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A. J. Philip
Thirty years ago when the first RSS pracharak came to my village to start a sakha, he had brought with him a dwaja to hoist the RSS flag and a book he personally circulated among the youth. It was the Malayalam translation of a third-rate Hindi novel that horrifyingly portrayed the Partition in which Hindus were invariably the humble victims and Muslims the ruthless aggressors. The pracharak could not have found a better way to indoctrinate and initiate the impressionable youth into the RSS, which today has a large presence in the area.
The Sangh has always relied on hate as a unifying force even while claiming to be a body of volunteers dedicated to serving Bharatmata. Though it operates in the open, mostly in temple compounds and public parks, much of its work is done surreptitiously. Small wonder then that the RSS remains an enigma even to some of its own adherents. But all this will be a thing of the past if Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi hashis way. He has in a recent newspaper interview said, "the only way to clear misconceptions about the RSS was to show its programmes and functions on Doordarshan".
For an audience that had got used to watching a godman, who dabbled in gun-trading, give Yoga lessons every morning, it won't be much of a bother to watch the knickerwallah twirling his moustache and twisting his staff on the small screen. However, unlike in the days of Dhirendra Brahmachari, today's TV viewer is not a slave to Doordarshan as he can choose from a large variety of channels, both domestic and foreign.
In any case, Naqvi has decreed that since Doordarshan serials are all about extramarital affairs they need to be replaced with "mythology-based" programmes. Thus at a time when Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee shouts Jai Vigyan (hail science), we will have the re-enactment of the scenes of simple people offering aarti to the television set as used to happen when the Ramayana was first telecast.
Incidentally, on the day Naqvi'sinterview appeared, some misconceptions about the RSS were removed voluntarily by one of its leading lights, B.L. Sharma `Prem', who quit the Lok Sabha to work full time for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Lest it should be forgotten, he has taken upon himself the grand project of erecting a monument to the sufferings of the people on account of Partition. So obsessed is he with Partition that he even criticised the BJP for celebrating the 50th anniversary of Independence which he termed as the anniversary of the butchery of Hindus.
If the speed with which he quit the Lok Sabha is any indication, it should not take Prem very long to persuade the DDA and other government agencies in the Capital to provide land for his project, which he perhaps wants to be more majestic than the Holocaust memorial in Washington.
The passion that drives him to build the monument was evident when Prem -- quite contrary to what his name signifies -- spitted venom at Christian missionaries for their ``anti-national'' and``traitorous'' activities. Nobody -- not even the unfortunate nuns whose modesty was outraged at Jhabhua in Madhya Pradesh -- had alleged that the assault was the handiwork of the RSS or any of its over 100 frontal organisations. It was presumed that only the wickedest criminals could have perpetrated such a ghastly crime. That was until Prem characterised the attack as the result of the "anger of patriotic Hindu youth against anti-national forces" and took full credit for it.
Far from condemning his statement, the BJP leaders have been straining every nerve to point out that Prem was no longer an active member of the party. Even Home Minister L.K. Advani chose the circuitous route of telephoning a fellow VHP leader to tell him to restrain Prem, rather than issuing a forthright statement. And that too when a Christian delegation called on him to express its anguish over Prem's statement! The VHP has in the past been used as a test balloon. In the initial days when it took up demolition of Babri Masjid asits pet programme, the BJP found it convenient to distance itself from it.
But the moment Advani realised that the campaign could be used to whip up passions and build vote banks, the party joined the VHP's demolition bandwagon to give the decrepit structure ek dhakka (one last push). Who knows the virulent campaign against the Christians in Gujarat and elsewhere could be part of a grandiose plan to re-establish Hindu pride as re-established when a centuries-old mosque was razed to the ground in the presence of the present Home Minister?
The missionaries have become the whipping boys of the VHP and their alleged crime is conversion. Statistics disprove all the VHP's claims. Hinduism is the most flourishing religion in the country. In fact, the largest conversion that ever took place was when the tribals of the country were declared as Hindus in one fell swoop.
It gets more new adherents than any other religion. In fact, every now and then the VHP makes claim that it has converted so many people.Even in the West where Christian churches fail to attract enough worshipers, Hindu temples come up by the dozen (in Munich's imposing cathedral church that can accommodate over a thousand people, I was one of the dozen who had attended the English service on a Sunday).
Turn to any corner in India and one finds a temple. Yet, conversion is a convenient bogey used against the Christians even when the freedom to propagate religion is enshrined in the Constitution.
Missionaries are a much-misunderstood category. A campaign was launched against four foreign missionaries who were working in Raigarh district of Madhya Pradesh a few years ago. They were denied the extension of their visas and were forced to depart from the country. They were all over 70 and had spent most of their adult life in this country serving the poor for the greater glory of their faith. As they departed reluctantly, they had only one desire unfulfilled -- to die in the land they loved and toiled for. A luckier among them was the principalof St. Xavier's School, Patna, who drove Pandit Nehru around when he had visited the riot-hit areas of Central Bihar in his jeep. He was cremated (as he wished) at the electric crematorium in New Delhi. It is these people who are now projected as a ``threat'' to Indian society.
There is however a silver lining in all this. The Christian community has been given a jolt. So self-obsessed has it been that it did not bestir itself when Muslims, Sikhs and Dalits were targeted by the agents of hatred in the past. They thought no harm would come their way if they continued providing "convent education" to the children of the elite and tending to the sick and the wounded.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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