I am not a fan of Mamata Banerjee’s rhetorical politics nor do I believe that BJP can’t gain in West Bengal. The problem in India is that everything is between the parties and the real issues are left out because those who are sitting on our discussion tables don’t want certain things to be revealed. When institutions have failed and been left with no credibility, then how do you fight? There was a huge scam but then if we are fighting against corruption by selective targeting of the opposition leaders then it will not work.
 
Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are the fountainheads of corruption. Everybody knows how crony capitalism has grown over the years. Anil Ambani’s company has already applied for insolvency and who will pay for it? The banks who took his guarantee? Today, politicians have converted corruption into a non-issue so that people don’t speak about it and accept it as part of the culture. Selective targeting of political opponents has been the biggest tool of this government to win electoral battles.
 
Now, we know that the Saradha and Narada chit fund scam case is before the Supreme Court and nothing has moved. Why is this issue being raised today when the elections are around the corner? What prohibits CBI from following the procedure? Was it a well-executed drama which suits both Mamata and BJP well? Mamata, because, she will want BJP to be her main opponent despite the fact that they are nowhere in the picture. In her zeal to eliminate the left forces, Mamata did everything the left had done. But left continues to be on a decline in the state. I am not impressed with any rallies because these are programmed rallies which are organised to show strength. When you are in power, you can mobilise anything. I am sure, Mayawati, Lalu Yadav, Chandra Babu Naidu, left parties, DMK, all can organise massive rallies of their supporters. It is a good show of strength but nothing else.
 
CBI’s Kolkata office has shown its incompetence several times. It was sending notices to Police commissioner on November 12 to appear on November 30. It is like what used to happen in olden days when the university registrar office would pack all the letters to be sent to applicants or invitees for a particular date but the postal staff would actually post it after the event to deny certain persons from being there. This is a typical Indian practice and shows how corruption has deep roots inside us. Kolkata High Court’s single-judge bench has put a hold on the arrest of the police commissioner till a certain date.
 
West Bengal government has already withdrawn its consent to CBI which means for any action, CBI has to take permission from the state. But it was not done. How can 40 officials of an organisation land up at the office of the Police commissioner and act as the cronies of the ruling establishment? They are supposed to take care of our security but are more interested in petty politics to get the opposition leaders trapped in cases. This is shameful, to say the least. Obviously, in the bhaktmandali, James Bond is a super cop who can’t do anything wrong.
 
They want to replicate what they did at midnight at the CBI headquarters in Delhi when they removed A K Verma and sent the Delhi Police to surround the CBI headquarter. If this is the modus-operandi then I am sure, we are now entering a dangerous war zone of centre-state relations.
 
Narendra Modi-Amit Shah-BJP-RSS have actually come from one background, that once you accumulate all power then all your wrongs become right. They feel that world goes through narratives and hence they have their c-grade scriptwriters, who are unable to counter their opponents politically and hence use all kinds of intimidating tactics and legitimise it with their paid trolls in television studios what we call ‘newsrooms’. These newsrooms are nothing but Sangh Parivar trolls cooking up stories to defame the opponents of the ruling establishment.
 
What is happening in Bengal is a clever and well-calculated ploy to put the entire state on fire. I do not see that the stock of Banerjee would grow. People talk about Bengal and the culture of politicisation but I can say that there is no politics in Bengal. Political violence in Bengal actually has left Uttar Pradesh and Bihar far behind. The ruling establishment in Bengal is actually the Bengali Brahmanical Bhadralok which has denied justice both socially and politically to vast Dalit Muslim segment of the state. We all know if the Dalit-Muslims-Adivasis-OBCs join hand in Bengal, they can overthrow the entire structure. Unfortunately, neither the left nor Mamata or Congress has done that.
 
Bengal’s politics has another important point. Most of those ruling castes were ‘revolutionary’ when CPM and left forces dominated the state. As the resentment grew against the left, these ‘revolutionaries’ jumped Mamata’s ship and abuse the left now. Right now, Mamata is in power and expected to do well, hence they still are with her but once they smell the decline in Mamata’s popularity or fortunes, they will shift and this time as ‘reactionaries’. All the time, the efforts of the Bengal’s established political forces is to deny the Dalit Muslims-OBCs a united front. Whenever there will be an opportunity, these forces leave one ship and jump to others.
 
