My bottom line is that I am not willing to keep quiet where my principles and my country are being torn asunder. I will speak and do whatever I can. I am glad that this group exists, amongst others, and a realisation is dawning on us that every voice matters – small or big, from wherever it may come – to bring sanity back to our battered public life and space.

The post Memories Buried Deep have come back to Haunt Me: Aruna Roy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In a public lecture at CEU’s School of Public Policy on May 11, George Soros Visiting Practitioner Chair Aruna Roy spoke passionately about a particularly “relevant and timely” topic: the growing restraints that even democratically elected governments in many countries are imposing on dissent these days. Although she focused her remarks on the situation in India, she noted that this was “a malaise that has spread internationally.”Democratically elected governments often talk – at least initially – about principles like equality and justice, freedom of expression, and the rights of minorities to express themselves. Roy said that many people took these principles seriously and were determined to hold their governments accountable. When they tried to pursue these rights, however, they threatened the status quo. Governments often reacted by restricting dissent.

Roy noted that the ability to express dissent was an especially important “need” for those living on the margins – people who have “no place to go but the streets.” She went on to explain that being able to dissent was more important to many people than the particular issue that they opposed. “Street action is our parliament. It’s where we express our point of view,” she said.

There have been some important moments in India when people’s ability to dissent has resulted in significant changes. Roy detailed several of these instances including the political protests in Rajasthan in 1996 that led to the passage of people-centric legislations like the Right to Information and the MGNREGA (act guaranteeing a minimum level of wage employment to rural households). The rights-based laws that resulted were important achievements for India, especially for its “enlightened poor.” Roy pointed out that dissent is not just a voice against the prevailing status quo or so-called mainstream opinion. It is also a voice for an alternative that pushes governance to honor its commitment to a more equitable society for everyone.

Roy spoke strongly about the “knowledge and skill inequality” that prevents many people from listening to the poor. “We don’t have patience to listen to knowledge that is framed in a way that is not familiar to us,” she said. She showed several videos during her presentation to make this point. In one instance, marginalized and semi-literate women in Kudankulam (in the southern Indian state of Tamilnadu) spoke eloquently about why they opposed plans to build a nuclear power plant in their area demonstrating that they understood the risks very clearly. “Their understanding and wisdom is no less than ours,” noted Roy.

The denial of dissent enables a single narrative to take over public discourse, denying the right to express a multiplicity of opinions and views. This denial of the right to expression and the arbitrary use of power to strengthen autocratic governance further erode the democratic rights of citizens. Free speech, dissent, disagreement, and the fundamental right to expression have to be protected to ensure both a healthy democracy and a better policy framework said Roy.

Courtesy: School of Public Policy

The Speech May be Listened to Here:

The post When Dissent becomes Difficult, Democracy is Sick appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
Comrades-singers from, and for, all of us.
 
Vinay and Charul, singers of protest songs and peoples' bards released their album of songs , ‘Aazadi’, in Ahmedabad recently. We were invited to speak on ‘Sangeet, Sapna aur Samvidhan’ – music, dreams and the constitution. In Hindi it is alliterative. The topic was as carefully chosen as. the banner and the music we heard that day.

The theme excited my imagination. Music is important to me. It has never failed to transport me to the world of dreams and a sense of wellbeing. It is a love that goes back to childhood, when musical notes wove their magic and spoke before we had words and a vocabulary to think, to Amma's – my mother's – lullabies as we fell asleep.

When slightly older Appa – my father – put the sounds in the context of structure and theory, he told us stories about the musicians. We had compulsory afternoon naps on Saturdays to make sure that we would stay awake to listen to the National Program on ‘All India Radio’. In the journey with him we traversed the unchartered by-lanes of music, often breaking away from the trodden path to listen to the music of the world. Our ears and minds had to learn to be patient; to hear what was not familiar and not instantly gratifying. But there was a palpable expansion of one’s universe. From Dikshithar to Thumries, from Ariyakudi Ramanujam Iyengar to Karim Khan and Fayaz Khan Sahib, to the strains of the Blue Danube, Peter and the wolf, and the Minuet in G, Tevaram and Paul Robeson. My innocent mind received and began to see melody and harmony, and prepared itself to understand counter point.

