Anil Nauriya - The Angst of August: Reading The Recent Political History of India // Express editorial: Prashant Bhushan judgement - the Supreme Court has diminished itself

"In fact, whatever the wisdom of the statement, pampering and pauperization in India in the last few decades have little to do with “secularist liberals” or with any specific religion. There are classes that are pampered."...The Temple Construction at Ayodhya at the spot where the Babri Masjid stood is a product of a pseudo-religious movement which one of its early proponents, who later served as Deputy Prime Minister, had once admitted was essentially political in character. The baggage of RSS-Advani ideas is being thrust on the people with the help of an Enabling Judiciary. The fifth of August that ruling circles seek to mark, to recall the steps taken with regard to Jammu and Kashmir on that day in 2019 and the event in Ayodhya in 2020 has an underlying focus on Hindutva, a doctrine embodying a view of state and nation that runs counter to the Basic Structure of the Constitution of India and the principles of the Republic. 

Jawaharlal Nehru’s correspondence with President Rajendra Prasad in 1951 sets out an exemplary and necessary standard that a state and those who hold public office must observe, making clear the distinction between attending public religious functions as holders of public office and as private citizens. However, the present case is one that falls in an infinitely worse category. Dr Rajendra Prasad was not associated with any movement for demolition. The question then was only whether while holding public office he ought to attend an inauguration ceremony of the Somnath Temple as distinct from making a separate private visit on a later occasion. In the present case relating to Ayodhya however, the incumbent Prime Minister associated with a movement that led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid has now gone to Ayodhya in an exhibition of triumphalism for the inauguration of a temple constructed at the same spot.

Although internecine issues between the RSS and the ruling party at the Centre are not my present concern in this article, we cannot ignore the role of RSS control of the BJP and its implications for the polity and society. The media needs especially to be  careful not to buy into the psychological warfare being waged across the country or to contribute to particular outcomes through self-fulfilling prophecies, suggestive discourse or by auto-suggestion.

L K Advani’s and Narendra Modi’s politics have been and are a matter of public record. But we must recall how sections of the media had sought to portray Advani’s politics as “secular”. Hindutva forces also propagated the idea in purported justification of their vandalism that the Babri mosque was a “non-praying one” (and therefore no more than a "structure") but did not emphasise on how far this was the result of a Court order. The media unthinkingly lapped up the term "disputed structure".

The allegation and notion of “appeasement” was introduced even in contexts where there was, in fact, no such phenomenon. The fact that the energy behind Hindu law reform of the 1950s did not extend also to Muslims was not an instance of “appeasement” as is erroneously alleged. It arose out of the assurance, repeatedly given to religious minorities, that no law directly touching them as minorities would be made without their general approval and that such laws would be enacted only when opinion within their respective communities would require it. In a similar fashion, for a long time Hindu law in Pakistan and Bangladesh remained unreformed. Were the governments in those countries “appeasing” the Hindus? It may be right to criticise the Congress on certain issues, as for example, its pusillanimity over Muslim law reform and other errors on this front. Yet one must not be overawed by the BJP in this context..... read more:
http://mainstreamweekly.net/article9795.html



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