There is no debate on ideological differences except the attempt to show ‘knowledge’ and denigrate those who differ. All those who used to do ‘management’ for the left in the past are with Mamata now and may go with BJP or Hindutva five to ten years later. It depends on the political temperature in Delhi and how it suits the Bhadralok.
 
Mamata Banerjee might gain some brownie points at the moment and project her as a ‘street’ leader but the problem in Bengal is more serious. She has not made any sincere effort to fight Hindutva and RSS politically. The more you try to stop them from the campaign, the bigger will be their impact. Tripura and Assam have not gone to Hindutva simply, but because of the Bengali upper caste shifts in these states along with others who are leaders of the Hindutva party today.
 
The biggest threat to India today is the dominance of the majority who want to maintain their hegemony at all costs and are ready to put the country on fire for the sake of it.
 
Bengal will gain if the historically denied communities there get access to power but now Hindutva has attempted to divide them through the citizenship bill, there is a risk that political violence might grow and Hindutva party is looking for that opportunity to increase its tally. The failure of left and Mamata will ultimately give space to the Hindutva party who will use these contradictions of caste for their own purpose.
 
Technically, BJP’s term has resulted in the erosion of all democratic values and institutions but at the same point of time, it sets the wrong precedence for an officer on the job, the police commissioner, to sit in on a dharna along with the chief minister. It is the time we understand the crisis which is longer and political leadership of the day whether Modi or others, have no vision.
 
When WhatsApp becomes our ‘source’ of ‘research’ and information, the result is bound to be more political groupings which won’t help in the long term. Bengal and northeast are sitting on a time bomb of political violence and it needs serious thought and action so that violence does not go beyond control, one that can threaten the integrity and unity of India.
 
Mamata should focus on fighting the BJP and Hindutva politically and the centre should desist from dismissing the government under any pretext because it would create a violent atmosphere which can go out of hand and will be detrimental for all.
 

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The election campaigns in North India would have passed uneventfully had Yogi Adityanath not uttered that Lord Hanuman was only a Dalit forest dweller and mere servant of Sri Ram. He said it on impulse at Alwar, Rajasthan during the last phase of elections in November 2018.
 
Dwija Hindus innately knew that most servant characters were only inferior gods, goblins and demons. Be it Hanuman, Bali, Sugriv, Vibhishan, Ahalya, Guha, Jatayu and others who were instrumental in the Ram’s victory or the Kaliyug vanaras who demolished the Babri temple in Ayodhya like L.K. Advaniji and the Hindutva Parivar. These sentiments are not just echoed by the Dwija Hindus but also materialist historians like Kosambi in his ‘Introduction’ who in footnotes depicted the low status of these gods and “the great influence of the Brahmin priesthood towards more humane observances” (p52.)
 
This has remained an uncontested truth for literate Hindus and others for generations. Interestingly, the twenty-first century has opened more venues of communications through social media where learning still remains limited. The Dalit Hanuman barb caught the imagination of New Dalit leadership like Chandrasekhar Azad who went to capture the Hanuman temples in UP and other places. In fact, fresh space for social and cultural struggles has emerged to counter the so-called Hindutva- Capitalist expansion, lest progressive Bhadralok thwarts it with muddled interpretations.
 
Not only the above but several such incidents during the modern period, particularly after 1794 when William Jones had declared that Indians were their long-lost kin, helped both modernists and traditionalists popularise Hinduism of two different camps. The term Hinduism itself was seemingly coined by Jones. On the other hand, Hindutva as an ideology of the Dwija is centred on alien or Mediterranean/BMAC theology. It seems that the present Hindutva forces get their forage from the writings and movements of the British who considered themselves Aryan pedigrees.
 
The writings of Lord Curzon, Waddel L.A and Colonel Olcott of Theosophical society have provided the much-needed intellectual support, not only for the present campaigners but also a section of Indologists who believed that Hinduism originated from Vedic culture. The crafty interpretation of Hindus as a geographical term and way of living is an afterthought cookie to satisfy some dissenters.
 
It is time that one should reflect on this phenomenon that has been cultivated by a social class spread in different camps with the same agenda. The Genetic DNA studies of Harvard Scholar Reich and others summarised in a book by Tony Jones have sufficiently established the fact about Aryan migration. This is now supported by hundreds of web pages on the net about White brotherhood or Aryan migrations justifying what the 19th-century scholars like Muir, Muller etc have said.
 
