watching the watchers

[Guest guest]

Watching the Watchers

 

Ramesh N. Rao ~ Aug 21, 2000

 

 

There was a spurt in the publication of

articles and books after the destruction of the Ayodhya

mosque in 1992. "Communalism run riot" was

the take by the establishment journalists and

scholars, and much dire speculation ensued

about the fundamentalist strait that India would find

itself in if the BJP came to power. The BJP

was denied the chance to form a government in

1996, but succeeded in 1998, and much was

made about how the country slid down the

slippery slope of minority bashing in the

thirteen months that the BJP-led government was in

power. Newspaper and magazine owners like N.

Ram of Frontline collaborated with

ideologues and Christian proselytizers like

John Dayal and Left scholars like Udayakumar to

start a "watch group" called "BJP Government

Watch". They presented the most biased

selection of commentaries, and op-ed pieces

by politically compromised commentators that

proclaimed the BJP was communal and fascist

on arrival and remained communal and fascist

when it was brought down by the machinations

of Jayalalita and Sonia Gandhi. The creation of

this "watch group" was merely described as

"peculiar" and "adventurous"(1) ignoring the fact

that no such watching was done when even

criminals took office nor when Indira Gandhi came

back to power post-Emergency.

 

The India Today report said: "The BJW is

planned as a committee of social scientists,

journalists and assorted Marxist thinkers

which will monitor Atal Bihari Vajpayee's

Government. Udayakumar... says he has 'at

least 10 internationally acclaimed' scholars ready

to back the BJW but can't reveal their names

yet. The list is a bit of an open secret though -

supposedly covering names such as Tanika

Sarkar, Gyanendra Pandey, Praful Bidwai and

Aijaz Ahmad.... N. Ram, editor of

fortnightly Frontline, (says) 'Given the RSS'

semi-fascist

origins, we are suspicious about the BJP's

attitude towards civil society and democracy... The

BJP threatens the institutions of civil

society'".

 

Frontline is unabashedly leftist, and

encourages commentators only from that part of the

political spectrum. That the BJP was leading

a coalition government with socialists like

Fernandes, with regional parties like the

Lok Shakti and the Telugu Desam Party, and with the

support of the AIADMK was ignored by Ram and

Udayakumar. The latter even presented a

paper on "BJP Government Watch" at the

annual South Asia Conference in Madison

(University of Wisconsin) in October 1998.

He read a self-laudatory, theoretically obtuse, and

a scurrilous paper, and in the question and

answer session responded in a crude and

condescending way when questioners

challenged both his data and his theories. He went on to

accuse the BJP of being a party of rapists

and murderers, because of the rape of four nuns in

Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh. That the rape was

perpetrated by local Christians/tribals and the

details were emerging in the police

investigations was completely ignored by him. He ended up

comparing Vajpayee to Zhirinovsky of Russia

and Le Penn of France!

 

In the India Today report Udayakumar was

asked how he and his friends would monitor the

BJP government. In response, he said that

"The BJW is as nascent as the BJP Government.

The BJP has a hidden agenda. Our group will

seek to expose it". "So what will the BJW do

with the valuable information it collects?

Ram says Udayakumar will be the repository and

'sole spokesman' of this saffron

surveillance squad. He will take the findings to 'the

press and

maybe a special page on the Internet'". I

was a participant on the South Asian Journalists

Association (SAJA) online forum and was able

to "monitor the monitors". In about six months

when Udayakumar posted articles from

newspapers and magazines on the SAJA forum there

was not one attempt to balance the choice,

nor one act of grace where he acknowledged how

a biased and false report had been later

shown for what it was.

 

The day the government fell, April 17th,

1999 Udayakumar posted a message on the SAJA

forum saying: "Free at last! Free at last!!

Thank (No) Confidence Vote Almighty, We are free

at last!!! Reports have just reached

indicating that the BJP government has lost the

confidence

vote by just one vote. And Mr. Vajpayee has

already submitted his resignation. The

government got 269 votes in support but 270

MPs voted against the government. It is so

disappointing to see that the DMK voted in

favor of the government. However, the BSP voted

against the Vajpayee regime. The vote of Goa

(sic) Chief Minister who has not resigned his

parliamentary seat yet has made a huge

difference in pulling the government down. It was so

exciting to monitor the political

developments in India with Mr. N. Ram, editor of

Frontline,

who has been in Minneapolis to participate

in a two-day symposium on 'Indo-Pakistan

Relations: What Lies Ahead?' Since the BJP

government at the center is gone, there is no

reason to continue with the 'BJP Government

Watch'".

