persons I know intimately were present throughout the meeting, which was held at his request in Mr Ramnath Goenka's penthouse at Express Towers. V P Singh said then that as the structure was valued by the Muslims and the site was sacred to the Hindus, he was for Rajmohan Gandhi's proposal -- i.e., for shifting the mosque bricks to another site and constructing the temple at the site.
This is in essence what the VHP and the BJP came to espouse, with the improvement that the Hindus shall raise the funds to bear the entire cost of shifting the structure.
Later, too, I know from one of the senior most leaders of the BJP, one who measures every word he says, Kidar Nath Sahni, V P Singh used the exact expressions of the BJP leaders.
Later still -- and I know this directly from my friend Jaswant Singh, the BJP MP and today the Chairman of the Estimates Committee of Parliament - he used the very expressions to Jaswant Singh. To him V P Singh added that as the structure was a mandir in any case, why "demolish" it?
"Where is the need for demolition?" V P Singh had asked, "One shove and it will crumble. If each of you were to carry just one brick home, there will be nothing left there."
The Formula
Nor was there any change in the ensuing months. I know -- again from persons who were directly involved that V P Singh did not just endorse the three-point formula which was worked out, he actively participated in devising it.
Under it the entire property -- i.e. the structure and the land -- was to be acquired by the government. The structure was termed Part A, and the land around it Parts B and C, for reasons we shall just see.
As for Part A, the Supreme Court was to be asked to determine the character of the structure.' Till the determination was handed down, VHP etc., though continuing their movement, would not touch the structure. The lands around the structure were divided into two parts - and only because the method of acquiring them had to be different. The lands around the structure which were owned privately had to be acquired under the Land Acquisition Act. In normal circumstances to acquire these, notices of up to two years would have to be given. The notices were dispensable in emergencies, but even then it was necessary to give notices of three weeks or so. This latter is what was to be done in the case of this land.
The rest of the land was Nazul land. This the Government could, and therefore would, acquire immediately.
The lands had some structures on them -- a temple, a dharmashala, an office, etc. It was decided that for the time being the government would keep these intact.
The lands per se were to be made over to the VHP, etc., and they were to commence construction from the spot where the shilanyas had been done last November.
It was then noticed that actually the entire land could be acquired by Government under a special ordinance. There was therefore no reason to hand over the Nazul land one day and the privately owned land three weeks later. It was all to be done in one go.
All this was worked out between V P Singh and others between Monday, October 15, and Thursday, October 18.
George Fernandes met Bhaurao Deoras and Atal Behari Vajpayee on the night of Thursday, October 18, and confirmed the arrangement. As did P Upendra. V P Singh confirmed it on Friday, around 11 am.
At 3 pm that day two minister, Madhu Dandavate and Subodh Kant Sahay, met Moropant Pingle, the RSS strong man overseeing the VHP, and reconfirmed the arrangement. Pingle expressed the VHP's reservation: it would accept the formula, but it would not give up its right to continue its movement for shifting the mosque, he said; however, he agreed, it would not disturb the structure for the time being in any way.
Then came a stormy meeting of Muslim leaders with V P Singh. And so around 5 pm V P Singh let it be known that he had changed his mind. What was the "disputed structure became the "disputed land". And all lands, the titles to which were in dispute before the Allahabad High Court were now to be taken to be covered by the expression "disputed land".
As nothing was to be done to disturb what was "disputed", this change meant that nothing could be commenced anywhere, not even at the spot where the shilanyas had been done.
"But once Government acquires the land," the law officer of the Government explained to him, "all disputes about its titles would end. There is thus no reason for going back on what has been agreed -- about commencing construction."
"Then I won't acquire the land," said V P Singh.
The Ordinance
That night however came the Ordinance. It did not make the distinction which had been agreed to originally between the structure and the land. Government did not spell out what exactly was to be referred to the Supreme Court. And there was nothing about transferring anything to the VHP. Even so, the Ordinance had at least acquired the land.
The VHP was furious. It felt it had been taken for a ride, not just by government but the mediators, among whom were two I know and work with intimately. But the impression was given on behalf of Government the next morning, on Saturday that is, that the Ordinance had been just the first step, that the rest would follow within the next two or three days. Moderate leaders, L K Advani and Vajpayee, therefore declared that while the Ordinance was a small step, it was a small step forward.
