By M.S. Prabhakara

The Congress is a preferable alternative to the group that has been defeated but to describe it as the `secular alternative' is to do injury to language, history and memory.

THE DELIGHT over the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance Government in Delhi needs to be tempered with some concern about the shape of things to come.

Yes, one is delighted over the defeat of the BJP-led Government in Delhi. The NDA Government had lost whatever legitimacy it initially had ever since it chose, first to bluff and browbeat its way through cruel rationalisations and later to be a passive spectator of, perhaps even a covert participant in, the generalised massacres that went on and on after the Godhra killings. It has taken over two years for nemesis to catch up; belated as it is, and though this does not bring back the lives of those killed and does little to heal the wounds and restore the dignity and the lost material goods of the innocent victims, these just deserts are most welcome.

But to describe, and welcome, the alternative that is shaping up in Delhi amidst the usual wheeling and dealing as the `secular alternative' is quite simply to take the easy way out, to surrender to the allure of another kind of self-induced so-called `feel good' factor, to indulge in smug self-congratulations that India is really shining in ways not intended by the authors of that silly slogan.

If the BJP and the Hindutva mindset now occupy a substantial political space in India and has indeed become just another legitimate political party and ideology, the responsibility for this has to be laid at the doors of the Congress itself. This is not the place to go into the historic links between the Congress and the spiritual and political forerunners of the Hindutva mindset; such an exercise would also be pointless, for the Hindutva mindset has always been appropriated by the Congress. Like many other mass organisations that led the freedom movements in colonised countries, the Congress in India too has been somewhat of a broad church, alternatively having an accommodation with and fighting against reactionary political tendencies, most notably (in the Indian context) the communalism of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, as well as other mutually contradictory political and economic philosophies and programmes, all under the exigencies of the freedom movement.

What has been the stand of the Congress on the vital issue of communalism since independence, when these exigencies no longer obtained? Three instances highlighting national chauvinism, communal mobilisation and violence against religious minorities, in each and every one of which the Congress took the initiative, are cited below.

One, when 3,000 swayamsevaks of the RSS in their uniforms marched in the Republic Day parade on January 26, 1963, Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister. The RSS was invited to participate in the march. The border clashes with China earlier in that winter in which the Indian armed forces were badly beaten had left Nehru utterly demoralised, acquiescing with the worst forms of national chauvinism; and the invitation to the RSS to take part in the Republic Day parade was one way of legitimising this form of chauvinism. One recalls with shame listening to the All India Radio commentary of that parade, the extolling by the official media of the `disciplined' footsoldiers of rank reaction.

Two, the national shame of December 6, 1992, was carefully prepared for by three preliminary initiatives that led, successively and inescapably, to that denouement.

The `implanting of the idols of Ramachandraji in the Babri Masjid' on the night of December 22-23, 1949, when Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister; the removal of the locks that had been placed on the gates to the `disputed structure' on February 1, 1986 when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister; and the Shilanyas on November 9, 1989, with Rajiv Gandhi still Prime Minister, though beleaguered by disclosures about various scandals following the resignation of V. P. Singh from the Government. The demolition itself was carried out with another Congress Prime Minister in office in Delhi.

Three, organised killing of minorities. The cruel rationalisation of the killings in Gujarat (every action is followed by a reaction) has quite an interesting pedigree in Rajiv Gandhi's observation, vis-�-vis the killings in Delhi of thousands of Sikhs following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, that when a great tree fell, the earth was bound to shake.

Yes, the Congress is a preferable alternative to the gang that has been defeated but to describe it as the `secular alternative' is to do injury to language, history and memory. So, the words of Amilcar Cabral, the great African revolutionary, tell no lies, claim no easy victories.

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2004/05/17/stories/2004051704191000.htm