 

The message made it seem that India had been

unshackled from a governance worse than that

of India's colonial masters, or that of the

brutal Muslim marauders of medieval times. Note

must also be made of how N. Ram continued to

be the "BJP Government Watch" sponsor,

and how it was thus both strange and telling

when the President of India, Mr. Narayanan,

forgoing the traditional Independence Day

eve address to the nation on August 14th , 1998

allowed himself to be interviewed on

Doordarshan by N. Ram. That Ram was hand-selected

as the interviewer by the President, who

later played his part in hastening the demise of the

Vajpayee government, should make it clear

that Mr. Narayanan had become one of the most

compromised Indian heads of state. The

President seemed beholden to the Congress party as

he proposed the Vajpayee government seek a

confidence vote, and when the government lost

it by a margin of one vote, he waited a long

time to have Sonia Gandhi try and cobble together

a majority.

 

A group like "BJP Government Watch" could

not have sprouted overnight. There is a history

behind such an academic enterprise in India,

and we can only understand the workings of "BJP

Government Watch" or "Communalism Combat"

only when we understand that history.

 

The secularist project

 

Indian academics have overemphasized the

nature of conflict between castes and have

underplayed the conflicts between religions.

Moreover, they have systematically tried to paint

Hindus, being the "majority", as the main

culprits in religious conflict. Whenever there has been

an attempt at recording the destruction that

Islamic invaders wrought on India, for example,

they raise the bogey that "Hindus drove

Buddhism out of India"(8). This is repeated at every

instance and then passed off as a historical

"fact" by those who rely on these historians. But

what really happened to Buddhism in India?

Ambedkar, who turned to Buddhism, has this to

say: "Such was the slaughter of the Buddhist

priesthood perpetrated by the Islamic invaders.

The axe was struck at the very root. For by

killing the Buddhist priesthood, Islam killed

Buddhism. This was the greatest disaster

that befell the religion of the Buddha in India...."

 

Shourie(9) concurs: "Today the fashion is to

ascribe the extinction of Buddhism to the

persecution of Buddhists by Hindus, to the

destruction of their temples by the Hindus". When

he makes his case none of the "official"

historians care to refute it. Instead they have tried to

marginalize him by characterizing him as a

"supporter of fundamentalists,Muslim hater," and

so on, and by denying him the opportunity to

debate with them the "facts" of history. Shourie

says "that the Marxist historians who have

been perpetrating this falsehood have not been able

to produce even an iota of evidence to

substantiate the concoction. In one typical instance,

three inscriptions were cited. The

indefatigable Sita Ram Goel(10) looked them up. Two of

the

inscriptions had absolutely nothing to do

with the matter. And the third told a story which had

the opposite import than the one which the

Marxist historian had insinuated: a Jain king had

himself taken the temple from Jain priests

and given it to the Shaivites because the former had

failed to live up to their promise. Goel

repeatedly asked the historian to point to any additional

evidence or to elucidate how the latter had

suppressed the import that the inscription in its

entirety conveyed. He waited in vain".

 

Shourie says that "in regard to matter after

critical matter - the Aryan-Dravidian divide, the

nature of Islamic invasions, the nature of

Islamic rule, the character of the Freedom Struggle -

we find this trait - suppresso veri,

suggesto falsi. This is the real scandal of

history-writing in

the last thirty years. And it has been

possible for these 'eminent historians' to perpetrate it

because they acquired control of

institutions like the ICHR. To undo the falsehood, you

have

to undo the control"(11).

 

I will give one more example of the biased

"scholarship" regarding the Muslim presence and

effects in India. It is well-known that the

VHP has demanded the "return" of three holy places

to Hindus: the Ayodhya Ramjanmabhoomi, the

Kashi Vishwanath temple (which was

destroyed by Aurangzeb, and on which ground

he constructed what is now called the

Gyanvapi Mosque), and the Krishna

Janmabhoomi in Mathura. Initially, the destruction of the

Kashi Vishwanath temple was characterized as

a random and a rare act of destruction of a

Hindu temple by Muslims. But that was

considered not strong enough to deflect criticism of

Muslim violence in India. So, a story began

circulating of how Aurangzeb was "forced" to

destroy the temple by some Hindu royals who

was accompanying him on an expedition to

Bengal, and one of whose ranis visiting the

Kashi temple was molested and held in the

basement of the temple by a priest. Elst(12)

has investigated this fabrication, which has now

become part of "official" history, and shows

how sloppy some of the research is. He traces the

convoluted history of this fabrication and

finds out that this story of Aurangzeb was a

concoction of an unnamed Muslim priest of an

unnamed acquaintance of Pattabhi Sitaramayya,

a Congress stalwart, who wrote the book The

Feathers and the Stones, and in which he

recounts the fake story. This story now is

used by both Muslim politicians and clergy as well as

secularist historians to dismiss the VHP's

argument for the return of the Vishwanath temple.

