Varun Plays The BJP’s Communal Card

Method in madness

Amulya Ganguli

Despite Varun Gandhi’s lineage, he is still a minor figure in politics. In fact, but for his genealogy, he would have been an even more insignificant person. His immediate background, too, is less exalted than that of the other members of the family. He belongs to a branch which can hardly claim to be the true heirs of the Nehru-Gandhi legacy. The reason is that Varun’s father, Sanjay Gandhi, the “wayward, uneducated, inexperienced boy”, in the words of his uncle, BK Nehru, is hardly a much admired person in Indian politics. Instead, the role of this enfant terrible was widely believed to be responsible for Indira Gandhi’s defeat in 1977 after two years of the Emergency.

Since Sanjay Gandhi’s fascistic tendencies were evident during this period, it isn’t surprising that both his wife, Maneka, and Varun, found refuge in the BJP which, too, exhibits similar traits. So has one of Sanjay Gandhi’s henchmen, Jagmohan. Sanjay Gandhi’s stint at the top was too brief to reveal his anti-Muslim sentiments although members of this community suffered the most during the sterilization drives as a part of his family planning initiatives. As a result, they turned resolutely against the Congress in 1977, especially in UP and Bihar from where the Congress, astonishingly, did not win a single Lok Sabha seat.

Stridently pro-Hindu

Since Maneka Gandhi, too, did not show any overt anti-minority feelings during her political career perhaps because she is a Sikh, it is difficult to say from where Varun has acquired his stridently pro-Hindu outlook, which has been disowned by his own party. It is possible that he sees his aggressive anti-minority posturing as the only way to make his presence felt. Besides, as the support extended to him by the Shiv Sena and at least two contributors to the saffron newspaper, The Pioneer, shows, his combativeness will have admirers even if, like Pramod Muthalik of the Ram Sene, he falls foul of the law. But illegality can yield dividends, especially in a party and a parivar where there are any number of hardliners ~ from Narendra Modi to Ashok Singhal ~ who make no secret of their antipathy towards what a saffron scribe called “non-nationalists”. It is not impossible that it is in the company of these hawks that the “inexperienced” Varun’s anti-minority sentiments were honed. After all, the essence of the Sangh Parivar’s worldview is what Varun said in his speeches in his constituency, Pilibhit ~ that the Hindus are under pressure from the unpatriotic Muslims, who invaded the country in medieval times, divided it in 1947 and now pose a demographic threat because of their increasing numbers. To buttress this last point, Modi coined the slogan, hum panch, hamare pachis, to underline the practice of the Muslims having four wives and not observing family planning. Varun’s supposedly doctored CD is not the only one which has drawn attention to the BJP’s venomous propaganda.

A similar CD was in circulation before the UP assembly elections of 2007. It was a typical potpourri of the BJP’s and the saffron brotherhood’s hate campaign. It features a saffron “masterji” saying that the BJP “is a party which thinks about the country, it thinks about the Hindu religion. The other parties are all agents of the Muslims”. There are scenes of slaughtered cows, of a Hindu girl being deceived into marrying a Muslim and a speech by a “social worker” who says that “the day is not far away when we will be afraid to even call ourselves Hindus and soon you will never be able to find a Sohanlal, Mohanlal, Atmaram or Radhakrishnan … we will only see Abbas, Naqvi, Rizvi and Maulvi”. The BJP, of course, disowned the CD even though it was released at a public function by Lalji Tandon, a prominent leader of the party in the state. The tactical retreat was not unlike its present ploy of distancing itself from Varun or from Pramod Muthalik earlier. The party with a difference has become a party of dissociation from its firebrands. There may be a method, however, behind this madness. Notwithstanding these subsequent denials, the BJP’s purpose is served by such CDs and speeches. They tell its core constituency that its heart remains uncontaminated by its tactical dalliance with “secular” allies of the NDA like the Janata Dal (United), which has predictably expressed outrage over Varun’s speeches.

Golwalkar’s view

As long as the central point of the BJP’s and the parivar’s remains Golwalkar’s perception of Muslims and Christians as Internal Threats Nos. 1 and 2 along with Savarkar’s view of these two communities as essentially alien, such inflammatory audio-visual means of propaganda and speeches by individuals like Varun will continue to be a feature of Hindutva politics. Even while pretending that it had nothing to do with such outpourings, the BJP cannot but note with satisfaction the voices of support not only from members of the extended parivar like the Shiv Sena, but also from those who express themselves, often in an offensive manner, on the Internet. To give one example, a contributor has said that “there is no question that Hindus are lambasted by the minority community in their own country. How else could an Italian head this huge nation? All because the selfish and egotistical founding fathers wrote a Constitution that benefited themselves and not the majority community. That was blatantly unfair. Varun (like I feel myself) has given vent to it”. Such comments probably act as a whiff of oxygen to the BJP and the parivar, sustaining their illusion that they are basically on the right track and that the only obstacle is the constitutional arrangement which prevents India’s conversion into a theocracy.

The writer is a former Assistant Editor, The Statesman.