If you love Hinduism you won’t vote for BJP: Mander (Herald)

If you love Hinduism you won’t vote for BJP: Mander

April 9, 2014

TEAM HERALD

 

PANJIM: If you love Hinduism you will not vote for the BJP, which is promoting Hindutva – a distorted version of Hinduism, noted social campaigner and former IAS Officer Harsh Mander said. Five weeks after the burning of the Sabarmati Express coaches on 28 February 2002, senior IAS officer Harsh Mander resigned from service, ashamed over the subsequent Gujarat riots.

Addressing media persons at a ‘meet the press’ programme organised by the NGO Aman Biradari, Mander who has been working with victims of religious violence said that the BJP is openly propagating an idea of India where all Hindus would be primary citizens of the state and the other minorities would be “allowed to” stay but as second class citizens.

“This is a view that has been held by the Hindu Mahasabha as well as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) even before India’s independence. On one hand you had the group led by Jinnah which was propagating a “sameness” that led to the creation of Pakistan and on the other hand you had the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS propagating a view where Hindus are citizens with greater rights and privileges,” he said.

“Thankfully that idea was defeated and we have a constitution where each and every citizen is equal before the law,” he said.

Explaining how true love for one’s religion would lead to rejecting the ideas of superiority, he explained how both Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Azad, both devout practitioners of their own religions were the ones advocating secularism, but it was Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a non practising Muslim and Veer Savarkar, a self professed atheist who were ironically promoting theocracies in their respective countries.

Mander explained how this is already true in Gujarat where Muslims are made to live in ghettos, closed of colonies and in these areas the basic necessities like water and electricity are of poor standard than those of the Hindu areas of Ahmedabad.

“We are at a crucial time where we will be deciding both the type of government we get as well as the type of country we give ourselves,” Harsh Mander contended saying that the coming of the right wing BJP to power would have serious implications for government and society.

“Modi today is just a repackaged version of the same person who was a chief minister when the riots took place and thereafter has shown no remorse. Instead, he proudly boasts about the size of his chest,” he said.

If you notice in Uttar Pradesh where last time the BJP came fourth, even lower than the Congress this time could in all likelihood come first given the anger they have manufactured against the Muslims through the Muzaffarnagar riots where videos shot in Pakistan were shown to be that of Muslims killing two Hindu brothers supposedly in India.

“The Samajwadi Party is complicit in this,” he said so that they get the Muslim vote and the BJP gets the Hindu vote.

“It is this hate against the Muslims that the BJP is engineering and seeking to benefit from,” he said.

“What the people of India want is secularism, as guaranteed under the constitution as well as welfarism, which is why victory is forced upon the Congress, like it happened in 2004 even though they are very unconvincing in their secularism,” he said adding that that was the very reason the BJP has never held power for long periods of time.

The BJP, he said, is offering three extreme fundamentalisms – extreme market fundamentalism, where the primary duty of the government is to facilitate big businesses, and not the ordinary citizen, secondly extreme communalism fundamentalism and thirdly extreme militarist fundamentalism where India will begin to arm twist its neighbours and begin an aggressive foreign policy and a very hostile international environment.

http://www.oheraldo.in/News/Main%20Page%20News/If-you-love-Hinduism-you-won-rsquo-t-vote-for-BJP-Mander/87496.html