Author: Tarun Vijay
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: June 8, 2005
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/jun/08tarun.htm
Komal Chheda is one among the hundreds
devotees from Mumbai who applied to go for the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra
this year. He was told his spouse who was accompanying him would be allotted
the same batch.
But like many others he was driven
from pillar to post and no one had a moment to listen to him. The staff
at the tiny Kailash Manasarovar cell in South Block are rude and unavailable
to the pilgrims and the government has chosen to let the Yatra begin without
the usual symbolic farewell gesture.
When the BJP-led government was
in power at the Centre, some states had started giving subsidies to the
Yatra pilgrims, but that too was stopped at least in Uttar Pradesh and
Uttaranchal. Apart from Gujarat and Delhi -- which has continued what Sahib
Singh Verma started during his tenure -- the Kailash Yatra has become an
apology for the government's secular credentials. It would like to have
the Yatra completed as a hush-hush affair.
That is what lies in store for the
Hindus in their homeland, at the hands of a terrified, de-Hinduised bureaucracy
and political leadership. Finally the man who began a lively debate on
pseudo-secularism has certified Jinnah as a secular leader. With this the
process of the dispossession of Hindus in India has arrived at a maturing
point.
It is obvious that any leader who
is visiting the mausoleum of the father of the nation of a host country
should be nice and say decent words in his memory. Jinnah could have been
justifiably appreciated without getting into the minefield of historically
hysterical points.
Hindus wanted a united India; they
voted against Partition but Partition did happen. They wanted to retain
Kashmir, the land of Maharishi Kashyap and seat of Sharda Vidya, but two-thirds
of Kashmir was snatched from them and from what remained, Hindus were driven
out, thus dispossessing them of their home and hearth in a truncated, nay,
Independent India.
They had three great deities --
or rather three dreams -- in the words of socialist leader Ram Manohar
Lohia -- Ram, Krishna and Shiva. All the three holy places associated with
them, had mosques built over them by the invaders.
After Independence, the Hindus naturally
wanted to have their places of worship returned to them as a goodwill gesture
by Muslims who otherwise got India partitioned and had no qualms razing
mosques for roads and hospitals in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
But not only were they snubbed and
humiliated for such a demand, even the greatest of their leaders in politics
declared the day of a first Hindu resistance and effort to possess what
historically belonged to them, as the saddest day of his life.
The Partition of the motherland
and the resultant mayhem was not his saddest day but the day of repossessing
a place of great significance to the Hindus became the 'most unfortunate'
day for the man whom the world considered a Hindu nationalist leader.
So finally Hindus were dispossessed
of their political leadership also, who would speak for them straight and
unapologetically.
In comparison, one must salute the
contemporary Pakistani leadership for their single-minded missionary zeal
to improve relations with India without compromising on their issues. President
Pervez Musharraf visited Rajghat, but didn't say anything about Gandhi's
secularism or his struggle to help newly born Pakistan despite facing disapproval
from both Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel.
They remain committed to the theory
of an Islamic Pakistan as envisioned by Jinnah, the qaid-e-azam, to make
Kashmir a core issues between the two nations, to get the Hurriyat leaders
without a passport or visa to Pakistan and declare it an evidence of India's
recognition of Kashmir as a disputed territory. They are never -- even
in a light 'mood' -- apologetic or sad about Kargil.
Their firebrand leader Maulana Fazlur
Rahman visited India and met RSS leaders in Jhandewala, New Delhi, but
never spoke a single word in praise of the RSS or its founder Dr Keshav
Baliram Hedgewar. He didn't find it necessary to say so for the sake of
friendship. He was careful not to express regret on the demolition of hundreds
of Hindu temples in Pakistan in the wake of the December 6 demolition of
the Babri Masjid and even earlier.
He said all good things, expressed
decent gestures, evoked friendly amiable body language -- a smiling and
affectionate face -- but not an inch was given on the core issues. The
Pakistanis are never apologetic about having a two-tier constitutional
arrangement for Hindus and other non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan which
makes them virtually second class citizens.
It is not necessary to covert to
win friendship. Stand up firmly and uncompromisingly on your issues and
yet strive for friendship. That alone lasts. The 'converted' can only have
pity and a 'protectionist' smile, but not a friendly relationship based
on parity. That is the policy which makes Pakistanis a solid block and
successful on Kashmir.
Hindus wanted a say in politics
and matters of governance as they had borne the brunt of all foreign invasions
and barbaric torture for centuries. At last, Somnath was rebuilt and so
should be our other places of importance.
But not a single Hindu pilgrim centre,
with the sole exception of Vaishnodevi -- that too due to the personal
efforts of Jagmohan, then Jammu and Kashmir governor, a non-BJP person
though -- was made into an ideal model of a place of worship, even by those
who declared themselves the sole repository of all Hindu wisdom and activism.
UP was in their hands and so was
Uttaranchal, which had the most revered pilgrim centres like Badrinath,
Kedarnath, Gangotri, Yamunotri, Mathura, Vrindavan, Kashi and Ayodhya.
Not a single religious township or temple got the attention of the Hindu
nationalists.
Gangotri, visited by lakhs from
all over the world, does not have power supply even today or a workable
telephone connection. Ayodhya, Mathura and Vrindavan are the filthiest
towns and its temples remain badly mismanaged under government control.
Though they demand that Hindu temples be freed from State control, not
a single Hindu nationalist state government has yet started a plan to de-control
Hindu temples in their states and make them a 'shining example' of their
'vision, agenda, programme' and all that which gets an entry into their
idea of Ram Rajya.
At least now they are not bound
by an NDA agenda, as was their alibi for not doing what they didn't want
to do. Even though they had always demanded an enquiry into the mysterious
deaths of their two great stalwarts, Syama Prasad Mookerji and Deen Dayal
Upadhyaya, but once in power they felt shy to do it themselves.
One of their influential leaders
in Manipur, who spoke courageously for Hindu issues was shot dead by insurgents
and the man who would become home minister later had gone there to offer
condolences and led a protest march with a strong demand to have a CBI
inquiry in a written recorded statement, but ignored the memorandums of
the slain leader's family members to do it, when he could have ordered
it with a stroke of his pen.
After a highly pitched struggle
of five decades to create a niche for their aspirations, Hindus feel dispossessed
of their political clout. They are not a vote bank, but vote as Yadavs
and Rajputs and backwards. They are not religiously organised as their
so-called leaders have missed the bus and gone into a rhetoric which a
normal, common Hindu does not relate to.
They cannot teach their children
anything that would make them proud Hindus as the drive to detoxify is
primarily aimed at them alone. They are insulted for expressing fears of
a decline in their population and their dead are simply not counted though
NGOs flourish on an extraordinarily inflated statistics of the riots affecting
non-Hindus.
The conversion from Hinduism to
other faiths is hailed as a hallmark of secularism and fair governance,
but any effort to 'bring back' the converted is opposed as blatant communalism
and an affront to minority rights.
Hindus have become so dispossessed
of their self pride that an assault on the Shankaracharya, disapproved
by the highest court of the land, is seen as something against Brahmins
alone and the mastermind behind it celebrates it with an electoral win.
