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Opportunities
for the Christian community in a General Election of
Virtual and Future Alliances:
Babri
Masjid's 6th December 1992 demolition is a big black
mark in the Indian political calendar, remembered by
even those who forget that the day is also the death
anniversary of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, the man who
changed the face of political India as much as Partition
had, but in a positive, affirmative manner. Will anyone
think of 24th August 2008 as a scratch on any political
yardstick? And does it matter, really, even to
Christians that it was on this day, 24th August 2008,
that the community in India saw the beginning of its
worst nightmare in modern history since Tipu Sultan put
the Konkani Catholics into captivity. Kandhamal 2008
finds no mention in the Election manifestos of political
parties as they face off for the general elections 2009.
It does not matter to Church groups. Catholic or
Protestant, in Kerala as they argue and negotiate with
the Congress led UDF for seats for favoured benefactors.
It is even forgotten by well-off Oriya Christians
seeking tickets from any political party that will have
them, even from Kandhamal where there may be not many
Christian voters left. But the pogrom in Kandhamal,
which left 120 dead and 50,000 homeless, must matter as
another of the touchstones for secular democracy in
India. And responses to that event -- rated on a pro
rata basis to be emotionally at par with the violence
against Sikhs in 1984, against Kashmir pundits, and
against the Muslims of Gujarat in 2002 must expose
political parties and candidates to a searing
searchlight of their ideologies and commitments.
These are going to be unusual elections for everyone,
unusual even by the crazy standards that have come into
being since 1977, when Indira Gandhi's Congress was
wiped out in the wake of the excesses of the State of
Emergency imposed in June 1975, and her return three
years later; more important than the rise of the OBCs
after Prime minister V P Singh opened the Mandal
floodgates, and of course L K Advani's Rath Yatra which
polarised India on religious lines.
I mention those important events to also recall that in
India Parliamentary democracy, any election result,
howsoever improbable, is possible! A good thing to
remember these days when to the ravenous and undying
appetite of communalism has been added the full impact
of globalisation and the economic meltdown. And
Terrorism capitalised by 24 hour Television news
channels. The ambitious middle class, who has BJP once,
and in the wake of Mumbai 2008 attacks vowed not to vote
for any politician, is feeling the pinch of the economic
downtrend. The 9 per cent growth rate has been
downgraded to a hopeful 6 per cent or so, but job cuts
have become a chilling reality.
Telugu `biddas' who were so happy in Silicon Valley till
last year are returning home by the plane loads, and
some have chosen the short cut of suicide rather than
face the ignominy of unemployment and rebuke at home.
Karnataka, Mumbai and Tamil Naidu have seen the impact
of the puncturing of the big dream.
And there are no jobs at home either. Will middle class
and once high paid youth vote for hope of the Congress
variety or be led by the hate campaigns of the Bharatiya
Janata party which is already telling them it is the
Semitic religions which are at the root of the crisis in
India?
Fortunately, India is bigger than its middle classes,
though they hog the media limelight.
THE ISSUES:
For the Dalit and the rural poor, nothing really has
changed. Even for Dalits who call themselves Hindus, or
have converted to Sikhism and Buddhism, and get 15 per
cent reservation in jobs as also in the Lok Sabha and
the State assemblies. For Dalits who became Christians
or Muslims, they share all the suffering, but are
deprived of the palliative and the curative. It is not a
question on the number of Dalits killed, or raped. That
runs into thousands every year. It is in the aggravation
of poverty. [For the record, the 2005 Annual Report of
the National Crime Records Bureau reported a total of
26,127 cases against the Scheduled Castes. A crime
against Tribals was committed in every 29 minutes.
"Poverty is still a grinding reality for millions of
people in India." the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights noted in her recent visit to India.