 

Driving them into a corner

 

The RSS has had to face an extremely hostile

opposition from the days of its inception. As the

years have gone by, and as the RSS has made

inroads into the Indian psyche and Indian life

both through its social work as well as its

ideological adumbration, the demonization of the

"parivar" has become more predictable and

more organized. The attempts to drive them into a

corner have been persistent and brutal.

 

Kenneth Burke(13) explores the implications

of being forced or driven into a corner. First,

"being driven into a corner" results from

what Burke terms "dialectical pressure", the tendency

during conflict for the positions of

adversaries to migrate to their polar extremes. Such

migration reflects the effort of an

adversary to re-cast a position in the most absolute or

"final"

terms possible and then to attack it as

absolute, irrational or untenable(14). From the very

beginning, and especially after

independence, academics in India have characterized the

RSS

as fascist, Nazi-like, and fundamentalist.

Such characterization, incessantly and deliberately

purveyed, has then been used to force them

further into even more tighter corners.

 

Defenders of the original position may

succumb to this pressure and supply defenses of the

more extreme or pure position, not always

perceiving that the "stronger" position or statement

they are led to defend is actually more

vulnerable to attack and less likely to be convincing.

The more academics and the media has termed

the RSS as anti-Muslim or nationalist or

harking on a mythical past, the more

therefore the RSS was forced to defend its position,

which initially wasn't as narrow or

authoritarian as its critics painted it to be. How much

of the

use of Hindu symbols and metaphors before

and during the rath yatras and the demolition of

Babri masjid, for example, could be

attributed to this dialectic? The more the RSS and the

BJP have been characterized as Hindu

nationalist, the more they are called upon to defend a

position, which really wasn't theirs

initially.

 

Once characterized as such, they may also

partake of the dialectical pressure themselves,

performing a similar maneuver with the

position of the other advocate. Thus the easy use of the

terms "Marxist", "pseudo-secular",

"Leftists" that are immediately applied by the BJP and

RSS

spokespersons and defenders(15). The effect

is dialectical in the sense that pressure exerted on

one position produces an equal and opposite

pressure on the other. The pressure so exerted

clears a battleground or arena between two

adversaries who move into corners or

fortifications they did not occupy when the

dispute started.

 

While the corner is a refuge in the sense

that it may attract others similarly committed and does

not admit ambivalence or doubt, it is a

corner nonetheless since it offers little floor space and

no outlet. Cornered beings lose their

interest in escape and instead fight to defend or protect

the corner, sacrifice being preferable to

surrender. That we should find ourselves "at home" in

corners we get driven into is a most

distressing paradox generated by dialectical pressure.

So,

to put this in the context of the BJP and

the RSS, and the way their opponents have/had driven

them into a corner, does it not make clear

how and why the RSS and BJP leaders and many

of its members have taken positions on

issues and events that could be deemed "extreme"?

Would they have had to resort to such

rhetoric and such actions if they had not been pushed

into a political and ideological corner?

 

"Being driven into a corner" is particularly

problematic when the dispute pits an orthodoxy

against a deviant or emergent position.

Although the dialectical pressure drives both groups

into corners, the orthodoxy, in Burke's

terms, "owns all the recognized avenues of approach".

They can dictate or control the common

ground as well as set the ground rules for exchange.

To gain hearing and support, dissenters must

"steal the insignia of the orthodox,"

commandeering strategies intended to further

isolate them. Only by such theft and stealth can

the outcast group reclaim status or

prerogatives as members of the more inclusive community.

This effort by the cornered group to "build

its character by using the prayers of the orthodox"

may well be met by a countermove of the

orthodoxy designed to drive infidels into corners

previously occupied by (other) outlaws.

Burke gives the example of an adversary condemning

a statement because it resembles statements

made by Nazis. This strategy works by

re-defining the corner in much more sinister

terms and denying to its residents any claim they

might make to the open space beyond it. How

many times have we heard the term Nazi or

"fascist" used to describe the RSS or the

BJP or some of their policies and pronouncements?

