DETRACTORS of Hindutava are excited to no end by BJP President Bangaru Laxman's call to party men to woo the Muslims. In his presidential address at the Nagpur conclave last week, the new BJP chief observed that the distance between the largest religious minority and the BJP was neither in the interest of the party nor the Muslims and certainly not in the national interest. He found fault with the party for not reaching out to the Muslims by taking it for granted that the BJP would never get their support.

As is their wont, every commentator in the “secular brigade”, from the hardcore Marxist to the self-confessed Pakistani spokesman in Indian Parliament, has interpreted the call to win over the Muslims according to his or her own political predilections and prejudices. Broadly speaking, three different perceptions have been articulated by these commentators. First, it is a well thought out repositioning of the BJP on the ideological front to distance itself from the RSS and its legacy of Hindutva, secondly, it is an exercise in image building and a “rhetoric” driven by electoral compulsions and thirdly, it is a ruse to mislead the Muslims, the Hindu “liberals” and the international community on the eve of Prime Minister's official visit to the US.

Whatever his intentions, Laxman has caused utter confusion not only among BJP cadres but also its detractors. Unable or unwilling to fathom Laxman's thought process, writings of commentators pronouncedly hostile to the ruling party betray their bias rather than throw any light on the “new” BJP line. Never to miss even half a chance to malign the BJP, a hard-core Marxist wrote in The Hindu that the new BJP Chief's pronouncement was a significant move away from the “old ideological moorings” of the BJP that to a large extent were based on “hate Muslims” attitude. The writer, however, admits that “Muslims are flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood” quotation in Bangaru's address was from the erstwhile Jana Sangh ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya's presidential address in 1967.

That Upadhyaya was an RSS pracharak till he died under mysterious circumstances and was totally committed to the concept of Hindutva goes without saying. If this did not prevent Jana Sangh chief from describing Muslims as “flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood”, how come “hating Muslims” constitute BJP's moorings? In any case, no one said in 1967 that the Jana Sangh was undergoing an ideological shift. Why this hue and cry now?

In a malicious bid to malign the Jana Sangh and the BJP, a well known political commentator has invented the blatant lie that the Jana Sangh members had before joining the Janata Party assured JP that they would severe their relations with the RSS but declined to do so in 1979. Nothing can be farther from truth. There was no question whatsoever of the RSS men giving any undertaking to anyone to join the Janata Party. It was the party in the making that was greatly impressed by the Jana Sangh and the RSS role in the struggle against the hated Emergency and was more than keen to have members of erstwhile Jana Sangh in its fold to consolidate non-Congress votes. In fact JP made a determined bid to persuade the RSS to join the new party. That the latter rejected the offer out of hand as it wanted to remain aloof from electoral politics speaks volumes about RSS commitment to selfless service to the nation.

As for JP, he had over the years changed his earlier perception of the RSS and the Jana Sangh based on misinformation. He willingly addressed BJP conclave at Delhi and delivered a lecture in the RSS training camp at Patna. JP went on record that if the Jana Sangh was communal, he too was communal. This is what he said about these two organisations in a farewell function held after his discharge from the Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai on July 17, 1976:

“I have been over the last 3/4 years made the target of a very serious accusation. It is being propagated that I have been surrounded by Fascists and communal forces and have fallen into the trap set by them. But this is an entirely false and baseless charge. I stand guarantee that the groups against whom these allegations are directed—the Jana Sangh and the RSS—are not like that. This I am speaking from my own personal experience... . The charges against me and them are nothing but a malicious and deliberate attempt at mud-slinging.”

In a commentary replete with lies and canards, the above mentioned commentator who is a self-appointed adviser to the BJP, refers to the Prime Minister's visit to the RSS headquarters at Nagpur to question Vajpayee's commitment to secularism. Is visiting the RSS office and paying homage to its founder Dr K.B. Hedgewar, who inspired millions to devote their entire lives to the service of the nation, is anti-secular? Does secularism constitutes parroting the cause of Pakistan's military rulers? The gentleman asks the BJP to pull out of the “Sangh Parivar” and change its Hindu ethos if it were to carry any conviction with the Muslims. The Prime Minister knows how to deal with such “secular fundamentalists”. His uncompromising stand on “dual membership” controversy and his assertion that “RSS is my soul” should be taken as a befitting reply to those who are hatching conspiracies to distance Vajpayee from the RSS in a bid to pull down his Government.

Laxman did nothing wrong in asking party men to reach out to the Muslims to ensure that its detractors do not continue to use Muslims as their vote-bank. Distance between the minorities and the BJP, he insists, will hurt both the party and the Muslims. It is no appeasement of Muslims. Laxman himself says he has not made any startling departure from the past. Every party chief, he points out, had appealed to the Muslims to back the BJP and place trust in it, but had not stressed it in the same way. It cannot be interpreted as an ideological shift as certain commentators have sought to project.

One, however, can ill afford to ignore the stark reality that certain observations made by Laxman after the Nagpur conclave have caused confusion and dismay among BJP cadres as well as its well wishers. His reported remarks that the BJP should not be called a “Hindu nationalist party” and that it is a nationalist party and not a Hindu party questions the very foundation of BJP's ideology.

He will do well to remember his illustrious predecessor L.K. Advani's assertions that Hindutva is BJP's mascot and that the party is a Hindu nationalist party. Certain off-the-cuff remarks attributed to the new party chief by a section of the media like the “BJP would henceforth ignore RSS advice” have caused pain and misgivings in the “ideological family”. One only hope that Laxman, who has been associated with the RSS for decades, has been either quoted wrongly or out of context. Having been catapulted into the high-profiled office of the president of the ruling party, it would do him and the party more good if he were a little more circumspect in his observations. He should not be the one to breach the “Laxman rekha”.