The initial reactions of the Muslim leaders too were of cautious relief: they had been in what was being negotiated; they did not reject what was announce; they said the details would be studied.
Even on Saturday therefore, the original arrangement was alive.
But by Sunday recriminations had started among the Muslim leaders: you have agreed to a step which will become precedent for taking over waqf properties anywhere and everywhere, charged some about the others.
The hard liners prevailed. And so the Muslim leaders warned V P Singh, if you allow any construction even in the plot in which the shilanyas had been done, the Muslims will spurn you the same way they spurned Rajiv last year.
And it became clear too that Mulayam Singh, who had already outdone V P Singh in chatting up the Muslims, might seize upon the Ordinance as opportunity. It wasn't just that he could, by halting the rathyatra, undo on the ground whatever might have been agreed to in Delhi. It was that a word from him that V P Singh had caved in to "Hindu fundamentalists" would erase the image which V P Singh had been so assiduously cultivating all this while.
The CPM stepped in too, in minatory tones.
These things and nothing else were the spur to the "secularism" which burst upon everyone so suddenly on Monday, and of which we have heard so much in the last five days.
Secularism has not been upheld. It has been given a body blow. The one and only inference which will be drawn from the fact that a Prime Minister of India went back on what he had himself helped put together, and thereafter even withdrew the Ordinance which had been issued in the name of the President of India, and that he did all this because of pressure from secularists like Imam Bukhari, the only moral that will be drawn from this is that Hindus too should raise Bukharis among them.
Not just secularism, the authority of the State has been dealt a body blow. And in the long run no one will be harmed as much by such weakening of the State as the minorities.
The Tragedy of it
I am not so much on what all this reveals about V P Singh: no one has to labour much on that these days, he is doing all the revealing himself day and night. I am on the tragedy of it for our society, and for the Muslims in particular.
Throughout the last few decades the rational course for all citizens has been to work together to strengthen the institutions, in the proper functioning of which alone the security and prosperity of all lies. But section after section has been led to believe by the thekedars in it that its security and prosperity lies in fortifying itself as a group separate from the others. And at each turn the lay members of it have been led to believe that this leader or that -- Mrs Gandhi one day, Bahuguna the next -- was the one and only available guarantor of their security and prosperity.
The real reason behind this has been simply that that leader has won over the thekedars by the customary devices, that the interests not of the poor Muslim masses were secure in the hands of that leader but that the interests of those thekedars had been taken care of by him.
That has been the real reason. But the poor Muslims have been made to fall for the contrived superficials: the achkan with a Lakhnavi or Hyderabadi cut, the cap of this cut rather than that, the person's demeanour at Iftaar parties, the smattering of Urdu in the person's speeches. They have been led to fall for surface promises -- "The Minorities Commission shall be given Constitutional status," "There shall be special financial institutions for the minorities."
It is not only that so many of these promises have been hollow - what is the poor Muslim weaver, his trade being swamped as that of any other weaver by the rush of technology, or the poor Muslim boy toiling away over a carpet like any other poor boy, going to get from the conferment of constitutional status on the Minorities Commission? It is that many of these sops will worsen the lot of the Muslims: Just set up separate financial institutions for them and see the attitudes of managers in ordinary banks towards Muslim clients.
But because a leader has held out such baubles, the Muslim masses have been enticed by their thekedars to repose faith in him.
Of course, the leaders and the thekedars are not the only ones who have contributed to this. The pseudo-secularists have done even more. They have not cared to study the details of any controversy that has arisen � be it Shah Bano or Rushdie's book or the affair on hand. The hand slogan and the smear have been all for them. But these have been let loose ferociously. Every rational solution has thus been drowned.
And the very thing they said they were out to prevent -- Hindu reaction -- has been enflamed.
V P Singh taunts the BJP leaders today, asserting that they embarked on the rathyatra for electoral purposes. Assume they did.
But what is portentous is not the rath they launched. What is portentous is the tumultuous response it evoked. Today no one stokes that reaction more the sudden secularists, V P Singh and Mulayam Singh.
And the poor Muslims are led to believe by the thekedars among them, by the pseudo-secularists, and of course by the two of them that these two are their protectors!
The Indian Express
October 25, 1990
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