He was never a reluctant mask, as the merchant
press misleadingly proclaimed, in the misdeeds
of Rashtra Sanharak Sangh and its adjuncts and
affiliates. He pledged himself to active
volunteerism right when he swore fealty to RSS,
the fascist outfit, stinkingly notorious throughout
the world since Gandhi's assassination. He never
flinched or veered away from the cultist objectives
of the sinister Sangh: elimination of Muslims,
Christians and communists, and lately the
democrats and secularists. Vajpayee's antipathy
towards and commitment to the liquidation of
minorities forms the core and constant of his
achievements in his political career.

What concerns us here is not his ignoble stoking
of communal fires time and again. That is very
well known and fairly documented. But recently he
made certain statements that reveal the depth of
darkness that fills his mind no less than it
disfigures language. In a lighter mood I would
have suggested that he be placed as a curio piece
in a museum for the delight of sightseers - a
biped with a forked tongue. But since a nation's
tragedy is involved in the matter, no levity is
admissible.

Recently he declared in Bihar that democracy is
incompatible with violence. This is typical
forked-tongue speech particular to and patently
Vajpayee. What did he mean? Is it compatible in
Gujarat but not in Bihar? Or that Bihar, for
having stymied state-sponsored violence against
minorities, unlike Gujarat, is not democratic?
He also recommended President's Rule for Bihar?
Why? Because its government failed to drench
Bihar in blood and forgot to set the minorities
afire alive a la Gujarat? Because Biharis
refused to become savages and affirmed their
common humanity across man-made divides when the
whole of India was rocked, and various parts of
it were charred, by Advani's Rakt Yatra? Because
Bihar asserted its respect for the Indian
Constitution and avowed its faith in the ballot
box, unlike Gujarat? Because Bihar rejected the
inhumanly bloody way to poll victory advocated by
Advanis and foisted on Gujarat by the Bharat
Jalao Party? Because Bihar, under its
Constitutional obligations, discharged its Raj
Dharma of protecting the minorities, its Muslim
citizens, beleaguered everywhere else? Because
Bihar did not allow President Musharraf of
Pakistan to be a candidate in its elections as
against Gujarat where Sancho Panza-like, Modi
flailed his hands and tilted at Musharraf's
apparition in every speech, as if terribly
quaking in his dhoti, frightened and scared with
such a challenger and contestant in the field?

The question of questions remains: why did he
forget recommending President's Rule when
rampaging anarchy plunged Gujarat in massive
death and destruction? Or, was it only this Raj
Dharma of connivance and collusion that he had
recommended to his fellow fascist Modi, the
Butcher of Gujarat? Is he unhappy that Hindu
Rashtra could not be seeded in Bihar, as in
Gujarat, "democratically"? Is Vajpayee
theo-terrorist Hindutva's well crafted Rip Van
Winkle, or a victim of senility and its attendant
feebleness of mind?

Another recent discovery he seems to have made,
and again in Bihar, is that the educated youth,
if unemployed, will take to violence. Not even a
year has passed when he was removed from power
after a five-year long stint in New Delhi. Was
this not a fact then? Who denied the youth,
educated or uneducated, any decent job in those
five years when BJP was busy looting and stealing
(hefty bribes and holy scams as guru dakshina)?
The sporadic and sanguinary jobs – raping,
killing, and burning of innocent Muslims - that
it gave to Dalits in Gujarat, may not be the idea
of employment nurtured by or very popular with
the educated unemployed of Bihar or the rest of
India for whom Vajpayee so conveniently chose
this poll time to shed profuse crocodile tears.

Truthfully, Vajpayee should have told his hired
audience, that he is a minion of the privileged
minority that has ruled the country since
historical time began; that he can make pompous
and false promises of employment, but would be
impotent to deliver the goods, for it would not
redound to the Big Business interests, his and
his party's donors and patrons( financiers have
historically subsidized fascists quite
munificently) ; that providing jobs to the
skilled and unskilled, educated or uneducated, is
not on the agenda of Rashtriya Shatru Sangh or
its plenteous litter; that he, and his 'soul
RSS', believe that India needs more and more
temples rather than schools, clinics, clean
drinking water, employment guarantee, and paved
streets and roads; that he-BJP-RSS-VHP are
pledged to wreck and defile Indian Constitution
and shred the nation via communal bloodbaths
towards achieving a rigged majority of votes in
order for them to be hoisted in the seats of
power; that they hate democracy and would spare
no exertion, no trickery to defame and destroy
it; that Bharat of their dreams will be a
theo-terrorist state enslaved and dominated by
the varna system which will mandate only
predators to be lawmakers.