I now know that this process etched the concept of plurality as an irrefutable value in my life. As children we heard the principle articulated by our parent's comments, when we grumbled about food and other things, “If you cannot taste different food and listen to different music or thoughts, you will remain narrow and illiterate, illogical and prejudiced.”

‘Sangeet, Sapna and Samvidhan’, made sense and encapsulated these ideas. The journey to Ahmedabad, fraught with painful memories of engineered exclusivity and conflict, ironically presented a great opportunity to share music and by sharing an experience established a deep connection between apparent differences and disparities. Words have become loaded with preconceptions. One often misses the essence because of the sound and fury of conditioned reflex to jargon. But music could dispel the non-essential and go straight to the collective dreams articulated so well in our Constitution and its Preamble.

Sangeet
Laxman and I had diligently put the music together, random and scattered as they were, keeping  strict watch on the time – five minutes in all. In those five minutes we had to capture the abundant richness of varied traditions and modes. It was a challenge.

It began with the Tanpura shruthi, the basic drone for all Indian music. All sound is a variation of those seven note from sa to ni, do to ti. As Amjad Ali Khan explained in one of his recitals two decades ago – the seven notes, the flats and the sharps, define the universal language not only of music but of all expression; a million variations of song and rendering. All bound together in the common harmony of inter-relationship.

Even the random selection followed a chronology. It went back to Amma's lullaby, a kriti of Muthuswami Dikshitar – Hiranmayim. It brought back memories of glorious sound and the warmth of a mothers' unconditional love. The kriti – as the rendering is technically defined – was sung by T.M. Krishna, a great young contemporary musician, who is also democratically committed and an articulate columnist. As a musician he has always pushed boundaries, redefining spaces. As a citizen he sees himself beyond the category and the box of a stellar musician, into which he is relentlessly pushed by an admiring audience. His writings reflect his concerns, arching from music, to freedom of expression, and protest against fascist policy. There could not have been a better example of the interconnectivity of categories in and amongst ourselves!

The musical journey meandered to Kabir, popular for centuries. He was at one time exclusively the bard of the Dalits and the poor, the poet of Hindi speaking rural India, the saint of the “Kabir panthis”. In our acquaintance with the peasants and workers of Rajasthan, we have met scores of illiterate performers with repertoires of hundreds of his songs. But Kumar Gandharva sang to Kabir that evening – a tribute for popularising Kabir on the concert platform. As he sang “ Suntan hai guru gyani-jheeni jheeni”, one hoped that the gap between the Dalits and the others, the traditional folk style and the classical form began to be blurred.

In all these instinctive choices, the effort to bring differences together, without damaging their distinctive attributes, seems to have played a dominant role.

The music then made a leap to another part of our musical mind and the globe. It was a dramatic and not necessarily an easy change for the listener. It shifted to the last movement of the 9^th symphony of Beethoven- the choral. For many of us, it is a great revolutionary movement with its undisputed musical place in history. But it is no less important for bringing Schillers’s lyric celebrating universal brotherhood to millions of us. It is the symphony that played when the Berlin Wall was brought down. It is today the anthem of the European Union.

As Charul sings.. “Hindu kehta . . om namah shivaya” in her clear and melodious voice and Vinay ends this stanza with the azaan, clouds dispel along with his voice and the music reached, and touched, an infinity. The song never fails to strike the chords of our conscience.

We could hear the beginning of murmurs, perhaps everyone’s patience was being stretched. But this long standing favourite, also stands testimony to the human minds’ ability to absorb the other, the unfamiliar, so essential to building pluralism and tolerance. There was hope that the human voice used very differently in that movement, would nudge an opening up of mind space to listen and to appreciate difference.