Recalling that the Supreme Court has defined India as "a
country of people with the largest number of religions
and languages living together and forming a nation," the
UNHCR warned this diversity had the potential for
igniting competing claims and even strife if stressed by
poverty and inequalities. Twenty or so of 28 States are
afflicted by internal armed conflicts. Many of these
States are heavily militarised. In our report to the
Universal Periodic Review of the United Nations Human
Rights Council, Indian Civil rights groups noted that
the almost 250 Special Economic Zones, constructions of
dams and leasing of areas for mining have become virtual
"conflict zones".
Patently no single political party or group has been
responsible. The Congress has ruled the most states the
longest. But the others have had their chance. The
Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left parties, too, have
ruled the nation in their alliances, and remain in power
in several states. They must share the blame as they can
also, justifiably, claim a share in all the good that
has accrued ever since the visionary Jawaharlal Nehru
spoke of the Modern India and a scientific temper as its
guiding spirit.
It is in this social and economic overview of the Great
Indian Reality that the average Indian -- and the
Christian voter is just an average Indian with just one
more overlay of vulnerability as a religious minority,
possibly a Dalit or a Tribal looks at the players in
General Elections 2009.
THE CONTENDERS:
Real politics has dissolved the Great Alliances that
were formed to rule India after the last two General
Elections. The currently ruling United Progressive
Alliance, and its predecessor in office, the National
Democratic Alliance, formally exist no more, with
constituent parties mostly going their own ways.
But one must not hurry to dismiss the Grand alliances as
being `dead' and buried. Alliances are like the Count of
Dracula they are the `Living dead", phantasms that can
take body and shape when the time comes. Till then, they
exist as "virtual alliances"; in most states by design
or by default, as I will explain, and come into being
after the results are declared claims are staked for
office. What it means is that the people and issues that
hogged television time and headline space have to be
taken with a pinch of salt, and breakups of NDA and UPA
need not mean the partners have filed for divorce never
to marry again. And they may well marry the same party
again! But having said it, I need point out it is the
Bharatiya Janata Party which loses the most friends,
with the sanitising and secular lure of the yet to be
born Third Front luring away staunch allies Telegu Desam
and All India Anna DMK, and tempting old friend Naveen
Patnaik's Biju Janata Dal in Orissa. It is also salutary
to remember that the first major defeat the Congress
suffered nationally in 1977 was at the hands of a
coalition called the Janata Party that was formed while
the leaders of various parties were in Jail, put there
by Indira Gandhi. It was a party only in name. It was a
strategic and tactical coalition forged by Jaiprakash
Narain with the support of the Marxists who provided the
brain power to the mass bases of the other constituents.
That coalition could not last, and broke up when George
Fernandes objected to the former Jana Sangh members
retaining their membership of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh. Several members of that group later rejoined the
BJP as electoral allies, as Mr Nitish Kumar in Bihar, or
the Akali Dal in Punjab.
The two recent alliances, UPA and NDA. were in actuality
only coalitions of two major national partiers -- one of
which had lost its countrywide strength for various
reasons over a period of time, and the other which could
not really expand to cover every state -- forged with
regional players who had a caste or linguistic base in
at least one State. There was only the opportunism of
power which soldered the alliances. There was no
ideological glue to bring them together, not even really
common policies. The Common Minimum Programmes were
their election agendas reduced ad absurdum, with a
veneer of populism. For regional parties rising from
linguistic, religious or ethnic aspirations, the omnibus
nature of the Congress makes it a perpetual opponent
locally, and a `impossible ally' nationally, the
necessary evil they need to get central funding and a
place in the sun.
The Bharatiya Janata Party formed the fulcrum of the NDA
around which a motley group of regional parties, some of
them breakaway factions of the Congress, came together
in the last few years of the Twentieth century.