For example, Cook(16) identifies the

metaphors associated with the Nazi Party that occur in

discussions on BJP policies: a headline in

the Times of India said "Education: BJP Adopts The

Nazi Model". The report said: "The uncanny

resemblance between the argument forwarded by

the Uttar Pradesh government (run by the

BJP) for rewriting history and reshaping math in high

schools from this academic session and the

theory propounded by Hitler for remodeling the

educational system which existed in Germany

after WWI, are too close for comfort"(17). But

the correspondent not only fails to provide

any evidence that the BJP was actually doing what

it was charged with but ignores the fact

that the West Bengal government (run by the CPI-M)

has been involved in rewriting history, and

doing so much more methodically and craftily.

 

Finally, "being driven into a corner" is

problematic, nay even tragic, in the sense that it names

a

state to which we are subjected, a condition

which reduces our choices or imperatives as

agents. The impetus comes from an abstract

but insistent force which operates upon us much

as gravity does. Recognizing its influence,

naming its dangers, does not alter its operation.

"Being driven into a corner" would thus seem

to be one of those inevitable consequences of

human symbol use. It is these elements of

"being driven into a corner" - its origins in dialectical

pressure, the advantage held by orthodoxy

over the "deviant" or emergent forces, and the

downhill momentum it gains that can guide

further research and analyses of the RSS and the

BJP.

 

Claims of the BJP Watch Group(18):

 

The watch group came up with a document,

from which I will quote excerpts, and point out

how they misled the public about their goals

and purposes. In a section titled "What will BGW

watch? they claimed:

 

-- In a nutshell, the BGW will watch the

Words, Actions, Thought-process, Character &

Handiwork of the BJP government in the

larger context of the Sangh Parivar's communal

politics. Such a broader perspective is

important because the BJP government is run by a

party that has several other constituencies

and power centers such as the RSS, VHP,

Bajrangdal and so forth. Incidentally, there

are other political entities and figures who are part

of the BJP government that cannot be

overlooked either.

 

[1] Words: The BGW will monitor the hate

speech and harmful speech of the BJP ministers,

and other Sangh Parivar leaders that have

the potential of inciting communal passions and

violence. Such hate/harmful speech

encompasses not just oral remarks but any form of

expression regarded offensive to the values

and beliefs of a people and injurious to their group

interests.

 

[2] Actions: The 'BJP Government Watch' may

closely observe the functioning, and the law

and policy developments of the BJP

government and its ministers that affect the welfare of

the

Indian civil society, especially the

vulnerable groups such as women, minorities, Dalits,

children

and so forth. To be more specific, the BGW

may look for any governmental moves that would

violate the human rights, or measures that

would curtail the freedom and dignity of any section

of the Indian society.

 

[3] Thought-Process: The BGW will monitor

the saffron thinking on various socioeconomic

and political issues that have both short-

and long-term bearing on India's present and futures.

Monitoring the various gatherings,

discussions, and resolutions of the BJP, RSS, VHP,

Deendayal Research Institute, and a whole

array of such Hindutva outfits would form the core

of this activity.

 

[4] Character: The BGW will watch the

general character and overall direction of the Sangh

Parivar politics that has the aforementioned

saffron components such as revisionist history,

thriving on non-issues, polarizing the

society, and so forth.

 

[5] Handiwork: The BGW will closely monitor

the schemes and acts of mayhem and murder in

the country through Ram temple construction,

Mathura and Kashi "liberation," common civil

code implementation, and other such

campaigns against individuals or groups of people.

 

In classic doublespeak, the group, in a

section titled "The character of BGW", claims that:

 

[1] The BGW will neither engage in partisan

politics nor base its activity on the ideological

proclivities of any given political entity.

Nor will the group act in accordance with any religious

community, interest group or other such

entities either in India, or in the US, or anywhere else

in the world for that matter. However, a set

of political values and convictions may be called in

for carrying out our work. The Universal

Declaration of Human Rights and the international

covenants can be one such tool.

 

Not one posting by Udayakumar on SAJA

referred to Christian or Muslim or any other

religious group related acts of omission or

commission. So much for the group's claims to

independence and objectivity.

 

Communalism Combat: Their chortling over the

fall of the Vajpayee government over, and in

true academic fashion wanting to prolong

their "wasteful life", the BJP Government Watch

converted itself into "Communalism Watch and

Governance Monitor"(19). Blinkered as they

are/were, the members of the group could not

foresee that the BJP would come back to

power. And from the links provided to the

now defunct "BJP Government Watch" one can

glean the affiliations of groups, academics,

and institutions to this group of fatuous factotums.