The soft and hard Hindutva promoted by the pseudo secularists and fake Hindus for the last few decades and the pouring of intermittent verbiage by select few intellectuals did not change the agenda of the debate. The purpose of the moiety of the prize fighters appears to be to bring the warring groups under their control. However, the critiques and applauders of Hindutva have hardly touched the real and crucial issue of the problem. Is the idea of Hinduism or the content, beliefs, gods, rituals, philosophy and other paraphernalia really native to present India borrowed, imposed? What are the similarities and differences between the anthropomorphic gods of the Sumerians and Hindu pantheon based on which cudgels are fought? Why do the Hindutva forces or Brahminical Hinduism hate the native Indians and their belief systems while consciously following the alien gods and being enslaved by them?
 
It is true that any religion is a way of life. It is not necessarily true for Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims or some other faiths. All faiths believe in equality before God, share common values and respect certain traditions and rituals. But they may not help mark the difference between religions. Each religion has certain core values and features, like a holy book, god or gods, rituals etc. It is true even for non-belief systems or faith like ideologies that are thought to be infallible and inalienable by the followers. There are certain practices and relationships that are basic for the survival of a tradition without which its identity is lost. There could be groups or classes who are the adherents of the core values and they protect them with a belief to be in turn protected by them. That gives power, strength, legitimacy and endurance.
 
In this context, we may examine some of the unique characters and practices of Sumerians and Babylonians who had around 3000 gods. We have Zeus, Hades and Poseidon as Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara trinity, seven sisters like the sapta rishis, the Lion-headed Meroitic god of Egypt like that of our Narasimha, King Ramasses of Hyksos of 1709 BC like our Lord Rama of Ikshvaku, the Hittite texts, BMAC-Andronovo culture, Zoroastrian culture of the Parsis and the genetic debate etc., have reconfirmed the far-reaching migrations of Aryan tribes. Some of them entered United India Including Pakistan, Afghanistan.  Soviet archaeologists like Viktor Sarianidi, B.G.Gafurov and several others have repudiated the opinion that Aryans already lived in India in 3 millennium BC on the basis of archaeological and linguistic research.
 
Interestingly, thousands of karyakartas spread around the world, mostly in the English-speaking countries (ironically keeping aside the religious restrictions to not, cross oceans) are now working day in and day out to denounce the above findings and use abusive language to criticise scholars and historians who support scientific evidence. Not surprising that all of them, unless hiding their identity, come from the same social class. They are interested in protecting the false identity of Aryan ancestry being Indian. This is Brahminical puritanism, the ideology of Hindutva. The pantheon of gods is different and they alone have properties and wealth.
 
History has given us a new discourse on the Pre-Aryans. Not only the excavations at Indus, Harappa, Kalibangan, Lothal and other places, but even the living cultures are also seen as dichotomous when the non-puritans enter the portals of higher education and start questioning Indian culture. Though an attempt was made by Mahatma Jyotiba Phule to write the history of the native indigenous people and the narrative of alien Bhats occupying India at different points of time as dasavatara, no professional historian has ever paid attention to this literature. The Post-Gramsci-Foucault-Said academic project of subaltern writing of history did not pass the Bhadralok test and remained a mess without much headway to throw light on the real subalterns. The failure of the project itself shows the deep roots of the divide. The so-called Bahujan-Dalit scholarship to challenge the mainstream, mostly the Marxian agenda remained a non-starter. These developments have links with the present narratives of Hindutva and its triumphant suzerainty of India.
 
Most of the critiques in the name of secularism appraise selected ideas like varna, cultural nationalism, myths, Puranic characters, Vedic liturgy, Muslim bashing, actions of sangh parivar etc all bundled in one term Hindutva. This seems to be problematic for an ordinary Hindu or even a non-Hindu Indian. The critiques assume that they are hitting the visible culprit without realising that they have a huge defence mechanism of twisting words, using coarse logic and people friendly manoeuvring and hidden agendas of mainstream political parties. It appears that the leaders or champions of secularism are naïve individuals with enthusiasm and anger to counter the unscientific arguments of the Hindutva brigades. They do not realise that the brigades have a support base, open and veiled from the same platforms from where they encounter the fundamentalists. In some cases, the literal downpour is fortuitous and many times not backed by a concrete plan of action.
 