The next switch came with the song of protest and freedom, the popular music of the modern world.  Perhaps the listeners would feel more comfortable. The eclectic audience was invisible. Joan Baez's melodious voice sang, “We shall overcome”. A song familiar to activist India as “Hum honge Kamayaab.”

It hopefully found familiar ground with activists in the audience. For the undergrads of the 60s it was politically evocative. The USA glorified in history for its advocacy of democracy, a country which freed its slaves; did not grant them equality. Martin Luther King and the movement for the equality of Black Americans is part of the living memory of many of us. This song and Martin Luther King’s ringing words, “We have a dream”, come together to make one of the most powerful statements for equality and inclusion in the modern world.

As Joan Baez sang with the power of faith and belief, my generation perhaps heard in our minds, Pete Seeger’s famous lyric also sung by her, “Where have all the flowers gone,” the powerful protest rendering against the war in Vietnam. There is a strong possibility that if a similar song had been sung today in the context of the Indian government and what constitutes the state today, the composers of music and the singer would have been jailed for sedition! Kovan, a folk singer in Tamil Nadu protesting in song against the liquor policy of the current establishment was in jail for sedition.

The music shifted from Joan Baez to Faiz and Nayara Noor. We went to Lahore for the Safdar Hashmi Festival in 1988, part of the collective euphoria of “jumbooriat”, democracy after many decades of martial law. The stadium in Lahore was jam packed. As curious and sympathetic Indians we heard songs and drums familiar and evocative. We did not have to battle with an alien culture. We had to accept that differences of nationality do not create barriers, as we hummed with “mast kalandar” and the songs; felt the rhythm of the drums in our bones. We heard Nayara Noor one of those memorable evenings. A voice of velvet and an elusive quality that is unforgettable.  Joan Baez and Nayara Noor are also women, that have brought in the feminist argument for peace and solidarity, into their singing and music. As her clear voice wafted, “Aaj bazaar mein pabajoolan”, into the cooling air in the Gujarat Vidyapeeth that night of dark differences were kept at bay.

Charul and Vinay have become synonymous with protest songs of quality, in lyrics and music. Perfectionists, committed with body and soul to what they do. They are very good friends and we have stood together at many a protest. In all the songs they have created and I have heard, one of my standing favourites remains; “Mat baanton insaan ko”. The lyric cautions us against the creation of conflicts, to prevent us from becoming tools in the hands of political manipulation. The song is popular – it’s sung both badly and well, in and out of tune, in seminars and workshops, in public meetings and drawing rooms. It is often sung without even knowing who the author of the lyric is, or even the names of the singers are. As Charul sings.. “Hindu kehta . . om namah shivaya” in her clear and melodious voice and Vinay ends this stanza with the azaan, clouds dispel along with his voice and the music reached, and touched, an infinity. The song never fails to strike the chords of our conscience.

The journey to songs of protest by people who use songs to express their angst, was organic. Lyrics composed by singers who may not read or write but can remember tomes of musical scores. Mohan Lal (Mohanba), singer of Kabir, Bhagatji to hundreds of villages in the Magra area of Rajasthan was also an MKSS and RTI activist. His musical imagination was from popular folk song, his singing always with others in chorus. His song “Raj Choron ko” spread the message of the RTI quicker and more clearly than the hundreds of lectures and articles written on the subject. He sang in his grainy voice, “Pehle wala chor”. The thief of yore shot you with a gun; today’s dacoits kill you with a pen. He sang to tell us that in this scenario, the right to see papers and documents is the only salvation from administrative tyranny, from poverty, inequality and injustice, to get us closer to the dream of freedom.