He must be effrontery and egregiousness
incarnate. He and Advanis talking of democracy
must bite their tongues before uttering such
blasphemy. The sworn followers of Mussolini and
Hitler, through Munje-Hedgewar-Golwalkar, all the
notorious and avowed enemies of democracy and
proponents of totalitarian tyranny, Atals and
Lalkishenchands are not known for their passion
for democracy. How could they profess any faith
in it being its demolishers all the while? Atal
is known to have publicly pleaded for elections
to be done away with. But his refuge is dementia
or amnesia. So he can pretend he just joked, or
that he never said so. Deceit and denial prop up
the demagogues. Congenital or habitual, seasoned
liars do not remember. It does not suit them to.

The disjunct between words and their meanings,
the gulf between profession and practice, and
the yawning distance between the motive and the
manifest, as evidenced in the political discourse
of saffronazis, are stunningly brazen, starkly
bold. All political talk may be just blather,
many a lie is uttered to serve an opportune
moment. But what distinguishes the Hindu Taliban
is their mulish persistence in their repetitive
lies, their rhetorical rhodomontade compounded
relentlessly of prejudices and falsehoods,
pathetic ignorance, pathological mental deficit,
and aggressive assertions. These they purvey as
facts and truth by dint of propaganda, publicity,
and pugilistic polemics.

Consider the obscene assertion by their
luminaries that 'there are no minorities in
India', or that 'BJP is secular'. Both these are
lies too big for any mouth, but VedicTaliban
remain unfazed, unrepentant, and unashamed in
spouting and chanting them after Sudarshan and
Lal Kishenchand. They don't wince from such a
hippopotamus-size falsehood. RSS and its
satellites all have been inveterate enemies of
minorities and secularism, denouncing them both
as aliens, and foreign concepts, hence
un-Bharatiya and un-Hindutva.

But forgetting or feigning to obliterate all
that, they continue unflaggingly to make these
claims as if playacting. And, the press starts
yelping in unison its hallelujahs for these
votaries of its kind of "secularism". But it is
not as naïve as it looks. It is a version of the
assertion that HinduTaliban need no lessons in
secularism from abroad, that it is native to the
soil of Bharat. Proof? It is Hindu secularism
that accommodates diverse religions in Bharat.
Without Hindus being secular, minorities could
not have lived here this long. In a twisted way
it validates the ugly version: it is on Hindu
sufferance that minorities have lived here.
Hence, they must subjugate themselves to Hindus!
This line of argument takes care of both
secularism and minorities.

Another gambit that saffronazis take frequent
resort to is "political vendetta" and the non
sequitur "why at this time?" This cunning seeks
to preempt any corrective or remedial measure
against past crimes of NDA-BJP. Thus every
misdemeanor of BJP is sought to be legitimated
and entrenched as fait accompli, immutable and
sovereign. Again, this is a direct assault on
democracy. Any successor government would like to
enact laws that best manifest its goals and its
agenda. But BJP wants to eat the cake and have it
too. It wants its authoritarianism, wangled
through democratic tools, to perpetrate crimes
and subvert the system in perpetuity to its
advantage. But it is loath to concede the same to
other political parties which may rescind and
revoke its anti-people measures. The ruckus it
raised in the matter of governors can be
understood in this light.

Another variant of the above is "why now" (Hindi
Outlook outing the CD of Vajpayee saying "I don't
know what will happen tomorrow in Ayodhya"; and
Gujarat Holocaust CDs appearing in Bihar). It is
like a criminal asking the police or the court
"why now?" No time ever would be deemed
propitious or auspicious by the criminal for his
trial and conviction. Despite the Electoral
Commission's jarring interference and jumping its
remit, in the public domain, one party will
always cry horror when its misconduct is made an
issue. Which issues and when to raise them is not
for the EC to determine.

As to the deformity of the political culture,
things could not have been so obnoxious as at
present: BJP and Congress demanding President's
Rule in Bihar and UP. This is devil's axis. It
recalls the painful past of the 50s when Indira
Congress went along with the CIA in having Kerala
wrested from the Communist party. The feat was
repeated, foreign-policy-wise too, in the case of
Tibet. Cynicism and opportunistic tailism will
continue making asses of them all.