The BJP does not hide its ideology as a child of the
Muslim- bashing RSS, and most of its main partners
reconciled themselves to its worldview because they
themselves had extremely constricted visions that sought
to insulate their communities from outside influences,
or nursed real and perceived historic grievances. The
Akali Dal in Punjab is a party representing the
religious and land interests of the powerful and rich
Jat Sikh peasantry which gained strength after Indira
Gandhi's ill-conceived military expedition against the
Golden Temple fortress of Bhindrawalen's armed
militants. For the Sikhs, it was felt no national party
could represent them after the massacres of Delhi-Kanpur
in 1984. The BJP, which in Punjab represented the Hindu
business community, was no competition. It was
convenient to forget that aggressive elements within the
BJP had been quite in the forefront of the anti Sikh
sentiment, backing Indira Gandhi to the hilt in her
fight against Sikh extremism of the 1970s and early
1980s. Similarly in Assam, the Ahom Students movement
against Muslim Bengali migrants gave birth to the Assam
Gana Parishad, a natural and permanent ally of the BJP
in its anti Muslim theology.
The third major ally of the BJP till recently had been
Telegu Desam, born of one man's ambition, and the
political aspirations of a powerful caste combination
which had been ignored by the Congress controlled by
Brahmins and Reddys in Andhra Pradesh. Actor N T Rama
Rao converted his popularity as a celluloid Lord Rama
into political success for his caste and the middle
class Telegu groups. In Tamil Nadu, both Dravidian
groups, Jayalalitha's All India Anna DMK and M
Karunanidhi's Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, twins born in
an earlier Dravida split, have taken turns t partner the
BJP, but, like the other BJP partners, have made sure
that it is not allowed to grow in their states. That
leaves the oddest companion in Bihar's Janata Dal
United, a rump of the once united Janata Party now
localised in a small grouping of caste interests. Nitish
Kumar and Sharad Yadav, the Janata leaders, too make
sure that the BJP does not grow at the grass roots in
Bihar even if it could breach the caste walls.
The RSS long ago realised that its ideological growth as
an extreme right wing Hindutva organisation would not be
possible without the protection and the resources that
came with political party, and the Indian system allowed
only political parties to be part of the system of
governance and administration, the huge public budgets
and the billion dollar contracts. Even as it gave birth
to different groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
and the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram to cater to niche
segments, the RSS founded first the Jana Sangh and after
the breakup of the Janata Party, it came up with the
Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP's agenda remains
unabashedly Hindutva, seen to advantage in prime
ministerial candidate L K Advani's Rath Yatra in the
late 1980s, and the system of governance propagated by
Narendra Modi in Gujarat. Its essentials remain a
pandering to the interests of big business and landed
peasantry, and a sectarian espousal of what are
projected to be Hindu interests. These are constructed
from a well thought out strategy to protect Muslims, and
now Christians, as threats to Hindus and by extension to
India as a country. This combination seems to work in
brief spurts, and basically in the cow belt of north
India, but has not been able to sustain itself across
the country. The BJP entry into Karnataka has to be seen
in the context of the fragmentation of the vote
collectively garnered by the Congress and the Deve Gowda
Lingayat caste group of the Janata Dal Secular. The
reverse has happened in Orissa where the Biju Janata Dal,
its long term senior ally, has ditched it
unceremoniously, and to add insult to injury, has held i
responsible for spreading communalism in the state.
Ironically, the BJP has succeeded to an extent in
forcing its agenda on the Congress, which has to no
continuously stress that it too represents Hindu
interests while also protecting the religious
minorities. This was best seen in the party's ambivalent
attitude to the Babri issue where it began the process
by opening the locks of the mosque, and then Mr Rajiv
Gandhi, at the best of his home minister and Cousin Arun
Nehru, calling for Ram Rajya. The Congress which led the
Freedom Struggle as a rainbow collation of all castes,
religions and linguistic groups, has over the decades
not been able to hold on to its strategy of welding the
Dalits, Muslims and upper castes into a cohesive
electoral machine.
