<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>RSS backs Rajnath</b>
Pioneer News Service | New Delhi
The RSS has joined former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in endorsing BJP chief Rajnath Singh's selection of the national executive and office-bearers.
The RSS' support to Singh will help him silence critics in the party for dropping Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi from the Parliamentary Board and reducing the stature of some other leaders.
"The new team is a carefully crafted exercise in political manoeuvre and accommodation," the RSS said in an editorial in the Sangh mouthpiece Organiser.
The flattering editorial added: "He (Singh) has cobbled together a young team of office-bearers, sticking to the principle of continuity with change.
"Since the BJP is fortunate to have a large array of talented and experienced leadership reserve, it is not an easy task for any leader to present a perfectly inclusive team in an organisationally exclusive structure. The beauty is that he has not disturbed the rhythm of the onward march."
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Which 80 years old are they keeping? they must have a strategy for what they are doing.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
ABV
Modi was only CM as office bearer so his exist was not wrong. Jaitley is busy with coming election.
<b>Strategy to fortify BJP</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Giving details of the `chinthan baithak' of the party's national leaders at a press conference, Mr. Naidu said that strengthening of the organisational base, creating awareness among people about the party's ideology and organising people's movements would form part of the strategy.
Every village and ward would have party committees before elections, while its ideology on issues like Uniform Civil Code, abrogation of Article 370, opposing of appeasement of minorities, linking of rivers, opposing of religion-based reservations would be canvassed vigorously. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
>Uniform Civil Code, abrogation of Article 370, opposing of appeasement of minorities, linking of rivers, opposing of religion-based reservations
If they stick to these to the end, they can get back votes lost last time. On a positive side they will have gains in UP, Maharashtra, Karnataka. Hopefully, if they retain gains in existing/ruling states, they are back in business.
Unlike last time NDA partners may go along with BJP. By this time, it should have dawned on the partners that opposing those issues are not fetching any votes for them.
Elections some time this year is good for NDA. They should precipitate fall of the Congress government for mid-term elections.
Disunity among "secular'' parties may help BJP
Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar
Widespread public resentment against Congress Councillors
# By increasing the number of wards, Congress has taken BJP completely by surprise
# Third Front has thrown the spanner into the works of the Congress
NEW DELHI: As in the Mumbai civic elections recently, disunity among "secular'' parties here in the Capital may help the Bharatiya Janata Party in the forthcoming elections to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. While it is common knowledge that there is widespread resentment against the Councillors of the ruling Congress both among the people and also within the party, more than this disenchantment it is the extraneous factors that according to political observers may ultimately tilt the scales in favour of the BJP.
Delimitation
To begin with, the BJP had started on a strong footing owning to a strong anti-incumbency factor.
But shrewd as the Congress leadership is, by increasing the number of wards in the MCD from 134 to a minimum of 272, it took the BJP completely by surprise. With the delimitation of seats being undertaken, it also meant that for all the contestants there were newer constituencies to contest from and thus a more "level playing field''.
But recent developments in Delhi's political firmament have once again made the situation much more favourable for the BJP. By piecing together a five-party alliance called Pragatisheel Jan Morcha, the MLA from Badarpur and one of the most prominent Gujjar leaders, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, has thrown the spanner into the works of the Congress.
While both the Congress and the BJP may at the outset scoff at the Morcha, privately they both acknowledge its tremendous damage potential, especially in the Capital's untested waters as the newly carved out wards would be. With an electorate of about 50,000 in each ward, even a marginal pull one way or the other would impact the result, especially at a time when various residents' welfare associations have also decided to contest the polls.
And while the two major parties may like it or not, the constituents of the Morcha -- Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Jan Morcha, Nationalist Congress Party and Janata Dal Secular -- all wield considerable influence in different pockets of Delhi.
According to Mr. Bidhuri, the Third Front in the 1993 Delhi Assembly elections had secured 18 per cent votes. With the stage being much smaller, the alliance is hoping to better even that performance.
Observers
This should, however, be music for the BJP as the Morcha would eat into the secular votes that traditionally go to the Congress, say political observers.
And the confrontation would be akin to that in Mumbai where the Congress-NCP alliance broke at the eleventh hour.
"We had initially been promised 65 seats there and then the local Congress leadership insisted that we return three of these. This was not acceptable to us as the attitude of the State Congress leaders was also very haughty,'' Mr Bidhuri said. What followed is something both the Congress and the NCP would now be ruing.
Here comes the BJP with the same old check to see if they can encash it again. If BJP makes politics out of real hindu issues, why would any hindu in congress or any other party support hindus? BJP is all about votes, who cares what eventually happens to hinduism.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->BJP pledges Hindutva in Uttarakhand
Agencies | Dehradun
Releasing the party's poll manifesto here, BJP in-charge of the state Ravishanker Prasad today pledged to implement a Hindutva agenda in Uttarakhand while assuring other religions about proper care of their religious centres including temples.
"We are going to impose a ban on cow slaughter. In this regard, we will set up a cow protection commission," said Prasad, who was flanked by former union minister BC Khanduri and state BJP president BS Koshiyari.
