SECULAR VOTES

By S R Ramanujan

Citizens of this country have been familiar with the oft-repeated expression coined especially by the dwindling Left forces. That was the label given to select combination of parties clubbing them together as “Left, Democratic and Secular forces”. It is passé. Now the language is different. It is “either you are with us or with our enemy” language. Either you are “secular” and “inclusive” or your are “communal” and “divisive”. The Left, as we all know, is quite adept at labelling depending on their convenience and on whose side the party is. Any party that distances itself from Sangh parivar is a secular party. For the CPI-M in Kerala, Abdul Nasser Madani’s “Peoples Democratic Party” is a secular party, never mind Madani’s earlier avatar as a rabid communalist, founder of Islamic Sevak Sangh and now against whom there is growing evidence of alleged terror links which the chief minister of Kerala himself wants to investigate. Biju Janata Dal is “communal” so long as it had an alliance with the BJP. Now that it has severed its connection with the BJP and is the darling of the Left, it has become “secular”. One can do business with them. AIADMK’s Jayalalithaa, who had never hidden her proximity to the Hindu cause whether it is Ayodhya, Gujarat or Ram Sethu, was communal as long as she sailed with the BJP, particularly during the last elections. Now that she has alliance with the Left, as a tactical retreat to take on her first enemy Karunanidhi, she must be “secular” in the estimation of Karat and Co.

Another political phrase that is hurled at the enemy by the so-called “secular forces” is that such parties represent “divisive forces”. A party that wants Uniform Civil Code so as to have one law for all citizens irrespective of caste or religion is a “divisive force”. A party that may not hesitate to run counter to the letter and spirit of the Constitution just to get Muslim votes, like in the case of Shah Bano, or proscription of “Satanic Verses” or the way we treated Taslima, will be branded as “secular” and inclusive in its political philosophy. If Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief, Lalu Prasad Yadav or his new ally, Lok Janasakthi Party (LJP) chief Ram VilasPaswan, go about their poll campaign with Osama bin Laden’s look alike during the previous polls to placate Muslim voters, do they or their parties represent unifying forces. Is it “inclusive” politics? Yes, according to our secular pundits. After all, they fight the “obscurantic” forces like the BJP.
If the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee chief D Srinivas says he would cut the hands of those who oppose Muslims, it is not “divisive” and not “communal”, but Varun Gandhi’s support for majority and his outburst against the minorities are communal and are out to destroy the social fabric of our society. Interestingly enough, it was only the media and the so-called secular hacks who were egging on the Muslims for retaliation while the community itself did not take Varun seriously and fortunately there was no communal violence even after a month or so. If there is a competition between Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav to garner Muslims votes, their parties are secular and if BJP raises Temple issue with an eye on Hindu votes, it is communal politics. If RJD chief threatens Varun to crush him under road roller had he been a Home Minister, he is preaching communal harmony! Because his party is deemed to be “secular” and so he cannot incite communal passion.

Take the case of our Harvard educated Home Minister P Chidambaram. He says that unless we fight and vanquish communalism we cannot fight terrorism. What communalism did Pakistan and Bangladesh practice for terrorism to take deeper roots in those countries and for export to their neighbours. Is it not a fact that the Congress government’s unabashedly short-sighted policy in allowing illegal migrants from Bangladesh to settle in the North East that contributed to the menace of terrorism that we witness today in the region? What he probably means is that the Congress party will continue to pamper a particular community for votes and if any party opposes such a policy, that party will be dubbed “communal” and that party is promoting “communalism”.

Chidambaram has an astonishing explanation for not hanging Afzal Guru who is awaiting capital punishment. According to Chidambaram, some parties are seeing this issue through the “prism of religion”. May be, it is a Freudian slip or the boot is on the other leg. It is the government that does not want to hang him because of his religion. True, some more are in the queue awaiting the noose. But, the government had every reason to jump the queue so as to demonstrate its zero tolerance against terrorism. Action should have had a telling effect than pious statements about zero tolerance.

When we talk about Chidambaram, we are necessarily reminded of the shoe attack though the attack was not personally aimed at him. But the shoe achieved what pen or sword could not achieve though the journalist tribe boasts that pen is mightier than sword. But an unfortunate fall-out of this episode could be that many activists will try this strategy in future as it is paying dividends. In fact, Jarnail Singh’s act also was not original. He only followed the “foot”steps of Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi who flung his shoe at George Bush and this was followed by similar “Paduka Seva” in China, Sweden and our own Supreme Court. But Jarnail Singh achieved what political parties with their agitational approach could not achieve for decades. Just a shoe could put the mighty Congress on a spot.

Similar is the case of Varun Gandhi’s speech and the attention it drew all over. He must have spoken in a gathering of some three to four hundred people in a remote border village. Thanks to our hyperactive media, the CD of his alleged hate speech is the most sought after one by various parties for various purposes. That is not all. Leaders of different parties are using the same lingua for different effects like our APCC president.

Besides secular parties and secular forces, we talk, these days, of “secular votes”. Ours is the only democracy where we have categorised the votes of our people into “secular votes” and by extension “communal votes”. If we take into account the votes polled by the two major national parties, more or less equal number of the electorate are either “secular” or “communal”. In 2004 polls, BJP had polled 8,63,71,561 votes (22.16%) and in 1998 polls, the vote percentage of the party was 25.61% with total votes of 9,42,66,188. The Congress polled 101,34,08,949 (26.53%) in 2004 and its percentage of votes in UP and Bihar was 12.04 and 4.49 respectively. In Madhya Pradesh, BJP had a vote share of 48.13% while Congress had 34.07%. Does this hold any lesson for our secular parties and politicians? It is for the secular parties to introspect whether it is proper to look at the electorate through the prism of their own prejudices. What more can be “divisive politics” than this?