The musical journey ended for the night with the playing of the tanpura, coming back to remind us of the common harmony of the inter-relationship of notes. We have to be open to receive, allow the other point of view some space within our minds. It is the beginning of listening– an enabling process- to learn, love and tolerate others. A change of tone from flat to sharp, may allow us to organically deal with the discomfort of alien cultural expression. The music was an expression of hope, that signaled openness: an acceptance of differences in food, in apparel, politics and religious practices.

Tolerance is one of the non-negotiables to the feeling of and actually being equal.

Sapna
When Martin Luther King said: “I have a dream”, he spoke for all the unequal people of the world. What are the collective dreams of a tolerant country? Shankar spoke of those dreams which remain just at the edge of the horizon- permanently for some of us.

Shankar was born in a rural family, worked his way through school and college, worked in 17 different jobs, before he found his vocation as a communicator activist. He is a friend, colleague of many years and a part of the struggle and of protest, of songs and theatre. For Shankar dreams were not ephemeral. His powerful statement that day:

“We dream of food. In a stomach that is hungry, the dream cannot be of anything but food. We dream of food, we struggle for food, we fight over food. “

He drew out powerfully, the charter of hunger. He drew parallels between the campaign for food and hunger and the cultural expression that pushed it forward. In every successful campaign, it is that song that smells of the earth and contains a myriad images that draw on the harsh and lived experiences, that has propelled the desire to relentlessly pursued the demand for justice. We had no time to bring to our audience the powerful poem of Harish Bhidani, chanting , "Rotinaam satt hai, sattbolo gatt hai". We had heard it for the first time at a Jan Sunwai (People’s Hearing) in Bhim in 1994. Another poignant verse on hunger recalls that for a hungry person, everything that is round looks like a roti. Shankar made a simple, unpretentious reference to the unaddressed dreams of millions of Indians who were promised Azaadi in 1947, who are still waiting for it to happen.  Anticipating the beautiful lyric in whose name the album ‘Azaadi’, was released.

In the increasing bedlam of religious and political intolerance and bigotry, the sane voice of the framers of the Constitution remains a lode-star. It beckons and directs the continual demand for the logic of inter-relationship, the warmth of human concern, the space in the minds and hearts of people, the basis of a compassionate people and a fair and just government.

The entire discourse was located in the songs Charul and Vinay have sung, and in the music from the MKSS  for the RTI. The Charul and Vinay song ‘Janne ka Haq’ took the RTI to every part of India, and remains our anthem. Shankar's energy and charisma took the evening further. Dreams are expressed through collective songs and camaraderie of association.

The first song in the album released, Azaadi encapsulates the dreams of the right to live with dignity, to live without hunger -light the "chulha" everyday. These are people’s dreams, dreams which have become nightmares. The people who, to quote Galeano, remain the nobodies

The nobodies:
……………The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The
nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits,
dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the
police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them
Eduardo Galeano
Shankar's dreams come from the depth of this collective conscience.

Samvidhan
The Constitution was more than a legal document for the nobodies, for those who journey through life seeking some rationality for existence with logic and justice. It is the dream of possibilities and probability. Constitutional guarantees remain critical for all those who get out of the personal and see the public domain as the other half of a continuing argument.

In the increasing bedlam of religious and political intolerance and bigotry, the sane voice of the framers of the Constitution remains a lode-star. It beckons and directs the continual demand for the logic of inter-relationship, the warmth of human concern, the space in the minds and hearts of people, the basis of a compassionate people and a fair and just government.

