Priorities of Globalization

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

To,                                                                                                                              5.6.2009

The Editor,

Times of India,

Fadia Chambers, Ashram Road,

Ahmedabad.

Sir,

I am enclosing a response to the Edit page article “A change of Priorities” {TOI, Ahmedabad, 4.6.2009}. Please publish and oblige.

Yours sincerely,

Mukul Sinha

Priorities of Globalization

There is an old saying in Bengali that one cannot hide the fish in the platter under the vegetables to pose as a vegetarian. The smell of the fish defeats the deceit. “A change of Priorities” {TOI, Ahmedabad, 4.6.2009} reaffirms this old adage! However much the author would like to bury the “sanctimoniousness of middle-aged men droning about the India’s ancient inheritance” as matters of the bygone ages, the anachronism of his own mindset permeates throughout the article making his claim of ‘enlightened nationalism and modernity’ quite hollow!

The author who is known be adherent of Hindutva in all its pristine glory, appears to have discovered the virtues of globalised India and its shifts in the lifestyle after the resounding defeat of the Hindutva forces in the recently concluded loksabha election. If the “Pilbhit” line of chopping of the limbs of the minority species as propounded by Mahatma Varun Gandhi would have worked in the favor of BJP, perhaps this article would have advocated yet another type of shift in our life style: taking to butcherism! Perhaps a new mutant of “Thacherism”,   similar to the one favored by the author as the modern “Toryism”  under the leadership of David Cameron!

Be that as it may, what precisely is the thesis that is being advocated by the author as the “Change of Priority”? Shorn of its verbosity, the article suggests that BJP must move beyond the formulation of 1990s and “candidly recognize that assertive Hindutva marked by hate speeches and moral policing is seen as ugly mirror images of Taliban and therefore today Hindutva has become an etymological obstacle in the BJP’s path”. The author, who is evidently influenced by the cosmopolitanism of the Globalization, goes on to suggest that BJP must adopt “enlightened nationalism, good governance and modernity” as priorities, whatever those words may mean! 

BJP must therefore become a mirror image of Congress and hitch India to the band wagon of the Global capital! This is the change propounded after considerable verbose acrobatics. Nay, while doing so, it must shelve Mahatma Gandhi as Jawaharlal Nehru allegedly did at the time of Independence! But then why have two separate parties??

The catch lies however in the fact that the article does not either repudiate or suggest any change in the basic communal character of the party. On the contrary, the rise  of the Hindutva forces in the decades of 1980/1990 is described as due to the “freshness to the idea of Hindu resurgence which appealed to Middle India..” It may be recalled with horror that this was the very period in which L K Advani was conducting his Rathyatra from Somnath to Ayodhya with the avowed target to demolish the Babri Masjid which he finally succeeded in demolishing in December, 1992.  This was the very period when thousands died due to communal riots and the bomb blasts of Mumbai. The most barbaric and violent period of our recent history is that interregnum that created BJP for which there is no remorse or repudiation. That’s what “modernity and enlightened nationalism” is all about and no amount of vegetation can hide this barbarism.

Mukul Sinha.