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When I was writing this, state repression
on Ram bhakts in Ayodhya and other parts of Uttar Pradesh was in full force.
Thousands were arrested, numerous people injured in police action and countless
forced out of trains and public transport to prevent them from reaching
Ayodhya for a darshan of Ram Lalla. In full public view and under the glare
of TV cameras, revered VHP President Ashok Singhal was manhandled, humiliated
and arrested. Mr Praveen Togadia was accorded similar treatment. Ayodhya
was turned into a virtual fortress and the civil rights of the common people
were given a go-by by an overzealous Administration.
Meanwhile, 'secularists' of various
hues continued to demonise the Ram bhakts. Godhra, let us not forget, was
the logical conclusion of such a hate campaign. Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani had told UP Chief Minister
Mulayam Singh Yadav to place trust in the VHP. 'Secularists' like Ms Sonia
Gandhi have, in contrast, said that the VHP's promises were not be believed.
It would seem we now need lessons in trust from the Congress, which perfected the fraudulent art of 'outside support' to prop minority Governments and then pull them down. Or that we need lessons in constitutionalism from a party that attacked the judiciary by imposing a 'fascist' Emergency, and overthrew court verdicts-as in the Shah Bano case-through amendments or legislation. Or that we need to learn how to respect rule of law from the communists who live by Stalinist dictates and are in a constant state of war against civil society.
Communists of various hues are on the vanguard of the brigade that seeks to tar the VHP and the larger Sangh Parivar in black. They pose as saviours of civil society. Nothing could be more ironical. The list of the sins of the communists against India and civil society is too long to be repeated here. Right from the help they rendered to MA Jinnah to secure his dreamland of Pakistan to their opposition to Pokhran II, the Indian Left has never reconciled itself to the pluralistic, democratic and secular traditions of Indian polity.
The communists' pretence of having faith in Indian democracy is strategic. They feign participation in the democratic system so as to wreck it from within. Do those who are inspired by the former Soviet Union, Mao and, more recently, a foreign- born leader have any right to sit in judgment on people steeped in the Indian ethos? The only crime the Ram bhakts have repeatedly committed is "breaking the law" to see their dream of a Ram Temple at Ayodhya materialise.
In fact, the 'secularists' have little faith in democracy or the institutions born out of the Constitution. They promote or discard these institutions according to their convenience. The Shah Bano case was a high watermark of 'secular' hypocrisy when a Congress Government overturned the verdict of the Supreme Court through legislation-the Muslim Women's (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986. It thus entrusted the future of Indian Muslims to the regressive orthodoxy of the mullahs. That their worldview has 'progressed backward' was recently attested by their criticism of the Supreme Court's advice to Parliament to evolve a common civil code for the country.
'Secularists', including the National Human Rights Commission headed by a former Chief Justice of India, were very vocal about the 'miscarriage of justice' in the Best Bakery Case. They even advocated that all cases related to the Gujarat riots be transferred outside the State, and did not rest till the Supreme Court went out of its ambit to ask a democratically elected State Government to resign if it could not ensure 'justice'. This was epoch-making-in the undesirable sense of the term.
What did these 'secularists' do with regard to the Radhabai Chawl case when six innocent Hindus were burnt alive by Muslim history-sheeters and hoodlums of Jogeshwari on January 8, 1993?
Subsequently, 11 were the awarded death sentence by a special TADA court in October 1996. A committee was formed by Abu Asim Azmi, President of the Mumbai unit of the Samajwadi Party. This included representatives of Jamiat-e- Ulema and the Muslim Council. It carried on its activity with enthusiasm, upholding the challenge of jihad. The SP met most of the legal expenses out of its party funds. The Supreme Court judgement came in April 1998 whereby all 11 accused previously sentenced by the TADA courts were acquitted. What was different, where the 'secularists' were concerned, was the fact that the victims in the Radhabai Chawl case were Hindus and perpetrators Muslims. In contrast, in the Best Bakery case, the victims were mostly Muslims and the perpetrators allegedly Hindus.
Now, contrast this with the Marxists launching a huge agitation when the Thalassery additional district and sessions court (fast track) awarded capital punishment to five CPI(M) workers who had brutally hacked to death KT Jayakrishnan, State Vice-President of the Bharatiya Yuva Morcha, on December 1, 1999. Thirty-five-year-old Jayakrishnan, a teacher in the Mokery East Upper Primary School, Panur (Kunnur district) in Kerala, was killed in a ghastly manner by a CPI(M) squad comprising seven henchmen inside the school-in front of his pupils. The police had to cordon off the entire district and sessions court complex, sensing trouble from CPI(M) hoodlums. Though they could not dent the elaborate security arrangement, they shouted slogans and protested against the sentence.
The 'secularists' have been berating the VHP as a law-unto-itself entity due to its refusal to view the Ram Janmabhoomi discord merely as a title dispute-it considers it a matter of faith for 850 million Hindus, beyond the scope of law. One requires no special intelligence to appreciate the VHP's point of view on the inadequacy of the law to deal with such a subject. At the most, the court, basing its assessment on archeological evidence, could pronounce whether or not a temple existed at the site prior to the erection of the Babri mosque. Yet when such suggestive evidence started surfacing from the ASI's excavations, the 'secularists' in academia and the media spared no effort to deride it and even question the impartial credentials of the institution.
The 'secularists' merely toe the line of Muslim clerics that the Shariat is divine law and hence unalterable. Some personal laws animate society while some make it out of sync with the 21st century and its democratic ethos. Since 1934, the Muslim community chose to retain practices like the triple talaq and polygamy. Yet it refused to be governed by the Shariat in matters pertaining to criminal offences. The Quran itself specifically forbids usury which, if put into practice, must separate Muslims from anything to do with banking. But that has not concerned the 'secularists', who were less interested in ironing out the creases than in confusing public opinion. They went an extra mile to advocate that legal remedies should not be grafted upon anachronistic social custom.
Respect for the authority of law
on the part of the 'secularists' is conditional. Authority is good as long
as it pats them on the back, but bad when it spurns them. If the Supreme
Court orders a democratically elected Government to quit, it is admirable.
But if a High Court tells us that there is a jungle raj in Bihar, it is
unpalatable. When the Calcutta High Court recently pronounced a verdict
banning rallies and demonstrations on weekdays in Kolkata, the CPI (M)
bitterly criticised it as an assault on democratic rights and took to the
streets. The Stalinists and Maoist who have no faith in democracy nonetheless
exploit the latitude of democratic and secular society to sabotage all
that can help India to reclaim its glory, while promoting creeds that strike
at the roots of our pluralistic society.
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