Vishwanath Pratap Singh in his efforts, honest or otherwise, to better the lot of the downtrodden and oppressed, who form the overwhelming majority of Indians, has precipitated a major crisis for his own government. The vested interests will try their best to finish him off politically in this raging storm. The fascist Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party realizing that the Brahmanical scheme of things was threatened with sudden death after VP Singh tried to implement the Mandal commission recommendations chose to throw the government into a bizarre and confusing disarray. At the moment, every political party is clutching at my convenient straw for their survival, so intense is the situation. VP. Singh may have begun a virtual social revolution.
The question on everyone’s mind is will VP Singh survive the trial of strength in Parliament on November 7. He should, if there are men of conscience among the MPs. Such men, alas, are extremely rare in Indian politics. In any case, VP Singh himself wants a midterm poll. Thus, his bid a la Abraham Lincoln to help the oppressed may also take as much effort as the civil war.
Many political observers had predicted the outcome of the National Front alliance and had felt that VP should have gone in for a snap poll as early as June or July. He would have easily come back to power unencumbered with the monkey on his shoulder telling him what to do. But then, would he have pulled out the Mandal report is questionable.
Social reform and equality for the minorities means breaking the powerful hold on political and economic power of the Brahmins and their coterie who constitute a mere 15% of the population. This is the reason the fundamentalist BJP fell out with the Janata Dal. Advani’s arrest only precipitated the issue. For example, on August 7, at a high level meeting at the RSS headquarters in Delhi it was decided to bring down the government by ordering the BJP. to withdraw support to the Janata Dal, That move was put off then but ever since there had been various threats given to the govt that the BJP support was not unconditional. At the RSS meeting it was felt that ‘VP Singh had become the catalyst for the disintegration of the nation.’ By nation, of course, they meant a Hindustan of, for and by upper caste Hindus.
Much effort and time is being spent today in Delhi not so much to topple the Janata Dal government but to replace VP Singh at its head by either Devi Lal or Chandrashekhar. They cannot afford to go to the people while the Mandal ‘monster’ is alive. They want to see it dead and safely buried before there is talk of any election. Strangely enough, Mandal commission report was one of the Congress I’s election manifestos. The Congress has also learnt that its ‘secular’ talk has no buyers anymore. The people know how it used communalism to forever alienate the Sikhs and Muslims. As we have said over and over, Indian politics is not based on ideology or principles it is an exercise in opportunism and brinkman’s!
Theoretically, in a democracy, the majority has its way but in India this was never true. We hope that VP Singh’s actions will rouse the immense latent power of the majority (the large number of minorities) who are impoverished, illiterate and ignorant to better their lot and to have a say not only in their own lives but in India’s destiny.
The religious minorities must learn from the bitter experience of the Sikhs and not rely on any promises.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 2, 1990
