Introduction: Minorities of India unite — you have nothing to lose but your minds
Is it the Congress party’s new-found slogan to woo the estranged minorities back to the fold before the forthcoming assembly elections? Does not seem likely until you hear what Congress leader K.C. Lenka has been telling the minorities in Orissa. Then you begin to wonder and, as the full import of Lenka-speak begins to sink in, you fret and fume.
Lenka’s address to the Cuttack City Minority Congress Committee’s emergency meeting, held on January 8, does not seem to have received the national attention it deserved. Lenka is reported to have started his address with a bold declaration. The attack on Parliament and the war hysteria sweeping the subcontinent since then, he assured his audience, is nothing to lose sleep over because it is all fake. A charade staged by the BJP to gain short-term electoral advantage.
Admittedly, Lenka was not the first to dismiss the episode as artful stagecraft. Within 24 hours of that suicide-attack, a glib Pakistani spokesperson sought to downplay the incident by describing it as Indian flimflam. But the ingenious theory had no takers. For instance, why would India resort to killing its own citizens when the world, by this time, was well aware of the deprecations of religious terrorism and its links to Pakistan. Failure to answer this and other questions put paid to the several variations on the ‘self-inflicted wound for effect’ theme that were making the rounds at the time and the world, by and large, including the president of Pakistan himself, has come to accept the official Indian version.
Let not the audacity of the Lenka’s assertion, no matter how ludicrous it sounds, blind you to its sheer brilliance. In one fell swoop all the infirmities that made earlier conspiracy theories into non-starters have been taken care of. With the upgrading of the production from a low-budget swadeshi thriller to an ambitious Indo-Pak joint venture blockbuster, pieces fall into their designated places by themselves. Once you have General Musharraf and the BJP batting on the same side, those five Pakistanis who lost their lives in the attack on Parliament are no longer a problem and can be seen as dramatis personae picked with care by the cross-border casting director from a too long list of eligible martyrdom-courting contenders.
The electoral advantages accruing to the BJP and its allies are there for everyone to see. General Musharraf’s share of the spoils is somewhat hazier. For that you have to go a back in time and recollect his publicly expressed dislike and disgust for the murderous mullahs. If he could, he said at the time, he would like to take a pistol in hand and personally shoot them down.
The fact is, he always wanted to get rid of these holy horrors, and right from day one was waiting for a legitimate and risk-free opportunity to do so. It is does not take a great deal of imagination to figure out that a bloody attack on the Indian Parliament, carefully designed to fall short of killing anyone important, would provide him the ideal opportunity to get rid of the bad guys without putting his own position in jeopardy.
The theory advanced by Lenka, like all great theories constructed to explain observed phenomena, stands by itself needing no outside support except for minimal pre-assumptions. But will it be believed? The answer, Lenka’s aggressive inventiveness notwithstanding, is in the negative. Because about the only assumption that the theory requires is for the believers to have a super elastic free-floating mind capable of dissociating itself entirely from reality.
It is not Lenka’s fault that the
Indian minorities are nowhere near that exalted state yet and will not
let go of their minds so easily. Therefore, if the Congress is really thinking
of adopting the slogan in the coming elections, they should have a serious
rethink. If not, then Lenka theory is way out of line and will somebody
please ask him to shut up?