 

"Communalism Watch" and "BJP Government

Watch" are the creations of ideologically

suspect characters whose anger at the BJP is

an expression of their own hypocrisy, both

political and ideological. That they spent

so much time and effort to bring down a duly elected

government by coordinating those efforts at

the University of Minnesota (where Udayakumar

is a Co-director at the Institute for

Poverty Research) is indicative of the very tangled

political

and academic web woven to demonize the

BJP-led government.

 

Postscript: If any reader is interested in

the items posted by the BJP-Watch group, I will be

glad to forward them what I have stored on

my computer. Prof. Sreenivasan, who manages

the SAJA list and archives has informed me

that he no longer has the BJP Watch postings

archived.

 

1. A. Malik & A.J. Pais , "Conspiracy

Theory: An NRI left-right battle may lead to an

international group monitoring Vajpayee's

ministry," India Today, April 13th , 1998.

 

2. Writing in the Business Standard (October

21st, 1996, "New Dawn at JNU"), T.C.

Srinivasa Raghavan says, "In spite of its

small size, thanks to official patronage that JNU has

received, it has captured... a

disproportionate amount of intellectual space in the

country. It has

also arrogated to itself the right to put

the seal of approval -- again thanks to official

patronage.

Official patronage has also lent it an air

of moral superiority which anyway comes so easily to

the Left.... Second, there has also been a

strong version of the party line. This is especially true

of the history department, which is even

more prone to the pressures of ideological purity".

 

3. Even Madan was targeted by this group. He

said, "A couple of my critics have, however,

jumped to the conclusion that, since I have

reservations about secularism as presented in the

prevailing discourse, I must therefore be a

supporter of communalism. This is patently absurd"

(T.N. Madan, April 30th, 1994, "Secularism

and the Intellectuals", Economic and Political

Weekly).

 

4. R. Sinha, "Red Green Clubs," The

Telegraph, June 30th ,1998

 

5. A. Shourie (1998). "Eminent Historians:

Their technology, their line, their fraud". New Delhi:

ASA Publications. (In this book Shourie not

only establishes the fact of intellectual fraud

committed by these historians but also how

these "eminences" have bilked the country of

millions of rupees.)

 

6. See p. 41 in C. Jaffrelot (1996). "The

Hindu Nationalist Movement in India". New York:

Columbia University Press

 

7. Sahmat was founded shortly after the

murder of street theater activist Safdar Hashmi in

1989. Since then Sahmat has almost solely

focused on speaking out against "Hindu

fundamentalism, communalism, and political

exploitation of religious sentiments". Sahmat

ignores Muslim and Christian fundamentalism

and communalism.

 

8. K.Elst (February 18th, 1999). "Was there

an Islamic 'Genocide' of Hindus?"

 

Http://members.xoom.com/KoenraadElst/articles/genocide.ht

ml

 

9. A. Shourie, "To undo the scandal, undo

the control," The Asian Age, July 24th , 1998

 

10. S.R. Goel (1995). "Stalinist

'historians' spread the Big Lie". New Delhi: Voice of

India

 

11. Shourie's demand is snidely dismissed by

one of these historians. See H. Mukhia

(November 27th, 1998). "Historical Wrongs",

The Indian Express.

 

12. K. Elst (21st November, 1998). "Why did

Aurangzeb demolish the Kashi Vishvanath?"

 

http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/KoenraadElst/articles/auran

gzeb.html

 

13. K. Burke (1937/1961), Attitudes towards

history, Boston: Beacon Press

 

14. C.N. Ramesh, and H. Warren (1994), "The

tragedy of 'Being driven into a corner': A

Burkean analysis of the Branch Davidian

confrontation", Paper presented at the annual Speech

Communication Association Conference, New

Orleans

 

15. On a personal note, I too have begun

using such terms to characterize the academics and

media persons who rail against the BJP and

RSS almost in a knee-jerk fashion. The irony is

that I am known among some of my

communication colleagues as being sympathetic to

Left/Marxist analyses, especially as it

pertains to the critique of American style capitalism or

media ownership and manipulation.

 

16. M.A. Cook, "Journalistic 'Fictions': A

Critique of the Categories 'Fundamentalist' and

'Nazi' in Journalists' Writing on the

Bharatiya Janata Party". On the internet at

 

http://www.univie.ac.at/Voelkerkunde/theoretical-anthropo

logy/cook.html

 

17. P. Tripathi, "Education: BJP opts for

propaganda", The Times of India, August 20th ,

1992, p.10

 

18. http://www.saccer.org/bjpgovwatch.htm

 

19. http://www.saccer.org/CWGMoverview.htm