HVK Archives: The saffron Tricolour (Question and Answer with K N Govindacharya)
The saffron Tricolour (Question and Answer with K N Govindacharya) - (no publication)
The Times of India
()
January 30, 1999
Title: The saffron Tricolour (Question and Answer with K N Govindacharya)
Author: The Times of India
Publication:
Date: January 30, 1999
The term ideologue has become hackneyed for having been used
again and again in connection with BJP general secretary K N
Govindacharya. Yet, no other description would do him justice.
V P Singh once said of him that with him around, the BJP doesn't
need a computer Indeed, ask Govindacharya and he will tell you -
the runner-up positions, the winnable seats, the write-offs and
so on. Govindacharya may have moved up the political scale to
where he is today, but he is first and foremost an RSS
Pracharak. With him, there can be no disputing India's
Hinduness. In an interview to Vidya Subrahmaniam, lie examines
recent developments - of course, from the prism of RSS ideology.
Q: Haven't the BJP, the home minister and the three-member
ministerial team prematurely absolved the Bajrang Dal of
complicity in the Steins killing?
A: When there is no Bajrang Dal unit in that district, where is
the question of its involvement?
Q: If it is not the Bajrang Dal, it is surely another militant
Hindu group?
A: Investigations need to be comprehensive. There are many
angles that need to be explored, especially since the horrific
crime offers no rationale. Was it the diversionary tactic of a
state government in trouble? Is there an attempt to destabilise
the central government by some forces - the locals might have
been used for a crime whose inspiration was trans-national.
Q: Why would foreign sources kill an Australian?
A: That is, of course, puzzling. May be India is being targeted
as part of the evangelisation campaign of the Church. The World
Council of Churches has set a target of one Christian in every
village and one Bible in every house by the year 2000.
Q: You talk of the state government's involvement and in the
same breath spot a foreign hand.
A: These reasons are not necessarily linked. I'm simply saying
that all these aspects need to be investigated.
Q: What do you say to the charge that the BJP's coming into
power has been taken as sanction for crimes of this sort?
A: I refute it. In Gujarat, for instance, it started from
religious conversions which created a social schism in the
village community. In a village hamlet of 300 people, if 120
get converted to Christianity, it makes life difficult for the
other 180. It is not merely the addition of one more God in the
row of pictures. Its effects penetrate deep down, affecting
societal amity and disrupting material well-being and harmony.
Where earlier all 300 accompanied a funeral procession to the
crematorium, now 120 go to the burial grounds. And where does
the grave yard come from? Often from the land owned by the 180.
This is a complex social phenomenon, it rattles those who are
not converted and all the more because the church and the
administration connive against them.
Q: But Christianity came to India with St. Thomas and people
have apparently been converting for centuries. Why the hue and
cry now?
A: That is precisely what I want to know. Earlier too there
were killings. In Bihar, Christian priests as well as activists
of the Vanvasi Kalyan Karyakram have been killed. The reality is
that the incidents now being mentioned are all unrelated. The
Jhabua rape was a crime against women. In Gujarat, it was a
social schism. Yet, what made churches across the country raise
such a hullabaloo? This is where the conspiracy angle comes.
Q: But there has been so much violence. Christian leaders have
documented evidence to show that there have been more attacks in
the past year than in the last two decades put together?
A: It could be a reaction to the target-2000 programme. The
Christian campaign is deliberately provocative. They have been
attacking and abusing Hindu gods and goddesses.
Q: Is there no provocation from your side? Panchjanya and
Organiser have been running a hate campaign against the
missionaries in the name of exposing the truth.
A: But we have to tell the truth. If the truth is that they are
attacking our faith, then it must be told.
Q: Conversion is permitted in the Constitution.
A: Not conversion by allurement and fraudulent means. These, in
fact, vitiate the spirit of secularism.
Q: Is it not strange that not one person has come out to say he
has been forcibly converted?
A: In the rural areas, the responses are bound to be different,
they don't necessarily react in the way we understand. They
could be feeling insecure.
Q: They feel insecure in a Hindu majority country?
A: Please understand the problem. We have a situation where
tolerance is being preached to one section when other religions
are teaching intolerance. There are faiths which talk in terms
of elevation from the lower culture to the higher culture. Who
has given them the authority to decide which religion is
superior? It is the continuous demeaning of one's identity - in
most cases, the tribal identity - that leads to tensions.
Q: Hasn't the climate become permissive?
A: If the argument is that what is happening now is the result
of the hate campaign of the sangh parivar, then go back further.
You have also to concede that it is the politics of minorityism,
the insensitive nature of it, which has brought the country to
this brink.
Q: You attribute communal tensions to the juxtapositioning of
the tolerant Hindu faith with other intolerant religions. In
other words, coexistence is difficult. So what is the solution?
A: Indianisation of all religions. An Indian kind of
Protestantism will evolve in due course because sectarianism is
not in the ethos of this country. Exclusivist thinking must be
shed. Slowly the transformation process will start, has started
in fact. Because the urge is innate in the Indian ethos.
Q: The end result of this will be Hind Rashtra?
A: We are already a Hindu Rashtra. If you accept that nation
and state are not co-terminus, then, geo-culturally we are a
Hindu nation. This is because a sense of belonging is embedded
in the spirit of Hinduness, which, in turn, is the result of
living together and sharing the same sanskriti for a millennia.
Q: How do you see the future of this concept?
A: Hinduness will be common, even if the mode of worship is
different. And that will motivate respect for all religions.
Q: Doesn't dominant Hinduness militate against equality between
religions?
A: Hindu Rashtra or Hinduness also means Bharatiyata,
Indianness. They are all synonymous.
Q: It is obvious not everyone in the BJP shares your views. In
fact, there is a theory that the moderates in the BJP will soon
break with the RSS.
A: That is a cock and bull story. The two are on identical
ideological wave length; they share a sense of belonging that is
intense. So all rumours of a rift are only fond wishes of our
detractors. The relationship between the organisations belonging
to the RSS school of thought is unique. There is a unique blend
of functional autonomy and spiritual co-operation. For insiders,
therefore, there is no confusion.
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