temper of indian politics

Date: 15 Jun 2008

Comment:

All political parties in India scowl or shy away when Hindus plead
that they also have a case. But all of them incorporate more and more
Muslim demands in their manifestos, and feel fulfilled when mullahs
and Muslim politicians condescend to speak from their platforms. The
more malevolent the mullah and the Muslim politician, the better it is
for the secular credentials of the party concerned. All these
political parties corrode the cohesiveness of Hindu society by
fragmenting it into smaller and smaller vote-banks on the basis of
caste, or sect, or language, or some other secondary differences which
no normal society can do without. At the same time, all of them
contribute to the consolidation of a single Muslim vote-bank which, in
turn, blackmails them further, and which has come to wield an
influence and a representation out of all proportion to its known
numerical strength.

The vote-hungry politics which is promoted by these highly sloganised
parties is practically devoid of any public content even of a local
character, not to speak of any national concern. This politics has
increasingly come to revolve round the personal ambitions of wily
politicians rather than round any national policies or programmes. The
more dishonest the politician, the better he fares in public life.
Politics has become a rat - race in which every politician who wants
to survive has to play the game according to certain well-understood
but seldom-spoken rules. Most politicians except those in power have
to live from hand to mouth and be always on the look out for more and
more money to meet the mounting election expenses. This has opened the
floodgates of corruption by foreign money which, in recent years, has
come to mean Muslim money flowing in ever larger volumes from the
oil-rich Islamic countries. One cannot help suspecting that the
Secularism sold by certain political parties, in an all-round
atmosphere of cynicism, is more a matter of financial compulsion than
a matter of conviction. The Islamic countries which pay for the
conspicuous consumption and high lifestyle of some politicians,
particularly in the opposition camp, can always call the tune.

Such a soft-brained government and a short-sighted politics can hardly
be in a position to evolve or employ those forward or long-term
policies which are needed more urgently now than ever before. Such a
government and politics are most likely to fritter away all their
strength and energies, including those of our armed forces, in one
frustrating enterprise after another. What has actually happened after
our conflicts with Pakistan in the past illustrates the point. The
conflicts were not at all of our own seeking and were imposed upon us
by a sabre-rattling Islamic state. Our armed forces carried out
creditably the tasks assigned to them. But every time the politicians
allowed the aggressor to escape without paying any penalty whatsoever
for his unprovoked aggression. The victories won by our armed forces
on the field of battle at the cost of so much blood and sacrifice were
bartered away by the politicians on the tables of diplomacy in
exchange for nothing more substantial than international applause.

Take the much trumpeted triumph in 1971. Our armed forces did
everything that was expected of them, and gave a good account on every
front. But at the diplomatic table in Simla we surrendered every
advantage we had gained in exchange for a set of signatures on some
pieces of paper by a thousand-year-war demagogue, Bhutto, who went
back and immediately launched an ambitious project for making nuclear
bombs. We are now holding seminars and making statements in Parliament
about this new threat from an old adversary. Again, we freed the
people of East Pakistan from the tyranny and terror of their �brothers
in faith� from West Pakistan. But we did precious little to ensure
that Bangladesh does not revert to the old ways of her parent state.
The result is there for everyone to see. Bangladesh has proclaimed
that it is an Islamic state, and has become as hostile to us as
Pakistan has always been. She is not only converting by force or
hounding out her Hindu and Buddhist population but also pouring
hundreds of thousands of Muslim infiltrators through our borders in
Assam, Bengal and Bihar. The blood shed by our jawans and the
sacrifices made by our civil population in shouldering the burdens of
war, have gone in vain.

http://www.voiceofdharma.org/books/hhrmi/ch6.htm

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