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അന്ന ഹസാരെയുടെ മറവില്‍ നേട്ടം കൊയ്യുന്നത് ആര്‍.എസ്.എസും ബി.ജെ.പിയും?

Published on 27 August, 2011
അന്ന ഹസാരെയുടെ മറവില്‍ നേട്ടം കൊയ്യുന്നത് ആര്‍.എസ്.എസും ബി.ജെ.പിയും?
 THE GREATEST story of deceit in war ever told is that of the killing of Bhishma, during the mythical Mahabharata war. The Trojan horse of the Greek imagination pales into insignificance in comparison. The pitamaha or patriarch majestically put his weapons down on being confronted by a person who was not a man, only to be slain by Arjun who had been hiding behind Shikhandi.

The Sangh Parivar had on several occasions in the past aimed its weapons at the government, Parliament and, thereby, the Constitution hiding behind, unlike Shikhandi, respectable leaders with mass appeal. The Congress, of course, is no Bhishma, but the Constitution that protects the minorities, the Dalits and the backward classes, sure is. And Arvind Kejriwal, the ‘ T’ of Team Anna, proclaims that it is not Parliament but his civil society that is supreme, articulating the Sangh Parivar dream of rewriting the Constitution.

Agenda

The first Gandhian to have been associated with those who killed Gandhi was Jayaprakash Narain, who became the face of a “ movement” against an elected government, when Indira Gandhi was at her prime after the liberation of Bangladesh.

But the RSS, allegedly with US support, mobilised its cadres all across north India in a desperate bid to dethrone Indira Gandhi.

JP knowingly, or otherwise, let himself be used in what was clearly an attempt at regime change. JP’s “ Total Revolution” was reduced to minimum alteration when the Janata Party came to power. Neither Indira nor her wayward son Sanjay, despite the Shah Commission show, was punished for the Emergency excesses. Nothing changed, but the reach of the RSS. For the first time swayamsevaks had become Union cabinet ministers.

The RSS gradually perfected the art of making Shikhandhis out of mass leaders. When VP Singh, a former Sanjay Gandhi groupie and a ‘ regular’ Congress chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, with no particular penchant for probity, suddenly turned against Rajiv Gandhi and launched a “ movement” to cleanse politics, it was actually the RSS that was running the show by getting its volunteers to mobilise people.

The anti-corruption “movement” of VP Singh catapulted the BJP from just two Lok Sabha seats in 1984 to 89 in the 1989 polls. Again, corruption ceased to be the prime political agenda after the new government was sworn in. The same crowds that sprung to bring back black money from Swiss bank accounts of politicians were soon talking about razing a sixteenth century mosque to reclaim Hindutva’s manhood. The boom of the Bofors payback got muted when the mob cried, “ Jai Shri Ram.” History is being repeated. For the third time the Sangh is aiming its arrows at an elected government, hiding behind a self-appointed Gandhian.

The imperfections of our democracy were in full display during the NDA rule when the RSS itself called Vajpayee’s foster son-in-law, Ranjan Bhattacharya, an extra-constitutional authority.

There were scams galore in every sphere of public life, from procurement of coffins for dead soldiers to privatisation of public sector units. One of the country’s senior most bureaucrats, Dr EAS Sarma, quit in disgust. But Kisan Baburao Hazare was in Ralegaon, Arvind Kejriwal was running Parivartan seeking the right to information, and there was no “movement” against the NDA’s corruption during those six years.

But corruption at the national level suddenly became an issue when the BJP desperately needed to revive its fortunes after the humiliating defeat of the 2009 polls, when the party’s strength declined from 147 to 115 Lok Sabha seats. It is time that Kejriwal and his co-actors at the very least acknowledged the script writers of this political drama that is being enacted aptly at the Ramlila Maidan.

Movement

RSS ideologue KN Govindacharya, the Kautilya of the Indian Right who was a lieutenant of Nanaji Deshmukh during the JP agitation, had graduated into being a prime strategist by 1989. He played VP Singh against Chandrashekhar and both against Devi Lal, gaining more and more ground for the Sangh in the process. This amazing organiser, also credited with the stupendous growth of the BJP in Bihar and UP, particularly for propping up the OBC leadership of Kalyan Singh, is one of the architects of Kejriwal’s anti-corruption campaign. In fact, Govindacharya was present at the first public meeting held at Ramlila Maidan on February 27 along with Kejriwal, Hazare, Ramdev, Subramanian Swamy, BJP MP Ram Jethmalani and others. But curiously, he dropped off the radar afterwards.

Another important backroom player is the former Intelligence Bureau chief Ajit Doval, widely expected to be the National Security Advisor in case LK Advani becomes Prime Minister.

Doval runs a think tank associated with reportedly saffron affiliates, called the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF).

This was the venue of a two-day seminar on April 1 and 2, which elected Ramdev as the patron and Govindacharya the convenor of the newly formed “Anti-Corruption Front”. Another RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy and Doval became members of the Front.

Kejriwal was one of those who attended the seminar.

It is not clear whether Kejriwal had brainstorming sessions with Doval and Govindacharya at VIF before he launched ‘India Against Corruption’, or during the February 27 rally at Ramlila Maidan. But soon after the seminar at VIF, on May 12, the RSS’ students wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad launched the similar sounding ‘Youth Against Corruption’. And last week ABVP goons attacked a missionary school in Dumka in Jharkhand for not shutting the school in support of Hazare.

Whether the RSS is the facilitator or the beneficiary, there is no denying the fact that this movement has achieved a critical mass among the upper caste, urban, middle classes which constitute the bribe-givers and the bribetakers.

The political context is ripe for another “movement” against corruption with scandals gushing out of the UPA government regularly.

PM

From Medha Patkar to the CPI (ML) Liberation, genuine support from elsewhere has also poured in for the fast. The surging middle class angst of urban India against politicians, corrupt or otherwise, threatens to swamp Parliament. Medha even spoke against the corporates that corrupt politicians, though Kejriwal usually skirts this issue.

In this moment of mob frenzy the Prime Minister has lost the plot completely. By getting Hazare arrested, Manmohan has not just displayed his ruthless face that can’t brook protest, but a total bankruptcy of political ideas.

He seems to be the Dhritarashtra at the Kaurava court — a blind king led by clueless courtiers.

Sending one of his ministers, A Raja, to prison doesn’t absolve him of the sin of presiding over a corrupt cabinet. Coalition compulsion did not stop him from letting the CBI arrest Raja and Kanimozhi.

Then, why did he condone corruption? Had he been clean, he should have quit the day the cash-for-votes scandal was exposed on the floor of the house in August 2008.

Instead, the then Speaker Somnath Chatterjee conducted a charade to let Singh continue in power. For the Congress party, the best way to tackle Team Anna or the Sangh Parivar is to dump ‘Team Manmohan’.

- rajesh ramachandran



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