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From Ayodhya to Dandi
By Harish Khare
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When Mr. Advani invokes the Dandi March symbolism for his rath yatra he is seeking moral acceptability and historic endorsement for a blatantly divisive political ploy.
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AN EXTRAORDINARY claim was made a few days ago in the Lok Sabha. The claim was that a parallel could be drawn between the ``Ayodhya movement'' and Mahatma Gandhi's many movements during the freedom struggle. The sacred word ``Dandi'' was invoked; and, it was suggested that just as the Mahatma had used the symbolism of ``salt'' to underline the British oppression, the ``Ayodhya movement'' too was meant to protest the unjustness of the arrangements in post-Independence India.
And no prizes for guessing as to who made the blasphemous claim: our very own Mr. Lal Kishen Advani, the man who sought to imitate Gandhi's Dandi March in 1990. Replying to a debate the other day in the Lok Sabha, a man who has come to occupy the office of the Union Home Minister took further unholy liberties with the Mahatma's movement. Mr. Advani equated the bloody events of December 6, 1992 with the Chauri Chaura violence in 1922, and argued that just as the Chauri Chaura violence did not invalidate the Mahatma's freedom struggle movement, the December 6, 1992 vandalism was not all that there was - or, is - to the ``Ayodhya movement''.
These thoughts could be dismissed as of no consequence; after all, like anyone else, Mr. Advani too is entitled to a bit of his own loony history. That is why perhaps not many were bothered by Mr. Advani's ludicrous attempt to elevate himself into the Mahatma's company. It is also not inconsequential that at no point have Mr. Advani and his party, the BJP, managed to get the endorsement for the so-called ``movement'' from even the majority of the majority community. The party had to make the most amoral adjustments with groups and individuals - ranging from criminals to crooks - to cobble together a majority in order to come to power at the Centre.
Yet, Mr. Advani had the gumption to claim that the ``Ayodhya movement'' changed the ``ways of Indian politics, the Indian thinking and the Indian mindset''; this, too, can be allowed to pass. If the last three years' pitiable record of misgovernance, corruption and crookedness is to be dignified with the ``changed ways of Indian politics'', Mr. Advani is entitled to this bit of delusion as well. To the extent the country has a fairly good measure of the competence and calibre of our new rulers, Mr. Advani and the rest of the Nagpur-inspired renaissance men can be dismissed as too incapable of improving over the last three years' ignoble record.
Perhaps. But the great danger is that the limited minds are unwilling or incapable of coming to terms with their own limitedness. During the December 3 debate, Mr. Advani was insistent that he remained impressed with the correctness of his ``Ayodhya movement'' and that he was not prepared to disown either the ``movement'' or its raison d'etre. ``I am not one of those who say that just because we are in Government, we should stop talking of Ayodhya. Who says that I have abandoned the Ramjanmabhoomi issue, just because I had to form a Government?''
What is more galling in these formulations is the attempt to invest the so-called ``Ayodhya movement'' with the moral respectability of the Mahatma's crusade against the most entrenched colonial empire. The Dandi March, whose symbolism Mr. Advani seeks for his own rath yatra, was the most morally uplifting exercise in mass mobilisation; the Mahatma had used the iniquitous Salt Tax to arouse the poorest among the Indians, cutting across religious, ethnic and regional divides. In the Mahatma's calculation, the ``them and us'' dichotomy was clear, unambiguous and unconfused; on one side were the poor, wretched masses of India and on the other were the British empire and its local collaborators. And, as the Mahatma wrote to Lord Irwin, Viceroy, the objectives were entirely noble: ``My ambition is no less than to convert the British people through non-violence, and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India. I do not seek to harm your people. I want to serve them even as I want to serve my own...''
In sharp contrast, there was nothing noble about the so-called Ayodhya movement. It was intended to tap the visceral hatreds in Hindu community. In particular, the movement provided a licence to the lumpens in cities and semi-rural areas to indulge their violent impulses. Whereas the Dandi March brought together an entire nation, the ``Ayodhya movement'' deliberately pitted the Hindus against the Muslims. Those who authored the Ayodhya movement had cynically scripted violence on a large scale. Whereas the Dandi March was meant to convince and convert an alien empire, the Advani rath yatra was intended from day one as an exercise in intimidation and exclusion. The comparison, even a very remote one, with the Dandi March is not available to Mr. Advani for his rath yatra, which instigated only violence, bitterness, divisiveness and exclusion.
Above all, the Ayodhya movement was and remains about ``votes'', an exercise in a very ordinary and petty electoral duplicity; but, to Mr. Advani's embarrassment the likes of Mr. Ashok Singhal and Acharya Giriraj Kishore refuse to see the duplicity and persist with the ``movement'' and its unacceptable divisive agenda. If the Ashok Singhals and other worthies of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad feel they have been inveigled by the BJP's strategists into lending Lord Rama for a handful of parliamentary seats, and if these ``revered saints'' are unwilling to let go of the Ramjanmabhoomi trophy, it is a mess to be sorted out between them and Mr. Advani. Maybe both are cynically posturing, with the Uttar Pradesh elections in mind. The electorate has seen through this game, though that in itself is not going to deter the Sangh Parivar from persisting with it.
Nonetheless, the impending electoral rebuffs are not going to deter Mr. Advani and the rest of the Sangh Parivar from insisting that their ``movement'' be accorded a kind of retrospective respectability that it never deserved. After all, the Vajpayee Government has convinced itself that history, as we have known so far, has to be rewritten in conformity with ``facts'' as remembered or interpreted by the narrow minds from the saffron stable. The very logic of ``correcting'' the so-called misperceptions or misunderstanding in ancient history textbooks would, sooner or later, be extended to accounts of the recent times. The country is being treated to nuggets of this quasi-intellectual thuggery almost every day. A petty politician facing a Commission of Inquiry blackmails his way back into the Union Cabinet but the official chroniclers justify this foray into immorality on the entirely dubious ground that ``he is the best Defence Minister since Independence''. Another Minister, a neighbour in South Bloc, claims his Ministry has had no foreign policy perspective in the last 50 years. Who knows, in a few years there may be enough ``historians'' to re-write recent history to elevate Mr. George Fernandes into a Saint George and Mr. L. K. Advani into a Mahatma Advani.
However, beyond the petty ruler's itch to square the history books, Mr. Advani's historical delusions carry with them a serious danger for the civil covenant enshrined in our Republic. The Ayodhya movement may have been a political response to the Congress' equally cynical use of the minorities' existential dilemmas, but it nonetheless posited a dichotomy between the Hindus and the Muslims. And, when Mr. Advani invokes the Dandi March symbolism for his rath yatra he is seeking moral acceptability and historic endorsement for a blatantly divisive political ploy. A Sangh Parivar pamphleteer can be allowed this fraudulent claim but not the Home Minister of India.
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