South Asia on Edge
If exit polls in Gujerat are to be believed, BJP will win nearly a hundred seats in the Assembly compared to the 70 for the Congress Party. This is bad news not only for India but for the rest of South Asia because the BJP victory is based on blatant exploitation of Hindu chauvinism, anathema to the concept of secular India. Having lost almost all State elections since coming to power, the electoral success will not only be sweet for BJP, it will unfortunately serve as their model for future electoral campaigns. To the credit of the Congress Party they stuck to their secular stance despite pre-polls suggesting that the BJP-inspired carnage of muslims in Gujerat was in line with what voters in the State wanted. Narendra Modi, who can easily be tried in the Hague for genocide in inspiring and inciting violence against the minority muslims while being the primary authority in the State as Chief Minister, was shamelessly paraded by BJP through the electoral hustings proclaiming his “Hindutva” credentials. BJP’s victory in Gujerat is not only a disaster for India, the two muslim countries in South Asia will begin to feel the heat as BJP articulates its immediate “east” and “west” foreign policy to go with its virulent domestic anti-muslim stance.
The Advani Identity
For once ISI is off the hook! By assuming the appointment of India’s Deputy PM, Advani has discarded the charade of who is the real power in the country. The source of the defamatory article in TIME magazine recently about Indian PM Atal Behari Vajpayee should not have been a mystery, who else stood to benefit other than Lal Krishan Advani? In conducting a pre-mortem of Vajpayee (the whole anatomy was laid bare), TIME reporter Alex Perry had an impeccable source, for good measure his interrogation by Indian immigration authorities shored up his credibility. That Advani’s warped muslim-hunting personality should have his finger (aided and abetted by madcap Defence Minister George Fernandes) as the final authority on the nuclear trigger is scary. Compare the Advani “virility” to the doddering TIME portrayal of “senile” Vajpayee and the thought becomes scarier, this man not only has the penchant but the necessary venom and ruthlessness to initiate a nuclear holocaust in South Asia at the slightest pretext without any inhibitions or qualms whatsoever. His former daughter-in-law, who also served as his confidential secretary for many years, has chronicled his devious, vicious ways in a signed affidavit in a court of law.
India’s democracy prides itself in never have lived under the tutelage of the uniform, as if this is somehow different to being under absolute authoritarian rule under civilian garb, were Hitler and Mussolini army generals? And when Indira Gandhi declared emergency, what happened to India’s democracy? Germany’s Nazis could never be as virulent as India’s Rashtria Sevak Sangh (RSS), incidentally both have Swastikas as their cult’s symbol. Eminent Indian columnist Kuldip Nayar says that Advani, to quote, “is an RSS hardliner and a vociferous exponent of Hindutva Doctrine”, unquote. In layman’s terms, Advani is a charter member of a extreme right wing socio-political religious grouping that not only believes in the Hindu religion’s absolute supremacy over all other religions, it does not permit other religions to even co-exist. And they say fundamentalism exists in Islam! Despite being in numbers many times less than the Hindus they ruled, Islam’s millennium supremacy period is particularly galling for the RSS. When it came to the matter of sacking Gujerat’s muslim-killer Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Vajpayee, supposedly very secular, not only succumbed to RSS pressure within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but labelled most muslims in India as “potential terrorists”.