Even today, the well-intentioned leftist political outfits and secular groups seem to have no clear and structured agenda to counter it. It is alleged that the moles in the political parties are inconspicuously related to the Sangh parivar and therefore communication is much faster and reaction from the adversary very slow (In the Sabarimala controversy Kerala government found them in their Police force). The tentacles are too widespread in the western world. One significant incident of stalling the school syllabus on Hinduism by the Vedic Foundation, Hindu Education Foundation as narrated by Harvard scholar M.Witzel, an internationally reputed scholar on Vedic Literature, Sanskrit and Hinduism in California State, tells of the unprecedented power of the fundamentalists. The challengers of Hindu fundamentalism have not been able to develop a cohesive group, common agenda and content to counter them even after a century. On the other hand, they have not been able to recognise and remember the contributions of great scholars like Rahul Sankrutyayan, M.N. Roy, D.P Chattopadhyay to name a few.
 
Hinduism is equated with Brahminical or Vedic liturgy and pantheon is in fact not a true representation. Hinduism, as projected either by the organised Hindu Parivar or broadly understood by common man, is more than this. The Bahujans (understood as the majority of Hindus) who do respect the Brahminical pantheon, however, had their own ways of worship, ritual and native Indian goddesses, gods and goblins. This unique character has not been distinguished either by experts like Wendy Doniger and other critics of Hindutva.
 
Vedic literature, Upanishads, Puranic and classical literature did not represent the Native Indians or the so-called Bahujans consisting of Adivasis, Dalits and OBCs except by way of expletive expressions. Therefore, when the Secular critics address the Hindus, the lower castes do not react, as they believe they are also Hindus. This is not a post-independent India phenomenon. The colonial powers as collaborators of Brahminical hegemony, as noted above, helped the Hindutva forces to grow while disparaging the local religious practices, rituals and goblins as superstitions through the missionaries like Whitehead and colonial anthropologists.
 
The oriental scholarship and its critiques including Edward Said and his followers have looked at the Native schools of thought rather than Brahminical or alien imports. One need not wonder at this as the Oriental thought relating to Palestine, Israel or Abrahamic faith and the parallel primordial Hindu approaches seem to be the same. If one is inclined to scrutinize the rituals of Brahminical Hindus as historical memory of their ancestral homes being repeated from BMAC or Meru region in Brahminical Hinduism, it would be abundantly clear.
 
The Bahujans of India or the so-called Non-Dwija castes were prohibited to listen, utter or practice Vedic or Brahminical mantras or rituals in the past. Only after the efforts by reformers like Dayanand Saraswati, the Anglicans, Gandhiji and his followers, lower castes were given some ritual status and untouchables allowed inside temples. But, the lower castes or the depressed classes (a nomenclature used before 1935 for several low castes) or Bahujans had had their own systems of thought, gods, goddesses, epistemology, and ceremonies etc as original Indian/Hindu belief bonds. They were marginalised and their culture was interpreted as barbarian and treated as Rakshas or demons, poundras, asuras etc.
 
The Tantric practices in the rudimentary form in the Indus seals and developed as a form of Sankhya being practised even by Tiruvalluvar, Kabir, Veerabrahmendra swamy to name a few low caste players/practitioners were never given any status in Brahminical Hinduism. In fact, the predecessors of Mahavir and Buddha, the Ajivakas or shramanas were considered as inferior to Brahma, Maheshwara and the Almighty Vishnu. In the later period, most of the belief systems, their culture and knowledge goods were appropriated by the mainstream Brahminical systems of worship, rituals and thought. Thus, the prehistoric legacy of Bahujan Hinduism being more ancient, vibrant and inclusive compared to the narrow, Mediterranean Brahminical Hinduism of the recent period was made to demonstrate as original with the support of media and muscle. This has not been recognized by any of the critics of Hinduism.
 
There seems to be some confusion when the low castes or Bahujans were made to identify as followers of Brahminical Hinduism in modern times. In fact, the British India Courts, particularly in the South, was full of litigations, each lower caste claiming a ritual status like the carpenter /smiths claiming ViswaBrahmin, Barbers claiming NaiBrahmin and so on. They had provided intelligent arguments and spiritual episteme of their own, challenging the Brahminical supremacy.
 