He said the BJP will enact an anti-conversion law to check forceful religious conversions.
Prasad said illegal migrants in the state will be checked and a new information policy formulated.
Misuse of 'lal battis' (red lighted vehicles) and various funds like Chief Ministerial Discretionary Fund will be dissolved.
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Which media outlet uses the name Uttarakhand instead of Uttaranchal? Are they different?
Uttarakhand was used during British period and they mean different area.
02-09-2007, 10:33 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-09-2007, 10:37 PM by acharya.)
COMEDY ARTICLE
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodna...=rajinder&sid=1
Does BJP Have A Future?
Euphoria over Maharashtra is misplaced. The BJP's decline will continue, unless the party reinvents itself. The prospect of that happening is remote. The party in its present shape seems to have little future. If it does, India under its governance may have none. ...
Rajinder Puri
| e-mail | one page format | feedback: send - read |
The NDAâs showing in the Maharashtra civic polls is a shot in the arm for the BJP. But the euphoria is misplaced. Last week when BJP President Rajnath Singh reshuffled his secretaries, it attracted media speculation. One wonders why. Does the game of musical chairs in a declining party matter? Until now there have been two so-called national parties forming unprincipled, uneasy alliances with regional partners, to create a UPA-NDA polarization. The influence of neither of the so-called national parties extends beyond half a dozen states. And both parties have proved equally ineffective in power. Both parties have done nothing to improve their respective organizations. Both parties have relied up to now on their opponent governmentâs poor performance and the incumbency factor to be voted back to power.
Now the situation might change. The BJP is floundering so badly that even this pathetic arrangement could end. The BJP could all but disappear under the severe crisis that overwhelms it. One may ignore the indiscipline, rebellions and defections that have begun lately to splinter the party. One must focus instead on the changed perceptions of a new generation, on life as changed by globalization, and on the unchanged mindset of those who lead the BJP. The crisis in the BJP is fundamental. The party is directionless because it is flawed in structure, in ideology and in culture. Let us see how.
The BJP is a party of leaders without workers. The workers belong to the RSS. That is why the RSS controls BJP. That is why BJP leaders do not emerge through a healthy political process but are appointed by the RSS. True, one could say that the same happens in the Congress. After all, Mrs Sonia Gandhi appointed Dr Manmohan Singh as PM. But there is a difference. The Congress functions like monarchy with a royal dynasty. The RSS functions like a bunch of oligarchs squabbling behind the curtain. There is certainty in the Congress; there is confusion in the RSS. Also, Mrs Gandhi is the president of her party. She is up front in politics. Through her party she acts as the mentor of the government. The RSS is out of politics. It exercises power without responsibility. It acts like a backseat driver who has never driven a car himself.
The RSS is secretly flattered when compared to Hitler. But its reputation for militancy is questionable. As the late ML Sondhi once humorously remarked to me, "I donât know why people associate RSS with Hitler. They should associate it with Baden-Powell, who founded the Boy Scout movement!" Morning calisthenics and staff-waving do not add up to militancy. For communal violence the RSS does what other organizations do. It exploits anti-social elements to spread mayhem. It is only the emergence of the VHP that has tended to greatly alter the situation. And it has also greatly compounded the confusion and debilitation of the RSS.
The RSS was always dominated by Brahmins and Banias. The Banias mobilized funds but the Brahmins called the shots. The Banias got fed up with this arrangement. So they created the VHP as part of the Sangh Parivar. But they controlled it. The VHP is militant and capable of unleashing violence on its own. It is led by Banias like Dalmia and Singhal. Its foot soldiers are drawn from lumpen OBCs. Its favoured mass icons are OBCs, such as Uma Bharati, Vinay Katyar and Kalyan Singh. The financial links of VHP leaders with NRIs abroad have enabled them to mobilize funds required for a big organization. With autonomous control, the VHP forged its own agenda. In the demolition of the Babri Mosque, it was VHP leaders who took the lead. The RSS was an approving bystander. Sometimes fissures between RSS and VHP are discernable.
When this happens it is the VHP mostly which prevails. Narendra Modi, for instance, was the blue-eyed boy of the RSS until he fell out with the VHP. Now the RSS has been forced to remove him from the BJP parliamentary board. Thus while BJP is controlled by RSS, the latter is in turn pushed and pulled by the VHP. That is why the party lurches without direction.
This confusion has spread to the BJPâs ideology. In truth, the Sangh Parivar never had an ideology. It had an attitude. It has always been anti-minority. A party is entitled to hold its views. But it invites ridicule when its views are glaringly self-contradictory. For instance, in the recent issue of the RSS weekly Organizer, the RSS number two, Mohan Bhagwat, has once again eulogized Akhand Bharat. How can an Akhand Bharat of even cultural nationalismâ such as Mr LK Advani frequently dwells uponâ co-exist with the VHP brand of Hindutva? The two preclude each other. The truth is that Sangh Parivar leaders have neither ideology nor consistency. Recall Babri-wrecker Kalyan Singh leaping into the arms of Babri-defender Mulayam Singh, and then leaping back into the arms of the BJP! It speaks volumes of both the leader and his party which after this welcomed him back. There are issues galore to develop and propagate for expanding political constituencies. This is not the occasion to identify them. The BJP has no interest in a political agenda that meets the real aspirations of the public. Like a stuck gramophone needle, it keeps repeating a tired refrain.
Can the BJP change? Editorial writers have urged Mr Vajpayee and Mr Advani to make way for younger leaders. But political leaders are not appointed. They seize power after rising through their own sweat and toil. One columnist has urged that the BJP should have a proper election for a leader. Does he not realize that if an election were held and Vajpayee threw his hat in the ring, he would win hands down? Probably none would dare to even challenge him! That is the political culture prevalent here today. There is no real politicking, no real political issues, and no real leaders. What counts are sound bytes on TV and the ability to snuggle close to corporate sharks for funds.
On present reckoning the UPA government is in no danger of demitting office. It has even notched up a few popularly perceived gains in foreign policy. It faces no outside challenge. It can only collapse through some monumental stupidity of its own. In the remaining two years of this governmentâs tenure the BJPâs decline will continue, unless the party reinvents itself. The prospect of that happening is remote. The party in its present shape seems to have little future. If it does, India under its governance may have none.
Rajinder Puri can be reached at rajinderpuri2000@yahoo.com
<!--emo&:roll--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ROTFL.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ROTFL.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:roll--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ROTFL.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ROTFL.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:roll--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ROTFL.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ROTFL.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<b>A shot in the arm for BJP in Goa</b>
February 17, 2007 17:23 IST
Ahead of the assembly polls in Goa, Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday received a shot in the arm with former Goa and Maharashtra governor Mohammed Fazal joining the party.
"I do not have the greed to become minister. I have held positions much above it. My entry is not timed with elections. I thought before taking the decision and finally decided to join BJP," he told media persons in Panaji in the presence of BJP Goa chief Shripad Naik and leader of Opposition Manohar Parrikar.
Fazal's wife Shirley Godinhoe Fazal, a former Congress general secretary of local Benaulim Block in south Goa, was also present on the occasion.
Fazal was governor during November 1999 to October 2002 in Goa and later in Maharashtra between October 2002 and December 2004. Post-Maharashtra assignment, Fazal made Goa as his abode and is a voter of Taleigao constituency in North Goa.
"I thought that I will devote my life to study and literature. But things happening in Goa made me restless. Congress regime unleashed corruption and is harassing the people. I thought this is a time for me to act and be part of the political set-up, which gave good governance to the state,y" he said.
"I was a Congressman right from my student days. In 1978, I formally joined Congress and later resigned from it in 1985 when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister," the 84-year-old leader said.
After a long gap, Fazal joined BJP in the year 1996, only to resign three years later when he was made governor.
"I was offered Bihar governor's post during Indira Gandhi's time but I refused to accept it. Goa governor's post was not a gift, but was in fact offered due to my capabilities to handle such posts," Fazal said.
BJP seeks disqualification of 10 MLAs in UP
[ 17 Feb, 2007 1553hrs ISTPTI ]
RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates
NEW DELHI: BJP on Saturday sought disqualification of its 10 MLAs in Uttar Pradesh on charges of indulging in cross-voting during the confidence vote won by Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The party has asked the UP Assembly Speaker not to allow these MLAs to participate in voting on February 26 when Yadav will seek another confidence vote in the assembly, BJP Vice President Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->After a long gap, Fazal joined BJP in the year 1996, only to resign three years later when he was made governor<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It means he never left BJP. I think he is hoping for CM position, he is 84 years old. <!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Congress games in Goa are not going well with locals.
<img src='http://www.hindu.com/2007/02/19/images/2007021917541401.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
<b>
BJP president Rajnath Singh and other leaders at the concluding day of the birth centenary celebrations of the second Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh M.S. Golwalkar in New Delhi on Sunday. â Photo: PTI
</b>
Sonia, non-BJP leaders ignore invite for RSS event
# It remained largely a `Parivar' affair
# BJP, Sangh Parivar turned up in full strength
BJP president Rajnath Singh and other leaders at the concluding day of the birth centenary celebrations of the second Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh M.S. Golwalkar in New Delhi on Sunday. â Photo: PTI
New Delhi: A key RSS event with social harmony as its theme received no response from Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and heads of parties other than the BJP as it remained largely a `Parivar' affair, despite invitations sent across the political spectrum.
Chief guest
Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat was the chief guest at the concluding ceremony marking the birth centenary of Sangh leader Guru Golwalkar.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Sangh Parivar turned up at the event here in full strength as RSS chief K. S. Sudarshan and former Prime Minsiter Atal Behari Vajpayee, besides Mr. Sekhawat, adressed a public meeting on the Delhi Jal Board ground at Burari here.
Unlike the Congress-organised Satyagraha event to which no NDA constituent and the RSS were invited, the Sangh had sent invitations to UPA Chairperson Gandhi and presidents of other political parties for the Golwalkar celebrations.
Modi attends
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, also attended the celebrations along with his counterparts Vasundhara Raje from Rajasthan, Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Madhya Pradesh and Bihar's Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi.
In his address, Mr. Shekhawat spoke extensively about poverty while Mr. Vajpayee recited a poem based on theme of the event. â PTI
x-post
BJP should insist that UP govt be dismissed using Article 355 of the constitution for breakdown of law and order. 356 is for failure of constitutional machinery.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->BJP steps into Congress trap
Navin Upadhyay | New Delhi
With cracks developing within the NDA on backing the Congress move to impose President's rule in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party may have stuck its neck out too far in rallying behind the sack-Mulayam exercise.
<b>By throwing its weight behind the Congress, which always treated it as untouchable, the BJP leadership stands to make a major compromise with its main political adversary in justifying an act which, in the eyes of most constitutional and legal experts, is "immoral, unethical and unconstitutional." </b>
The BJP's political campaign against the Mulayam Government and its sustained demand for its dismissal may have come handy for the Congress to exploit the situation to suit its own politics of vendetta. But by allowing the Congress to dictate terms, the BJP might have fallen into a well-laid trap.
<b>Political observers feel that the BJP leaders should not allow the Congress to justify its moral-posturing, which is driven solely by Congress president Sonia Gandhi's personal dislike of Mulayam Singh and the party's grim electoral prospects in UP in case of timely election.</b>
Observers feel that the BJP should embarrass the Congress by asking it to tender an apology to the people of UP for extending support to the Mulayam Government when it was all along propped by the same defectors, who have now been disqualified by the Supreme Court.
<b>Observors feel that the BJP is also not paying heed to apprehensions that the Congress might delay the UP election to influence the presidential polls and try to improve its own electoral chances by time-tested design of running a proxy administration through the Raj Bhavan.</b> <b>On several occasions when the Congress imposed President's rule in any State, it went in for a major bureaucratic reshuffle and brought in pliant officers to execute its political design.</b>
<b>Observors feel that by aligning itself with the Congress to dismiss the Mulayam Government, the BJP could risk the prospect of sharing a possible judicial reprimand in case if the decision was challenged in the Supreme Court.</b> <i>(lets see if BJP has enough sense to hear these observers)</i> There is a near unanimity among legal and constitutional experts that the decision would be struck down by the courts. Legal luminaries like PN Lekhi, Rajeev Dhavan, Harish Salve and Subhash Kashyap have only questioned the propriety of any such Central intervention and argued that Mulayam Singh Yadav should be allowed to prove his majority on the floor of the Assembly.
Observers feel that the BJP must provide conditional support to the UPA Government in its sack-Mulayam move. The party must ask the Government to specify a time-frame for holding the Assembly election, and insist that it should be taken into confidence on the specific ground cited for imposing President's rule. The party should also ask the Congress to commit that the Assembly election will take place before the presidential elections.
Observers feel that without satisfying itself on the legal ground for dismissal, the BJP was making a big mistake in offering support to the Congress. Unless the party was satisfied that grounds cited for dismissal are legally tenable and the Congress was not going to delay the Assembly poll, the BJP should desist from such support, observers feel.
Obsevers also feel that the Congress treated the BJP as pariah when the NDA sought dismissal of Lalu Government in Bihar over complete breakdown of law and order in the State. In fact, the Congress refusal to support the ratification of the President's rule in Bihar led to revival of the Rabri Devi Government in 1998. At that time, the NDA had imposed President's rule after Sonia Gandhi herself advocated the need for such a move during a visit to Jehanabad in the wake of massacre of Dalits.
"Congress can't have the cake and eat it too," said a political observer. "The best way the BJP could extricate itself from the messy position would be to ask the Congress leadership to discuss the UP issue threadbare with it before imposing President's rule. Since the Congress needed BJP support in Parliament for ratification of the President's rule, Sonia Gandhi would have to decide whether she would sack Mulayam at the political cost of being seen as directly colluding with the BJP.
<b>Observers feel that the BJP could go back on its demand for imposition of President's rule only at a heavy political cost as it would be seen helping Mulayam Singh Yadav. But, at the same time, while providing support to the Congress, the BJP should try to protect both its image as a party that has always criticised the Congress for misuse of Article 356, and also ensure that the Congress did not use the opportunity to revive itself in UP.</b>
Sources said that there was no detailed discussion within the BJP on UP situation after the Supreme Court disqualified 13 breakaway BSP MLAs, and the party leadership acted under the misconception that the Congress was not serious about dismissing Mulayam Government.
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I hope congress wins in Himachal. Cong govt just implemented the anti-conversion bill there. It should become profitable for congress leaders to be pro-hindu. That will cultivate the hindu vote bank.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Himachal is BJP's next "destination"
Agencies | Shimla
The Opposition BJP in Himachal Pradesh Assembly today has claimed that the election results of the two neighbouring states Panjab and Uttarakhand will pave the way for the BJP to be in power in the State.
"The results in the two neighbouring states have shown which way the wind is blowing. (Chief Minister) Virbhadra Singh will meet the fate of his party colleagues Amarinder Singh and ND Tiwari in the state Assembly elections due in February next year," BJP Legislature Party leader PK Dhumal told the house.
After Punjab and Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh "will be the next destination", he said.
The BJP "joy over the Punjab and Uttarakhand outcomes will be short-lived... We are unhappy with the results going against the Congress but not demoralised," the Chief Minister said.
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As far I know, in Punjab, people are very upset with minority appeasement and OBC reservation.
Himachal where OBC are less than 15% and minorities are very small, I think reservation will cost Congress here also. Minority appeasement policy are major factor in this region.
HP Congress was forced to bring anti-conversion bill but that is too little.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/24696.html
One side of two coins
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Posted online: Saturday, March 03, 2007 at 0000 hrs Print Email
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Related Stories
To reform UP, trifurcate itOur Insecurity Syndrome Warm up the debateNo more dark spacesThe truth is not in the facts
It is tempting to over-analyse elections for their deep hidden meanings. But the beauty of messy political numbers is that each interpretation raises only further questions. If inflation was the key determinant, why did the BJP do better in urban areas? If the election is meant to tame the arrogance of power, whether in Amarinder Singh or the Lal Batti effect, why was the vote swing not more pronounced? If there is a quiet consolidation of upper caste votes in response to reservation, why are we not seeing more political traction for anti-reservation politics? Anti-incumbency as an explanation begs the question: why anti-incumbency?
The search for the deep wellsprings of electoral outcomes is, in many circumstances, difficult. The surface result is all there is. This does not mean that there are no reasons behind people voting the way they do. But interpreting the result is more complicated than we acknowledge. This is because voters are perhaps more ambivalent. They know what they want but do not know how to get it. Hence the results are a lot more tentative in their meaning.
These election results however raise an important question. Is it possible that both the Congress and the BJP may now experience less attrition of their votes to smaller groups than many had feared? It is still too early to tell, but the political space for consolidation by the two major parties seems to be somewhat more open. But whether this consolidation can happen will depend upon the ability of both parties to wrestle with some key issues.
The first is ideological. For good or for ill, the Congress and the BJP are still the defining poles of Indian politics. There are many other significant parties representing important social forces. But they donât set the terms of ideological debate. In a way the Congress and the BJP are, at least in image, the left of centre and the right of centre parties. They are supposed to act as checks on each otherâs excesses. Ideologically, the Congress has to guard against two excesses. In terms of economic ideology, it has to ensure that the defensible elements of its leftward turn, like greater attention to social sector, do not degenerate into an indiscriminate statism. And in terms of a conception of citizenship it has to ensure that its brand of secularism does not generate its own politics of divisiveness, where community identity becomes the axis of distribution. Its tussle is between secularism as principle and secularism as opportunism.
The BJP in turn paid the price for not being quite able to articulate an agenda for the social sector that can knit together a distributive coalition. It has to learn to distinguish between the proposition that community should not trump citizenship and the proposition that the minority community is always and the only one suspect; to distinguish between a genuine ideal of common citizenship and a Hindutva-inspired one. Its challenge is to keep fanaticism at bay.
In practice, at least at the central level, both parties converge more than their own self-representation would suggest. But neither has yet got the credibility to assure anyone but their core base that they have resolved their own internal tensions. They gain less credit for the good they do, and give succour to those who fear the harm they might inflict.
The Congress still has to overcome its crisis of credibility, and the BJP the taint of fanaticism. But these problems stem from their core weakness: in different ways their organisational structure is a handicap. Both have a crisis of leadership. Although Vajpayee was more of a mass leader than Manmohan Singh, he had the peculiar ability to not take a stand at crucial moments in the partyâs ideological evolution. And Manmohan Singh has a dual disadvantage of not appearing to be credible or his own man on a range of issues that are politically potent: constitutional morality, reservations, education. The good he does dissipates easily because of manifest lack of authority. Perhaps the Punjab elections are a testament to that. And neither leader has been willing to seize the ideological mantle, except oddly enough, in their foreign policies.
One could argue that this parallel is misplaced: Sonia Gandhi is the real leader in the Congress. But her function is peculiar. First, there is the oddity of her appearing to be more like the leader of the opposition rather than someone responsible for and part of the ruling party. But the one sense in which she is a liability is the sense in which the RSS can be a liability for the BJP. Both give their respective parties stability, but both also impose serious closure on their parties. Both give patronage to figures who do not bring their parties credit. But the form in which this is most manifest is organisational. Both the BJP and the Congress, like other parties, do not have the requisite degree of internal democracy. This acts as an insuperable barrier to attracting newly mobilised social groups. If there are no clear rules of how party leaders, representatives, candidates are chosen, at all levels, new groups will find it more difficult to join existing parties.
Most parties around the world solve the problem of their ideological orientation and their leadership issues democratically. The credibility problem, the ideological uncertainty and the leadership problem in both parties are irresolvable because there is no democratic procedure, built from grassroots upwards, to resolve these issues. Two-party systems typically emerge with a parallel development of intra-party democracy.
There is fashionable argument to the effect that we have more parties because we are a diverse country. This argument is deeply mistaken, because the diversity of parties is not a consequence of a diversity of views in the polity. It is a consequence of the fact that new social groups or ideologies do not have any means of orienting existing parties towards them, they fear being subverted by those with veto power in the party, whether it is Sonia Gandhi or the RSS. The disjunction between the parties that have the ideological base (Congress and BJP) and parties that are social groupings (BSP, SP) can be narrowed only through institutional reform of the Congress and BJP. The country is ideologically ready for a predominantly two party system. The lesson may be that both parties need to democratise to gain more authority in Indian democracy.
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I know CORRUPT CON men (servants of GNADHI dynastu would never approve democratisation of CON party). But it would be nice if BJP creates a PRIMARY elections to select party candidates. It would be a great change in India and I am sure Indians would love it. Not only that, CON party will DIE because once more and more CON men will start questioning the ITALIAN MAFIA. The DYNASTY will never allow such a thing because if Primaries decide the candidates, the DYNASTY will automatically DIE whereas, BJP will flourish since it is not ONE MAN's party.
http://www.lines-magazine.org/Art_Feb05/RaviAshRaja.htm
Dollars Funding Pogroms: The case of Hindu neofascist organizations in the US
-- Ashwini Rao, Ra Ravishankar and Raja Swamy
"$365 a year for one school. A dollar a day, for which we can't even buy a Coke in New York. Talk to your friends. This is our debt to our country where we were born." -- Veena Gandhi [1]
"The death and destruction wrought by nature's fury in Southern Bharat, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, etc. is beyond comprehension ... How much to give? Swami Vivekananda said: Give, give and give till it hurts. [2] "
At first glance, these appeals seem perfectly reasonable, even laudable, particularly in the aftermath of terrible natural disasters like the recent tsunami. However, such appeals to diasporic guilt and instrumental use of tragedies have been the hallmark of the Hindu Right's fundraising agenda in the US. The names of the fundraising fronts and their professed causes are but minor details in the grand scheme of things -- that of bankrolling the sectarian agenda of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Organizational Structure
The RSS is an organization inspired and modeled on the Italian fascists and the Nazis [3] , and has been implicated in numerous instances of violence against non-Hindu minorities [4] , most recently in the massacre of 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat [5] . The RSS exists in India through several front organizations, collectively referred to as the Sangh Parivar (Sangh, for short). Prominent constituents of the Sangh Parivar are:
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the religious wing
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political wing
Bajrang Dal (BD), the paramilitary wing
Sewa Bharati (SB), the service wing
The RSS is not registered as a charity or as a non-government organization, which frees it from any legal or financial responsibilities. The public responsibility of establishing Hindu cultural hegemony (VHP), Hindu youth militancy (BD) and parliamentary presence (BJP) and collecting donations (SB) are divided among the constituent organizations. All key members of the Sangh, however, pledge their allegiance first to the RSS and its extremist ideology of fashioning India into a Hindu nation. Such âdivision of laborâ allows the RSS to spread its hate agendas through multiple organizations while remaining in the background.
A similar organizational structure has been replicated in countries outside India wherever the Sangh has managed to establish itself. In the US, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) takes on the role of the RSS. Similarly, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP), Hindu-unity and India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) are the US equivalents of the VHP, BJP, BD and SB. While the Sangh in India is very open about its sectarian agenda [6] , its wings in the US operate primarily through deception (under the cover of cultural and development organizations). As a consequence, people who would otherwise keep a safe distance from the Sangh, unwittingly end up bankrolling Sangh operations in India.
Donation Structure
The VHPA quotes Swami Vivekananda as saying, "Give, give and give till it hurts." Unfortunately, it was only after such "giving" had caused irreparable harm that the Sangh's deceptive fundraising practices came under the scanner.
The Sangh has worked hard over the years to create a multi-faceted structure through which money is collected and channeled to Sangh organizations in India.
One facet of this structure is the takeover of various religious and cultural institutions by the VHPA and the HSS. With members of the Sangh family ensconced within the power structure at many temples (such as the Ganesh temple in New York) and Hindu cultural institutions across the US, the VHPA and the HSS are able to collect donation money from individuals. While this does not raise a lot of money for the Sangh, it performs the function of legitimating the Sangh and making it more acceptable among Hindus in the U.S.
A second part of the structure is to raise funds for well known Sangh projects in India through the student wing of the Sangh in the US, the Hindu Students Council. HSC has 77 chapters in universities across the US [7] . Many of these chapters raise money for projects such as the Ekal Vidyalayas (one teacher schools in tribal areas that are used for propagating a virulent form of extremist Hindutva ideology), for Hindu victims of violence in the state of Kashmir, and for organizations like Indicorps, that share a very cozy relationship with the Sangh [8] . As with the collection of individual donations through temples, HSC does not serve to fill the Sangh coffers as much as to provide the Sangh legitimacy within secular university spaces through which to recruit future middle-of-the-road supporters. Its purpose is to inculcate youth into Hindutva by exploiting their insecurities regarding identity in a multicultural setting.
A third part of the structure, one which has yielded large donations for Sangh affiliated organizations, is through corporate matching fund programs. This fundraising effort has largely been spearheaded by the service division in the US through the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF). IDRF has been successful at collecting donations from large corporations such as Sun Microsystems, Cisco systems, Microsoft corporation etc. by appealing to their large Indian immigrant workforce. While the donations are collected by IDRF purportedly for relief and development projects in India, a large proportion of this money has found its way to organizations linked with the RSS in India. Activists in the US have been raising this issue for several years now, but it was only after the Sangh-orchestrated anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat that the US mainstream media took notice.
In the May 22, 2002 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Kanwal Rekhi and Henry Rowen warned diasporic Indian Hindus that their well-meaning donations might be misused to "destroy minorities (Christians as well as Muslims) and their places of worship." Later that year, the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (CSFH) released a report [9] that incontrovertibly established IDRF as a fundraising front of the Sangh. This link is clear not only from IDRF documents presented to the Federal Government at the time of its inception, but also from the strong personnel and organizational connections between IDRF and the Sangh. Furthermore, in the period from 1992 to 2000, IDRF distributed over 80% of the available funds to organizations that are part of the Sangh. The CSFH report was based primarily on material published by the Sangh, so the Sangh has been unable to come up with a meaningful response.
The final part of the donation laundering structure comes into play soon after natural disasters, a time when well-meaning individuals are most vulnerable to appeals to donate generously. At times of such crises, all the different constituents of the Sangh get into the fundraising act. This was seen after the cyclone in Orissa in 1999, and after the massive earthquake in Gujarat in 2001. Now, after the Asian tsunami disaster, the VHPA, HSS, and IDRF promptly posted appeals for donations on their websites [10] . In fact, two days after the tsunami, the Sangh launched a new service organization, Sewa International USA, for collection of donations for tsunami relief. We believe that the Sangh was forced to launch this new organization, given the bad press that its primary service division (IDRF) had received in the past two years, as a result of the CSFH investigative report.
Sanghâs silencing strategies in the U.S.
While on this, the Sangh's public relations strategy deserves some analysis. Never one to take kindly to criticism, the Sangh in India is wont to take to violence. However, in the US, it lacks state support for indulging in physical violence [11] , so it has had to resort to verbal violence. For instance, in response to the WSJ article, the Sangh launched an ad-hominem attack on Rekhi claiming crudely that since Rekhi's wife is Christian, he is biased against Hinduism. This tendency to translate challenges into claims of attacks on Hinduism as a whole is part of the strategy of exploiting multiculturalist sentiments in the U.S. That it is constantly evoked to organize genocidal violence against minorities in India is conveniently forgotten by those sympathetic to this fallacious view.
Unfortunately, the Sangh's tactic of branding dissenters as "anti-Hindu", "anti-India", "commie" etc. seems to have served its purpose, at least for now. Ostensibly in fear of the Sangh, several service organizations in the US have taken to the "See no evil, hear no evil" approach. Thus, while they come out in full force in the wake of natural disasters (earthquakes, cyclones), they have remained mute spectators to human-inflicted disasters like the (state sanctioned) Gujarat pogrom. This, despite the fact that survivors of the Gujarat pogrom had greater odds to overcome -- not only had they lost their loved ones, their future was also clouded in uncertainty and fear what with the killers roaming around freely and promising more violence. Thus, while numerically not very significant, the Sangh in the US has been effective in shifting the ideologies of some of the service organizations to the right.
Using Disasters to Spread Hate Agendas
As mentioned above, natural disasters such as the recent tsunami offer the Sangh a unique opportunity to ask for donations in the name of relief and rehabilitation, and to carve out a legitimate space for itself within the affected communities. Once it infiltrates the community, it begins its program of creating divisions within the communities and attempts to re-convert low-caste communities and the Dalits (the outcasts of the Hindu caste system) to Hinduism. These are people who converted to Islam or Christianity to escape the hegemony of the caste hierarchy but the Sangh seeks to keep them in its ranks and use them as âcannon fodder for Hindutvaâ [12] . This process has led to large scale violence, most recently in Gujarat in 2002, where the Sangh had infiltrated small towns and village communities after the earthquake in 2001.
As part of its ârehabilitationâ efforts, the Sangh created divisions within the community by pushing the Adivasi, Dalit and Muslim communities to the outer edges of the villages [13] . Several villages were re-fashioned with Hindu identities with new temples, and some villages were even given new Hindu names. Schools were set up by the Sangh in which the curriculum was subverted to present the Christian and Muslim communities as invading marauders. Within a few months of the earthquake, the RSS and its affiliate organizations were able to create a vitiated atmosphere in much of Gujarat that was to lay the foundation for the widespread incitement against the Muslim community. This hatred was then harnessed to distressing proportions in the pogrom when 2000 Muslims were killed, several hundreds of women and young girls raped, and hundreds of thousands rendered refugees.