It was only appropriate that the last song of the album, and the conclusion of the evening should be with a hymn to the preamble – we the people," Hum Log". The pledge is a talisman and a daily prayer. Because for many Indians, the everyday is a scene of contention and battle, for equality, for dignity and justice. The oft-quoted extract from Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali, carries the same urgency and prayer for wisdom today as it did almost a hundred years ago. They are words expressed with so much beauty and truth. A prayer for freedom tempered with principles, a country:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore
 

(The writer is a former officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS who resigned; now political and social activist who founded the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan along with Shankar Singh, Nikhil Dey and many others apart from being a Magsaysay award winner for Community leadership)
 

The post Sangeet, Sapna aur Samvidhan: Diverse Tastes that animate India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: Indranil Bhoumik/Mint
 

• Release Funds earmarked in Central Budget for MGNREGA
• 95 per cent of current year’s budgetary releases for MGNREGA exhausted
• MGNREGA workers in at least 12 States are at work with no funds available with the State Governments to pay their wages
• Threat of Illegal and Inordinate delays in payment of wages; Worse, implementing agencies in the country will not even register demand for Rural Work
• Demand based framework of the legislation appears not to be backed by Central government
• FM Arun Jaitley’s 2015 Budget Speech allocated only Rs 34,699 crore (of which Rs 6426 crore was required simply to meet the pending obligations of the previous year)
• FM Jaitley promised another Rs. 5,000 crore, should there be tax buoyancy; tax buoyancy has been acknowledged by Government
• An Act like MGNREGA passed unanimously by Parliament must be unconditionally financed by Government and not depend upon ad hoc decisions of the Finance Ministry

 
What is MGNREGA ?

• MGNREGA was unanimously passed by Parliament in 2005, providing a demand based legal guarantee for any rural family seeking up to 100 days of work
• In the decade since it has provided employment to over 10 crore families and continues to be a lifeline for lakhs of families, particularly in times of distress.
• The 2016 drought has brought home the usefulness of the programme in providing immediate relief to rural citizens as well as providing some injection of demand in depressed rural markets.
• The Ministry of Rural Development notifying additional days of employment under the MGNREGA to 150 in six drought-affected states is an indication of this  

 
These demands were made in an Open Letter to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today. The signatories are Aruna Roy, Jean Dreze, Jayati Ghosh, Nikhil Dey among others

The text of the letter:
 
Dear Mr Jaitley,         

This is a submission to be handed over to you at the pre-budget consultation on the social sector on January 12, 2016, sent through invited members of citizen groups.

While the continuing trend of meagre and slashed budget allocations for the entire social sector is a reason for alarm, we write to you today regarding an immediate and urgent concern regarding the budgetary allocations and disbursement of funds for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) for the current financial year. We feel that if this issue is not addressed conclusively, the discussions of the pre-budget consultation for the upcoming budget would be rendered symbolic, and inspire little confidenceas an actionable consultation.

As you know the MGNREGA was unanimously passed by Parliament, providing a demand based legal guarantee for any rural family seeking up to 100 days of work. In the ten years since then, it has provided employment to over 10 crore families and continues to be a lifeline for lakhs of families, particularly in times of distress. The drought this year has again revealed the usefulness of the programme in providing immediate relief to rural citizens as well as providing some injection of demand in depressed rural markets. The notification of additional employment days to 150 in six drought-affected states by the Ministry of Rural Development is an indication of this.  

Timely release of funds this year so far, has led to some improvement in the demand for work generated over last year, and in making timely wage payments. However, as funds have dried up, the crisis of the last few years threatens to be repeated. As the Minister of Rural Development communicated to you on December 31, 2015, Ninety-five % of the current releases from the Finance Ministry have been exhausted. States have been making repeated requests to the Ministry based on their approved labour budget. Further, workers in at least 12 States are at work with no funds available with the State to pay their wages. This will inevitably lead to illegal and inordinate delays in payment of wages. It will also mean that most implementing agencies in the country will not even register demand.

This pattern of fund shortage is undermining the credibility of the legal framework. It has passed a chilling message down the administration that the demand based framework of the programme is not backed by the Government of the day. Another fund crisis at this point would not only multiply rural distress but also deal another crippling blow to the law and the programme.