Actually, it was a big crusade called Bhakti movement (pre-British) initiated mostly by the low castes or Non-Brahmins. They were supported by all progressive intellectuals including Gandhi, Ambedkar and social reformers in different parts of the country. Had it been continued without interruptions and appropriations, it would have turned the nation into a secular polity. But, the vibrant Hindutva today gained control over Bahujans without giving status to their belief systems through co-option, patronage and funding. The left, secular and democratic activists are bereft of the dichotomy between Bahujan Hindus and Brahminical Hindutva by clubbing them together. This has alienated them from the ignorant victims and seems to have lost the plot.
 
The non-Hindu forces have failed to project and popularise the native, original and materialistic traditions of the Non-Brahmin as superior if not equal and distinct in status. Further, the secularists lost steam under the tutelage of base-superstructure imagery claiming that these small issues will disappear once economic independence is gained. Is it true?
 
The author is Former Vice-Chancellor, Dravidian University, A.P. Guest of honour Speech delivered at 11th FIRA conference at Visakhapatnam, 5 January 2019.

First published on Counter Currents
 

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The electoral arena in the 90s has taken a qualitative turn for the worse. The earlier electoral equation, Congress vs. the Janata Dal/Janata Party and its allies, has been replaced by a triangle with first the BJP and now the BJP and its allies as the base of the triangle. Of the two other arms of the triangle, one is the Congress and other is the declining Third Front.

Progressive groups and individuals are faced with a serious dilemma as far as voting in various constituencies and campaigning is concerned. Barring the Left parties — whose secular and democratic credentials are strong — and the other earlier constituents of Third Front — though they had earlier stood on secular and democratic ground, many of them now seem to be wavering — both the major combatants in the electoral battle field are tainted with communalism of different varieties. It is in this context that the stance of the Left in singling out the BJP as THE communal force, to be isolated and dumped on a priority basis, has come for criticism from certain friends and groups from the liberal, progressive and left spectrum. Bringing to our attention the gory deeds of Congress in subtly tolerating communalism, these radical elements are advocating equi–distance from the BJP and the Congress. I would like to examine the pitfalls of this equi–distance thesis in this article. Congress and Communalism: Right since its inception, the main thrust of the Indian National Congress has been to struggle for a democratic, secular India at the formal level. At the same time, there has always been a weakness to accommodate and tolerate communal elements, more so Hindu communal elements. Some of the major leaders of the Congress had strong streaks of Hindu nationalism. The important ones in this category include Lala Lajpat Rai, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and Dr. Munje (one of the founders of RSS). Many leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha were also the members of the Congress. Dr. K. B. Hedgewar, the first Sarsanghchalak (supremo) of the RSS founded in 1927 was formally in the Congress till 1934. In the pre-Independence era, the Congress acted merely as a platform, the dominant part of it being secular and democratic as represented by the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru. 

Undoubtedly, Hindu communal elements within the Congress put pressure from within to supplement the agenda of the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS, to act as the opposite and parallel of Muslim communalism represented mainly by the Muslim League. With Partition, formation of Pakistan and the migration of theMuslim elite from different parts of the country to Pakistan, Muslim communalism in a way got deflated.But it did survive in the Indian polity, assuming strident postures at crucial times like the Shah Bano case etc, to provide much needed prop to Hindu communalism. 

The Congress underwent major transformation in the mid–sixties. Though it continued to pay lip service to secular rhetoric, apart from appeasing the fundamentalist sections of Muslim community, it did little to ameliorate the conditions of minorities. Also, the state apparatus started getting infiltrated by the Hindu communal elements — RSS trainees — who at the grass root level started giving a Hindu slant to the policies of a formally secular state. It is due to these factors that Muslims started getting discriminated against in jobs and social opportunities. They also became victims of anti–Muslim violence led by Hindu communal organisations, supported and abetted by a  ommunally infected State. The Congress was not principled enough to oppose and curtail this as a section of its leadership was either ‘soft communal’ or had no qualms in compromising with and promoting Hindu  communalism. 

During these years the principal project of the Congress was to build a strong Indian State. In this process it started suppressing ethnic and regional aspirations and imposed the Indian identity and laws on many
ethnic groups and regions by force. The Congress pursued the policy of relentless centralisation and intervened in state affairs at every minor pretext. This led to situations of insurgency in the Northeast, Kashmir and Punjab. In Punjab and Kashmir, the worsening situation was allowed to take a communal turn. The anti–Sikh pogrom led by the Congress in 1984 can be said to belong to this category of repression of ethnic aspirations of Sikhs. 

