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Saffron dogs of war bark up the wrong tree

The Bajrang Dal's attempts to make hate figures out of the Christian community would normally pass off as ludicrous in a dreary political landscape, had it not been for the fact that the central government is headed by its political version. This alone makes the threats, intimidation and worse of a peaceful community worrisome, for the little chance of the culprits facing justice otherwise is now non-existent. The prime minister and the home minister may have expressed their horror at the incidents, but beyond sympathy the Christians cannot expect any redressal from this administration.

For the Sangh Parivar, of course, the attacks on yet another group of minorities are part of its long-running campaign to try and create a hate figure, rather on the lines of what the National Socialists did to the Jews. Having done the same to Muslims, having made political capital out of the community's misery, the focus has now been turned to the numerically irrelevant Christian community.

Numerically irrelevant, in terms of vote bank politics, which is what the entire issue is all about.

The Sangh Parivar has never hidden its views on the status of religious minorities in the country. In fact, given a free hand, the cabal at Nagpur would rather have the entire lot of Muslims, Christians, Parsis and what-have-you either reconvert to the Hindu faith, or hotfoot it to climes where they could practise their faith unhindered. And so long as the Nehru family cast a long shadow across the polity, the ideology of aggression, as opposed to accommodation, was condemned to remain in the lunatic fringes.

Blame has been laid at Rajiv Gandhi's doors periodically for fanning the growth of the BJP's brand of politics, owing primarily to three reasons: one, his government's pusillanimity before Muslim hardliners following the Shahbano verdict, the reciprocal attempt at appeasing the Hindu community by opening the locks of the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid, and banning The Satanic Verses even ahead of Pakistan. But while all this may have hardened Hindu sentiment a little, by itself it would not have been enough to pitchfork the Parivar's political offshoot, the BJP, into the mainstream.

That was done by none other than Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who today is the darling of the backward classes thanks to his political Mandal. Had Singh not entered into back-to-back electoral tie-ups with the BJP and the Left in order to dislodge his bete noire Rajiv Gandhi, it is possible Atal Bihari Vajpayee would not be occupying 7, Race Course Road today.

All that, of course, is so much water under the bridge. The thing about the politics of communalism is that there is no end to it, the rules could be altered constantly to suit the convenience or the purpose of a handful of lumpen. Yesterday the question was of Muslim's patriotism, today it is about Christian commitment to the country, tomorrow it could cover just who is to be considered Hindu, whether the backward classes have a greater claim on the heritage of the land, whether Hindu and Hindi and synonymous ad infinitum.

The Sangh Parivar's compulsions in redirecting their focus on Christians are easy to identify. One, the BJP's electoral reverses, and the possible drifting away of its hardcore Hindu vote bank following disenchantment with the non-Hindutva agenda pursued by the Vajpayee government, have alarmed it no end, and this is a way of assuring its grassroots support of its commitment to its core ideology.

The other compulsion is the need to create a bogey, now that the Muslim bogey seems to have run out of steam. With tactical voting, Muslims have shown that they have the ability to determine who forms the government where, at least in a normal election. The BJP has realised that the only way it can counter this consolidation of minority votes is by whipping up Hindu sentiments, and this is how the Christians suddenly find themselves as cannon-fodder.

But there are fundamental differences between the Sangh Parivar targeting the Muslim community and now turning its ire at the Christians, something that seems to have been lost on the leadership. One, of course, is the question of numbers. The Christians are too few in number for them to be presented as any kind of threat to Hindu hegemony in all spheres. Also, while the Muslim community has history to blame for the faults laid at its door, the Christians have no such ghost to exorcise.

The Parivar knows this, which is why it is focusing instead on the conversion bogey. Of course, this could be a valid issue, but even this is not as if the entire community is going around the countryside proselytising Hindus by pews-ful. A handful of missionaries could be involved in conversions in regions beyond the pale of civilisation, Hindu or any other, and the possible converts would not be in the pathetic situation that the missionaries find them in if only Hindu faith, as it is practised, were more charitable to the dregs of society.

Even more than these points, the Parivar's attempt to make the Christian the Hindu's bogeyman is bound to fail for the simple reason that the minority community's contribution towards healthcare and education is deeply appreciated by the majority, which has been unstinting in partaking of the services. Before the Parivar tries to turn the Hindus against a community that is in the forefront of social service, it will have to do better at providing the same services. Since doing so is clearly beyond its ability, it should try its hand at winning political power through fair means.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy