The dividing line between the government and the saffron
brotherhood in Madhya Pradesh has become so blurred that the two are now
virtually indistinguishable. Thus the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, calls upon government employees
to join the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and attend its shakhas,
or cells, police officers perform shastra puja – arms worship –
on Dussehra, government schemes are named after Hindu rituals and
ceremonies and organisations associated with the sangh parivar
are gifted prime pieces of government land.
On a more sinister level, data is being collected about
the Christians living in the state even as the government funds
“religious functions” which are nothing other than platforms to spew
venom against the minorities. The chief minister has made it clear in so
many words that the government would in no case implement the
recommendations of the Sachar Committee (which examined the status of
the Muslim community in India), as that would “divide society and pave
the way for another division of the country”. A case of the pot calling
the kettle black?
When, sometime in the first week of April this year, a
couple of uniformed policemen turned up at the office of a Christian
priest in Bhopal and started asking him all sorts of questions about the
Christian populace of the city, the latter became suspicious and
demanded to know at whose behest the information was being sought. The
policemen, apparently unaware that they were parting with an official
secret, handed over to the priest a copy of the order – with the word
“Secret” written in bold relief at the top – issued by Bhopal’s senior
superintendent of police (SSP) to all police stations, asking them to
collect information about Christians residing in the area under their
jurisdiction. The information sought included details about the
churches, schools and other institutions run by the community as well as
their sources of finance. Policemen were also asked to collect
information about the political patronage enjoyed by the community
leaders, their criminal antecedents, if any, and the public functions
that the Christians had organised. Names and other personal details
about Catholic and Protestant priests were also sought.
When the Christian community protested, the state police
headquarters initially denied the existence of any such order but
subsequently declared that it had been withdrawn. How an order that was
never issued can be withdrawn continues to be an unsolved mystery. What
is interesting is that even after the order was “withdrawn”, the police
continued to act on it; the chief minister told a delegation led by Rev
Leo Cornelio, the archbishop of Bhopal, that this was due to a
“communication gap”. What makes this exercise – aborted, at least for
now – particularly scary is the fact that a similar exercise had
preceded the Muslim genocide in Gujarat and, of course, much earlier,
the Jewish Holocaust in Germany.
In further emulation of Gujarat, a ‘Narmada Samajik
Kumbh’ was organised on the banks of the Narmada river in Madhya Pradesh
in February this year, on exactly the same lines as the ‘Shabri Kumbh’
held in Gujarat in 2006. The objective: Hinduise the tribals, replacing
their gods with Ram and Hanuman and their places of worship with Hindu
temples. The government spent several crores of rupees on setting up the
infrastructure necessary for the event. Lakhs of tribals from within the
state as well as from neighbouring Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra were
brought to the fair and treated to a stiff dose of the Ramayana,
Bhagavad Gita and other Hindu scriptures. On the sidelines of this
event, a ‘Ghar Vapasi’ (homecoming) programme was organised – meant to
reconvert tribal Christians to Hinduism. Those who sermonised the
tribals included luminaries of the RSS.
The Gondwana Ganatantra Party (GGP), a political outfit
representing the tribal population, saw the Narmada Samajik Kumbh as an
attack on tribal identity and launched a campaign in the tribal regions
to make the tribals – who the sangh parivar prefers to call
vanvasis, or forest-dwellers – aware of the real designs of the
Kumbh’s organisers. “Tribals have never attended the Kumbhs held at
Allahabad, Ujjain, Haridwar and Nashik for hundreds of years. So where
is the question of their attending this fake Kumbh?” asked a pamphlet
issued by the GGP.
Attacks on Christians and their places of worship are on
the rise in Madhya Pradesh. Since the BJP came to power seven years ago,
at least 200 incidents of physical attacks on Christians have been
reported from different parts of the state. The Bajrang Dal and company
are invariably the culprits in these cases and the police invariably
refuse to take any action against them. The Christians have taken to the
streets in protest several times, all to no avail.
And going by the names of various government schemes and
programmes, one could legitimately suspect that Madhya Pradesh has
already become a Hindu Rashtra. All of them, without exception, have
names with Hindu connotations and many are named after Hindu religious
ceremonies, sites, gods and goddesses. Thus the state’s water
conservation scheme is called “Jal Abhishek” Abhiyan, a scheme for the
welfare of the girl child is called “Ladli Laxmi” Yojana, a rural
development scheme has been named “Gokul Gram” Yojana and another
welfare scheme, meant to provide financial help to poor families in
order to marry off their daughters, is called “Kanyadaan” Yojana.
Farmers are called “Balram” (after Lord Krishna’s brother). In 2009 the
government proclaimed that schoolteachers in state-run schools would be
addressed as “Rashtra Rishis”, a decision that was withdrawn in the face
of opposition from minority leaders.
The state capital, Bhopal, is proposed to be renamed “Bhojpal”.
And eight towns in the state have been notified as “holy cities” where
the sale of liquor, eggs and meat have been prohibited. The official
website of the state agriculture department has an entire section
devoted to “Kheti-sambandhi shubh muhurat (Auspicious times for
agricultural activities)”, which guides farmers on how to choose the
proper “muhurat (time)” – according to Hindu tradition, of course
– for sowing, harvesting and other key agricultural operations.
The government had, early in 2007, also made it
mandatory for all students from Class V onwards in government-run
schools to perform “surya namaskar (sun salutation)”. The order
came after the so-called yoga guru Baba Ramdev introduced the chief
minister to the “miraculous benefits” of yogic exercise. This move was
bitterly opposed by Muslim organisations in the state, which pointed out
that Islam did not allow its followers to bow before anyone but Allah
and so they could not worship the sun – an integral part of the
exercise. The decision was ostensibly withdrawn after the Madhya Pradesh
high court ruled on January 24, 2007 that surya namaskar could
not be made compulsory. (The government however showed no signs of
relenting and, in direct violation of the high court order, district
education officers in some districts directed schools to conduct
surya namaskar. In August 2009, more than two years later, a fresh
order was again issued by the high court disallowing such compulsion.)
Seemingly undeterred, in August 2009 the government went
on to declare that from September 5 that year, students would have to
recite a Sanskrit hymn, the Bhojan Mantra, before partaking of their
government-funded midday meals – a practice long adhered to in RSS-run
schools, the Saraswati Shishu Mandirs.
The list is unending. The latest is the chief minister’s
announcement on April 21 that “Gita Saar (Essence of the Gita)” would be
taught to all school students in the state from the session commencing
in July 2011. Also, government teachers are proposed to be trained in
the Hindu “solah sanskar (the sixteen rituals, aimed at improving
the inner self and all-round development of the individual)” whereby
they would gain “more respect” in the rural areas.
In keeping with the maxim ‘make hay while the sun
shines’, member organisations of the extended sangh brotherhood
are seeking – and receiving – prime government land at throwaway prices.
At a conservative estimate, at least 300 land allotments have been made
to saffron bodies, one of which was struck down by the Supreme Court
recently. In 2004 the Kushabhau Thakre Trust, whose trustees include BJP
heavyweights like Lal Krishna Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, was
allotted 20 acres of land on the outskirts of Bhopal. The state
government was in such a hurry to allot the land to the trust that it
did not even wait for the trust to be formally constituted before
distributing its largesse. However, this move was challenged in the
courts by the Akhil Bhartiya Upbhokta Congress, a Bhopal-based consumer
organisation, which approached the Supreme Court after the Madhya
Pradesh high court had refused to quash the government’s decision.
Ultimately, on April 6 this year the apex court ordered the government
to take possession of the allotted land.
But the judicial action in this case is an exception. As
a rule hundreds of plots, ranging from 10,000 square feet to several
acres in almost every town and city in the state, have been allotted –
for peanuts – to Saraswati Shishu Mandirs, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi
Parishad (ABVP) and a host of other organisations owing allegiance to
the sangh parivar, turning these institutions into millionaires
and billionaires overnight.
It was at the inauguration of the state headquarters of
the ABVP, built on a piece of land gifted by the government, slap-bang
in the centre of Bhopal, that the chief minister urged government
employees to join the RSS, technically a non-political organisation but
for all practical purposes a partisan outfit. At another public function
he announced with obvious pride that the government had done away with
the ban on government employees joining the RSS because the Sangh was
the only organisation that genuinely believed in universal brotherhood
and the welfare of all. Thunderous applause ensued.
Without much sound and fury, the BJP government in
Madhya Pradesh is busy converting the geographical heart of India into a
saffron land. After Gujarat, it seems, another Hindu Rashtra is in the
offing.