We would also like to point out that simply maintaining the allocation in 2010-11 at Rs. 40,100 crore, taking into account inflation, would imply a budget in 2015-16 of Rs. 61,445 crore.In terms of percentage of GDP, the MGNREGA budget allocation has fallen from 0.59% in 2009-10 to 0.25% in 2014-15.In your budget speech for 2015-16 you allocated only Rs 34,699 crore (of which Rs 6426 crore was required simply to meet the pending obligations of the previous year) with a promise for another Rs. 5,000 crore, should there be tax buoyancy. While the Government itself has acknowledged increased tax buoyancy this year, we would like to underscore that the MGNREG Act passed unanimously by Parliament legally mandates unconditional availability of funds to honour demand for work and therefore the amounts provided cannot be based on decisions of the Finance Ministry.

We have two submissions: Given the immediate crisis and the requirement of the remaining three months of the FY 2015-16, we request the additional Rs. 5,000 crores to be made available to the Ministry of Rural Development immediately. Secondly, subsequent budget estimations and allocations to the programme must be brought in line with inflation;be measured and maintained as a percentage of share of GDP and fundamentally operate through a ‘demand pull’ system as required by the law.

Budgetary allocations for social sector programmes, when compared with allocations to other sectors in India, are a matter of national shame. This is in turn reflected in our pathetic indicators on health, education and women’s participation in the workforce. Claims of shortage of funds ring even more hollow when one considers the continual hike in allocations for elected representatives, and to public servants through the Seventh Pay Commissions.It is intriguing that the central government that denies resources for fulfil the basic needs of the majority of the population can easily find over Rs 1,00,000 crore additional resources from 2016-17 onwards to meet the recommendations of the 7^th Pay Commission that benefit employees and retirees who are less than 1 per cent of the population.

This is why we reiterate our overwhelming concern about the release of adequate funds for MGNREGA this year. The law requires it. The States are demanding it. The Ministry of Rural Development is making repeated demands for it. Implementing agencies are in desperate need of it. People will be driven to inhuman conditions of distress and starvation without it. There can be no legitimate justification for not making the releases to meet these demands and further increasing the amount as per demand.           

It is left to be seen how the Finance Ministry will respond.

The post Relieve Rural Distress, Release MGNREGA funds, FM told appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Courtesy: bbc.com

It is not a mere coincidence that the last three election manifestos of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) included the issue of a review of the Indian Con-stitution. And the fact that the BJP could manage to smuggle in this issue as part of the national agenda for government — the joint common manifestos of the motley combination, which calls itself the National Democratic Alliance — betrayed the intolerance of the Hindutva forces spearheaded by its political arm, the BJP, to the present Constitution. It is also quite revealing that once it assumed office it went ahead with the formation of the Constitution Review Commission, which has since submitted its report. The attempts at tinkering with the basic features of the Indian Constitution, which has the parliamentary system as the centre–piece of the political structure, provides a sharp contrast to the involvement of elected representatives of the people as inherent in the Constituent Assembly and underlines the alien nature of this latter attempt which essentially is divorced from the people and their aspirations.

Fortunately, the composition of the Indian Parliament as of now, and the insight of a broad array of political forces into the possible dangers of the Hindutva forces in redefining the secular democratic and composite nature of the Indian State and society have largely thwarted the potential mischief–making potential of the move. The silence of the government thereafter, on implementing some of the issues raised by the constitution review is a case in point. Perhaps we will hear more about it on the eve of the coming election.

In response to his plea to lift the ban on the RSS, in 1948 the then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had observed in a letter to the then RSS chief and the most influential of Hindutva ideologues, MS Golwalkar: “In the course of the last year both the central government and the provincial governments have received a mass of information in regard to the objectives and activities of the RSS. This information does not fit in with what has been stated by you in this behalf. Indeed it would appear that the declared objectives have little to do with the real ones and with the activities carried on in various forms and ways by people associated with the RSS. These real objectives appear to be completely opposed to the decision of the Indian Parliament and the provisions of the proposed Constitution of India.”

