Mr. Fali Nariman, the doyen of the Indian bar, has spoken against the growing intolerance in the country, and so has the Indian President and many others.
But without instigating communal hatred and communal riots how can the BJP win elections ?
BJP normally has only the upper caste Hindu votes. But the upper caste Hindus (Brahmins, Rajputs, banias,etc) are altogether numerically only about 15% of the population in north Indian states.(they are much less in south India).
An election cannot be won by getting only 15% votes. So how can the BJP win elections ?
For that there only two ways.
1. Promise ‘vikas’ ( development ), which will create an illusion that millions of jobs will now be created under BJP rule. In the May 2014 Lok Sabha elections this was the magic slogan which ensured victory for the BJP. The youth in particular, cutting through caste and religious lines, voted en masse for the BJP led by Modi, thinking that now they will all get jobs.( the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 in 1988). After all, all youth, whatever their religion or caste, want jobs.
But after the Lok Sabha elections it was realized that this promise was hollow and a sham, and the youth were taken for a ride and left high and dry..There is no vikas, and no jobs. Jobs cannot be created by empty slogans. They can only be created when the economy is rapidly expanding, but the Indian economy is stagnant. So the vikas slogan has now become ineffective, despite all talk of Digital India and all that kind of jazz.
2. So the BJP has now to fall back on the other, traditional, way to win elections :instigate communal hatred and riots, of which they are experts.
Hindus are ordinarily divided on caste lines ( it was recently reported that in Bihar even kitchens of policemen are separate for different castes ). But when the communal poison is spread they often unite against Muslims.
This idea was best developed by Advani, the poor chap who is now licking his wounds and saying ‘ Et tu Brute ‘ to his erstwhile chelas Modi and Jaitley who have unceremoniously kicked him aside..
It was Advani who started rath yatra and the Ram Janmabhumi agitation which resulted in the BJP’s seats in the Lok Sabha going up from 2 in 1984 to 161 in 196 and 183 in 1999, never mind what damage was done to the country by the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
The attacks on Muslims in Muzaffarnagar, Ballabhgarh, the lynching of Ikhlaque in Dadri, the hate speeches of Adityanath, Sadhvi Prachi, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti ( of ‘ haramzada ‘ fame ) etc, and the deliberate spreading of communalism in rural areas all fit into this pattern.
What is the real nature of the BJP ? It is really dominated by the RSS, as its leadership and cadres are from the RSS. And the RSS is rabidly anti Muslim and anti Christian.
The BJP claims to profess ‘Hindutva’. But in fact it does not really represent Hinduism, and its leaders and rank and file have no knowledge of the great Hindu intellectualism in the past ( see my speech ‘ Sanskrit as a language of Science’ available online and in my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in ). All it has in its ideology is communal hatred, and pseudo claims of our past achievements like the claim that our ancestors had invented aircraft (pushpak viman), atom bombs, guided missiles, etc and had discovered genetic engineering and head transplant technique (Ganesh) in ancient India, which are all false.They have little knowledge of the real great achievements of our ancestors like the decimal system, plastic surgery, construction of ports as in Lothal, and the great discoveries by Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta, Bhaskar etc in mathematics, Sushrut and Charak in medicine, Panini and Patanjali in grammar, etc
So, Mr. Nariman, do not live in a world of dreams
This was in response to the article “It’s high time PM acts: Fali S Nariman” published in Times of India
By Justice Markandey Katju