But as Aijaz Ahmed pointed out some years ago, Congress communalism is a pragmatic one that has been used by it time and again to ‘solve’ some other problem, for example, suppressing  thno–regional aspirations (Economic and Political Weekly, June 1,1996, Pg. 1329). They have to be contrasted with the systematic and sustained anti–Muslim violence whose ideological roots lie in the very concept of Hindu Rashtra. 

Hindu Communal Politics: The basic premise of the RSS is to work towards the goal of Hindu Rashtra and as its political arm, the BJP, is committed to help in the realisation of that goal. Since 1986, the BJP has pursued the aggressive agenda of Hindu Rashtra through the Ramjanambhoomi campaign leading to the demolition of Babri Mosque, post–demolition communal violence etc. Most of the inquiry commission reports on communal violence (Jagmohan Reddy, Justice Madon, Vithayathil, Srikrishna and Venugopal) have proved without any shadow of doubt that the various constituents of the sangh parivar have been the major actors in anti–Muslim communal violence. More recently, the National Human Rights Commission, National Minorities Commission and independent human rights groups have highlighted the role of most of the progenies of the RSS in anti–Christian violence. Lately, after realising that it cannot grab power at the Centre on its own on a communal, the BJP has ‘cleverly’ been talking of the need for a ‘National Agenda of Governance’ and a ‘National Democratic Alliance’ to woo the regional parties whose narrow regional interests and tubular vision does not permit them to see the core communal project of BJP. This temporary democratic posture of the BJP is merely for the sake of gradually increasing its vote bank/social base to be able to come to power at Centre on its own so that the agenda of Hindu Rashtra ‘in toto’ can be imposed on society. Till then the decent looking agenda will remain sprinkled with hidden agendas.

In the long term this elite, middle class party will freeze society in the existent social dynamics, taking away the rights of exploited, oppressed and those on lower rungs of hierarchy to struggle for social, economic and gender justice. The communalism of BJP is a cover for a gradually evolving fascism, with the aim of foisting Brahminical Hindu politics on the country. In the words of Aijaz Ahmed, the sangh parivar’s and the BJP’s is a programmatic communalism. 

Equi–distance and comparisons: It is not to say that the other parties are desirable, ideal and capable of sustaining the secular democratic programme. We have seen that the Congress could impose Emergency with ease and pass various anti–democratic legislation time and again. It has often compromised with and aided Hindu communalism. The other parties have also shown manifest inadequacies as far as perusal of democratic principles is concerned.

But all said and done, none of them is driven by the engine of RSS, a fascist organisation wedded to the concept of Hindu Rashtra — a Brahminical–Hinduism based nationalism akin to race based nationalism or Muslim nationalism. This is what makes the BJP a different cup of tea – nay, poison. Historical Precedents: As I have argued elsewhere(Fascism of Sangh Parivar, EKTA, Mumbai, 1999), the sangh parivar is a fascist variant with a number of similarities to European fascism which got strengthened, post–Mandal, in reaction to Dalit, OBC assertion in 1990s. 

In Germany, Hitler rapidly increased his social and electoral base by projecting the fear of a strong workers movement. The triangle there was: communists, Hitler’s National Socialists (fascists) and the Centrists – Social Democrats, akin to the Congress in India. In spite of seeing the methods and dangerous potential of Hitler, communists, who were a substantial force, in a way followed the electoral policy of
equi–distance from Social Democrats (whom they called social fascists) and the National Socialists (Hitler’s party). Though Hitler did not have majority he was able to come to power through negotiations as the opponents had shifting and divided aims and were unable to focus on the real essentials of power while Nazis had unwavering aims and had a firm grasp on ‘real politics’.

The Imminent Dangers: In view of what I have argued above, the BJP should totally be out of reckoning as far as electoral choice is concerned. Just because there is a vacuum of parties with decent secular and democratic credentials does not mean that one lands up supporting a party whose fascist potential is there without any shadow of doubt? What if the Congress, which time and again has used communalism to fulfil its political ambition, benefits from it? Surely, it is an evil whose magnitude is ‘n’ times lower than thedangers of BJP being in power. 

The equi—distance position stance holds no water. The BJP cannot be equated with any other party; it has to be an ‘untouchable’ for us — Historical revenge of the untouchables!

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 1999, Year 6  No. 51, Debate

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