If the BJP has nibbled away a section of the Brahmins,
the Dalits have found a new Messiah in the Bahujan Samaj
led by the charismatic Mayawati. The Congress alienated
the Muslims repeatedly, and lost them to the Samajwadi
party which otherwise represented the peasant back ward
communities. The Congress is also indistinguishable from
the BJP in its economic dalliance with the rich and the
powerful. And yet, the Congress has been able to
convince a significant segment of Indian society that it
still retains much of the spirit that was given it by
Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. The persona of the
Nehru Gandhi family is neither the cause of this
strength, nor the fruit of it. It just symbolises the
core values of the
Congress and its claims to be secular, to be concerned
for the poor, and to be capable of protecting broader
Indian interprets in the international arena. In this
success the Congress remains unique amongst all Indian
political parties.
The Third Front is an aspiration of the Left combine,
consisting of the Communist Party of India, the CPI
Marxist and the minor Leftists of the Forward Block and
others. But they have lost the fire that once moved the
communist movement. Ideological splits and confusion,
and the need to modify strategies in the wake of the
disappearance of the Soviet Union and the globalisation
of the Chinese economy, have irreparably changed the
Left. It can now impose SEZ culture in Bengal, and
cohabit with Islamic parties in Kerala with equal élan.
This unfortunately has also made it to remain confined
to Kerala, Bengal and to the Bengali population of
Tripura. Incidentally, there is no noise about Tripura,
unlike Assam, against Bengali settlers!]
While the Yadavs may be confined to Uttar Pradesh and
Bihar and Sharad Pawar's NCP to Maharashtra, Mayawati
has a historic opportunity to build the Bahujan Samaj as
another rainbow coalition much as the Congress once was.
But her haste to achieve greater political office, the
creeping sense that she is betraying Dalit interests by
pandering to upper castes and her inability to build a
political party infrastructure within the BSP will
possibly ensure her ultimate failure to become a future
political giant.
The Election scenario is changing rapidly as the poll
dates approach.
The utterances of Varun Gandhi and the BJP defence of
his anti Muslim rhetoric threaten to further polarise
the electorate. But perhaps communalism will have to
take second place to economic regeneration, the need to
tackle the great rural crisis and the increasing urban
poverty.
These could take the shine off the BJP's polarising
antics.
Will the Congress be able to convince people that it
will ensure communal harmony whole repairing the economy
remains a matter of conjecture?
And do the people, Christians among them, have any real
choice?
The dynamics of the virtual and future alliances gives a
window of opportunity. Unless it sweeps the elections in
a still to be born Hindutva "wave", the BJP just cannot
muster the strength in UP, Bihar and South India, to
dream of forming a alliance that can be called to form a
government. It has lost two important allies of the past
the Telegu Desam and Jayalalitha's to the Third Front,
and there are no replacements. In Tamil Nadu and Kerala,
Andhra and Karnataka, Bengal and Bihar, it will
therefore be possible for secular people to vote for the
Marxists, for Deve Gowda, for Laloo Yadav and Mulayam
Singh Yadav without fear that this could benefit the BJP.
We can be sure that the Left and the two Yadavs, were
they to do well in the states they control, will be
bound to support, or be supported by, the Congress in a
future secular formation, whether they now call
themselves the Third Front or no. And Mayawati, a
possible ally of the BJP, but not an ally of the
Congress, will have to either watch from the sidelines
or hold its peace.
This is good news for the Christians. If they wish to
vote for the Congress, they are voting for a party
professing secularism. If they chose not to, they have
an option to still strengthen the secular polity by
voting for the Marxists, the DMK and AIADMK, even Telegu
Desam. The Muslims have used this to great advantage by
choosing candidates with the best chance of defeating
the BJP. They call it strategic voting. The Church,
Catholic, Protestant or Syrian, cannot dictate who the
Faithful should vote for, though it may claim it can
influence the Laity. The Church's interests in
protecting its absolute control over institutions can
hardly be reason to foreclose options and freedoms that
the current elections offer.
I am sure the community is now politically less naive
than it was in the last few decades. It does not want to
be defined as a vote bank of one party. And it knows it
cannot afford to strengthen, even by default, political
elements who will damage the secular fabric of our
democracy, or constrict its vibrant plurality.
There never was such choice ever before.
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