With the tsunami disaster, we are witnessing for the first time, the same strategy of the Sangh play out in real time. Within the state of Tamil Nadu, the RSS and its affiliates have not had a stronghold even though its affiliate organization, the Hindu Munnani has been attempting to infiltrate the coastal fishing communities, in particular. A large proportion of the fishing community is composed of people who converted to Christianity a few decades ago. Since the coastal communities were the worst hit by the tsunami, the Sangh immediately pressed into action under the pretext of providing relief to these communities. Many press reports have indicated that the RSS is promoting its hate ideology in the pretext of providing relief [14] .
While the front organizations collect large amounts of donation money through their individual public relations efforts, on the ground there seems to be no distinction between any of these and the RSS. Thus while IDRF claims to raise money for relief, its workers on the ground pose for photographs in RSS regalia (complete with saffron headbands and khaki shorts) and present themselves as RSS activists [15] . In the days following the tsunami, the government of Tamil Nadu announced that it was giving RSS and its affiliates the charge of re-building a few villages in Nagapattinam, one of the worst hit areas. Given the experiences in Gujarat and Orissa, it seems likely that the RSS will attempt to re-build these villages by attempting to erase any non-Hindu presence. If its history of incitement, provocation and brutal violence teaches us anything, it is that the time for all secular, human rights, and community organizations to come together to prevent the Sangh from laying the foundations of a future genocide, is now.
Ashwini Rao, Assistant Professor at Columbia University
Ra Ravishankar, Graduate Student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Raja Swamy, Graduate student at University of Texas at Austin
All three are contributors to the Campaign to Stop Fuinding Hate.
[1] Veena Gandhi is a former Vice-President of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), the American branch of the Hindu supremacist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, World Hindu Council), and the school she is pitching for is the Ekal Vidyalaya (One Teacher School). Ekal Vidyalayas were started by the VHP in aboriginal villages to indoctrinate students with Hindu supremacist ideas.
[2] http://www.vhp-america.org/appeals/Tsunami_appeal.htm
[3] http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollecti...ve/casolari.pdf
[4] http://www.sabrang.com/srikrish/hinrole.htm & http://www.hrw.org/press/1999/sep/christians.htm
[5] http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/04/gujarat.htm
[6] VHP Working President Ashok Singhal called the Gujarat carnage a âsuccessful experimentâ, threatened to repeat it âall over the countryâ and spoke glowingly of villages being âemptied of Islam.â [ http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story....nt_id=8831] He also claimed that the anti-Muslims carnage âhad the blessings of Lord Rama.â [ http://www.expressindia.com#ullstory.php?newsid=33391], VHP leader Praveen Togadia called secularists the âimpotent fringeâ and threatened to âmake a (violent) laboratory of the whole country.â [ http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5905_120559,0008.htm]
[7] See the HSC website for details on the individual chapters at http://www.hscnet.org/chapters.php
[8] See the national HSC sewa website at http://www.netseva.org/projects.php
[9] The Foreign Exchange of Hate: IDRF and the American Funding of Hindutva; http://www.stopfundinghate.org/sacw
[10] See the IDRF appeal ( http://www.idrf.org/dynamic/modules.php?...le&sid=157), the VHP-A appeal ( http://www.vhp-america.org/appeals/Tsunami_appeal.htm)
[11] The Sangh did succeed â using the threat of violence -- in canceling the screening of Anand Patwardhan's film, âIn the name of Ramâ, at the American Museum of Natural History.
[12] See http://www.himalmag.com/2002/may/opinion_3.htm
[13] See Edward Simpson. âHindutva as a rural planning paradigm in post-earthquake Gujaratâ. In The politics of Cultural mobilization in India (Eds.) J Zavos, A. Wyatt and V Hewitt. Oxford university press. 2004. pp. 136-165.
[14] See http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=41600. As further evidence of (IDRF-funded) RSS indoctrination during tsunami relief, see the deification of the first two dictators of the RSS (KB Hedgewar and MS Golwalkar) at http://www.idrf.org/dynamic/modules.php?op...6&orderby=dateD
[15] See the pictures on the IDRF website at http://www.idrf.org/dynamic/modules.php?op...showgall&gid=40
VijayK
I know CORRUPT CON men (servants of GNADHI dynastu would never approve democratisation of CON party). But it would be nice if BJP creates a PRIMARY elections to select party candidates. It would be a great change in India and I am sure Indians would love it. Not only that, CON party will DIE because once more and more CON men will start questioning the ITALIAN MAFIA. The DYNASTY will never allow such a thing because if Primaries decide the candidates, the DYNASTY will automatically DIE whereas, BJP will flourish since it is not ONE MAN's party.
Ideally yes but take the example of Utterkhand; but for the intervention of central
party, it would not have been possible to instal Gen Khanduri specially when his competitor Koshayari had more local support. Now this will remain to be seen whether Gen can improve administeration at state level. However this experiment is possible in our style of party democracy only.
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