But now that the BJP has virtually come to control the central government thanks to the servile capitulation of its so-called secular allies, the threat of subversion of the Constitution and the Parliament is very real. In the wake of the ban on the RSS, the Hindutva forces had found themselves completely on the back foot. And it is against this background that the Jan Sangh was formed in the early 50’s, since nobody was prepared to take up the Hindutva view in the Indian Parliament at that point of time. Subsequently, by the mid 60s, though the Jan Sangh had increased its strength in Parliament and tried its best to use the floor of the two Houses to further the interest of the Hindutva cause, they met with  limited success. Though the Sangh elements managed to position themselves crucially within the Janata Party in the general background against the authoritarian politics of the Congress Party epitomised by the Emergency, during the late 70’s, notwithstanding the success they achieved in planting Sangh Parivar elements in important governmental positions (particularly in the media with Advani handling the I&B portfolio), the fight back by the secularists led by Madhu Limaye on the dual membership question led to the Hindutva forces suffering a set-back.

By the 1984 elections, the BJP, the new incarnation of the Jan Sangh, came down to an all time low of just two members in the Lok Sabha. But the fortunes of the Hindutva forces started looking up, with the Hindutva campaign concentrating on “pseudo secularism” against the Congress after the Rajiv Gandhi government’s completely misplaced decision to placate fundamentalist elements by reversing the Supreme Court judgment on the Shah Bano case.   

The use of Parliament by the Hindutva forces reached a most crucial phase with the Ram Mandir campaign in the early 90s. The BJP used the floor of the Parliament to propagate the mandir cause and ultimately, along with the National Integration Council, the two Houses were also used to hoodwink the nation on its real game plan about bringing down the Babri Masjid. However, this gory act once again saw the BJP finding itself in splendid isolation. The spectacle of Vajpayee completely lost standing alone in the Lok Sabha in an atmosphere of all–round condemnation will continue to be part of an enduring memory in the annals of the Indian Parliament.

But the fact that Vajpayee did not outright condemn the unmaking of the Indian Constitution in Ayodhya was a crucial point in the process of the Hindutva forces’ attempt to subvert Parliament. The Hindutva forces attempt at subverting Parliament went on unabated till 1998, so long as it was in the Opposition. But these efforts did not help the BJP emerge out of its political isolation.

However, these subversive efforts assumed a new dimension with the NDA government’s assumption of office in 1998. The dubious political and ideological premise which separated the BJP from its allies was promised to be relegated to the backburner on the eve of the elections. When questioned by the media on the absence of controversial issues like the reconstruction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, or scrapping of Article 370 of the Constitution at the time of the release of the NDA’s common election manifesto, Vajpayee pointedly stated that the NDA, if voted to power, would have nothing to do with these issues.  

The so-called secular allies of the BJP and NDA allowed themselves to suffer the self–delusion that the BJP was abandoning these issues for good. This was despite the fact that the Hindutva brigade did not make any secret about merely putting them on hold and not really abandoning them. But opportunism and lust for power prevailed in so far as the thinking of these so–called allies was concerned. To start with, the BJP was cautious and gave the impression that it was genuinely sensitive to the allies’ concern over the controversial issues. But as and when the vulnerabilities of these allies were exposed, the BJP went on the offensive,  more so, after the NDA was re–elected to office in 1999.

The first major issue in its attempt to subvert the parliamentary system started with the efforts in securing endorsement for the Gujarat government’s decision to allow its employees the freedom to associate with the RSS. This was in complete contravention of the existing rules. The Opposition wanted the government to advise the Gujarat government to reverse this decision. Not only the Opposition, even a section of the NDA put its foot down, rubbishing the bid of BJP leaders at the Centre to pretend they did not wish to interfere or undermine the ‘legitimate authority’ of a state government.

The protest against this led to the stoppage of normal transaction of business in both houses of Parliament. In the face of such strong resistance, the government had to relent and appropriate advice was communicated to the Gujarat government, leading to the scrapping of the latter’s earlier order.  

