Hopes belied

Sir, - Sadly enough the mask over the face of the only moderate leader of the Sangh Parivar has slipped. The ray of hope for the peace-loving Hindus and Muslims seems to be extinguishing. His suggestion that Mandir should be built on the disputed site has come in the form of a solution where in fact it is the very basis of the dispute. If at all he was interested in a solution he could have put it like this: ``Masjid will be rebuilt on the place where it existed and the Mandir which has no traces of history can be built anywhere in Ayodhya, may be much bigger than the Masjid''. This would have definitely come as a noble gesture of the magnanimity of the big brother, through the mouth of the most respectable politician of the Sangh Parivar. Instead, Mr. Vajpayee has chosen to drum up the same theme of the Mandir wahin banayenge,which has been the focal point of campaign of the RSS and allies all these years.

It is time that the so-called secular parties providing crutches to the Vajpayee Government jettisoned the wishful thinking that it is the secular agenda, they are heading with. They should admit that they could not restrain the BJP Government from proceeding with its hidden agenda under the garb of a national secular agenda. Surprisingly, the NDA meeting on December 10 has confined itself to a formal resolution, expressing faith in the secular agenda ignoring the statement of Mr. Vajpayee to discuss which the NDA meet was called. Everyone was expecting plain- speaking and even an ultimatum to Mr. Vajpayee, going by the initial reaction of Mr. Naidu and Ms. Banerjee.

Ms. Malini Parthasarathy has rightly said in her article ``No accidental swayamsevak'' (The Hindu,Dec. 11) that ``the unmasking of Mr. Vajpayee marks the beginning of a more aggressive challenge to the essence of India's secular and plural democracy... it is time for the vast number of secular and peace- loving Indians... and the diplomatic community to acknowledge that all the dreams and grand talk of a resurgent India will only founder if the hate-campaigns of the Sangh Parivar are allowed to continue taking their deadly toll of India's civil society.''

K. Malikul Azeez,

Chennai

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Opinion
Previous : China's tryst with globalisation - I
Next     : Expectation falsified