The next major confrontation was sparked off by Vajpayee’s infamous assertion that the ‘reconstruction of the Ram Temple was an expression of national sentiment.’ The debate on this dubious statement by the Prime Minister brought out the hypocritical commitment of the BJP to keep Hindutva agenda out of the government’s ambit. The Opposition did well to expose the sham and the Rajya Sabha, where the Opposition was in majority, voted a resolution disapproving the Prime Minister’s statement. But the flip side of this development was that so-called secular allies with otherwise impeccable credentials steeped in non–Brahminical Dravidian ideology like the DMK, MDMK or PMK sided with the government over such a crude expression of Hindutva.
The Ayodhya issue also saw government efforts at making the construction of the Ram Temple a part of the government’s agenda by offering legitimacy to the shiladaan program sponsored by the VHP and the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas even as the matter remains pending before the Supreme Court. It is the Prime Minister who gave legitimacy to the VHP’s pernicious design by promising it a deadline on the issue.

As long as the Hindutva forces are not ideologically weeded out from the body politic, the threat of Hindutva subverting Parliament will be real. The legislature and its capacity to assert its independence flow from the executive’s accountability.

Having thus allowed the drift and once again put the entire nation on tenterhooks, the Prime Minister justified the action of the attorney general making the government a party to a religious ceremony. Another major attempt at undermining secularism as the mainstay of state policy by the Hindutva forces is related to its series of actions aimed at saffronising education. Be it the question of withdrawal of manuscripts edited by secular historians for the ‘India Wins Freedom’ series or rewriting of NCERT history text books or framing of the national curriculum policy, Union minister for human resources development, Murli Manohar Joshi misled the Parliament and the nation with half-truths and plain lies. That the Opposition nailed these lies is a different issue.

But the most serious of all attempts to subvert Parliament by the Hindutva forces was over the Gujarat development.In the first week of March itself, the treasury benches refused to accept the terming of the indiscriminate looting, killings, arson, rape of the hapless minorities in Gujarat as state–sponsored genocide. All important ministers of the government, particularly LK Advani and Arun Jaitley justified Narendra Modi’s infamous “every action has an opposition reaction” theory, linking the communal carnage to the Godhra incident. Gaping holes in the government’s line of argument can be identified in the three debates which have taken place so far in Parliament on the subject.  Attacks on independent institutions like the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the National Commission for Minorities have been major features of the government’s stand. On the floor of the House, Jaitley defended intolerance of the media, like the blocking of Star News coverage of the Gujarat genocide. Venkaiah Naidu was so enraged over facts quoted from the special issue of Communalism Combat on Gujarat that he demanded an immediate banning of the publication. Only a reminder that it is a legitimately published magazine brought him to his senses. The contradictory facts over the Godhra incident also bear testimony to the government’s attempts at subverting Parliament. Notwithstanding the government’s most blatant attempts to shield the Modi government and the indefensible acts of the Hindutva forces in Gujarat, the NDA–government ultimately had to be a party to a resolution in the Rajya Sabha accepting the failure of the Gujarat government and its own inaction.  

To conclude, as long as the Hindutva forces are not ideologically weeded out from the body politic, the threat of Hindutva subverting Parliament will be real. The legislature and its capacity to assert its independence flow from the executive’s accountability. This is how the makers of the Constitution conceived the parliamentary system in our country. Given the obnoxious record of the BJP and the Hindutva forces, the threat is all the more serious.

In democracies the world over, the functioning of the legislature is inseparably linked to the functioning of a free press reflecting truthfully the development and proceedings in  Parliament. Therefore, in the coming days, vigilance has to be redoubled to safeguard Parliament from such pernicious attempts at subversion.          

Archived from Communalism Combat, September 2002, Anniversary Issue (9th), Year 9  No. 80, Subversive Sangh

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