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Opposition seizes on Vajpayee's defence of RSS

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's sturdy defence of and clean chit to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has given the Opposition a ready stick to beat his government with in the impending state assembly elections.

Congress spokesman Ajit Jogi told rediff.com, "Vajpayeeji's blatant defence of the RSS shows that despite the denials of the BJP leaders, his government is proceeding with its secret agenda of communalising and saffronising Indian society. The BJP's mukhota (mask) has been ripped off and its secular pretence can no more jell with the people."

Vajpayee had defended the Gujarat government's decision to lift the ban on its employees joining the RSS and participating in its activities, arguing that the Sangh was only a socio-cultural organisation.

Another Congress spokesman, Anil Shastri, said the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government's "communal overtones" had been guaged by the electorate and it was time for the country's secular community to step forward and "stop blatant communalism from poisoning the people's mind".

He said Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who is touring South Bihar now, had underscored the BJP's communal outlook and the prime minister's statement on the RSS had left no doubt about the government's bid to saffronise India.

The Congress is trying to derive the maximum possible political mileage from Vajpayee's statement, aware that President K R Narayanan too has put some queries to the government on the matter.

Senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) politician Harkishen Singh Surjeet lambasted Vajpayee's statement. "Now you can see that the Vajpayee government is like an elephant which has tusks for display and another set of teeth for eating. Vajpayee's duplicity on secularism stands exposed," he underscored.

Surjeet pointed out that the Opposition, especially the CPI-M, had always striven to show up in bold relief the BJP-led government's communal designs and the prime minister's defence of the RSS would provide "further grist to the mill" during campaigning.

He said the CPI-M would highlight the prime minister's utterances in the Bihar poll and support the contention of Rashtriya Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav that a vote for the BJP or other members of the National Democratic Alliance would hasten the destruction of the country's secular fabric.

While the Congress high command has already sent instructions to its units in the states, including Bihar and Orissa, to highlight Vajpayee's statement, the CPI-M-RJD combine in Bihar has chalked out an extensive programme to bring out the "BJP's communal agenda", including saffronising educational and government institutions.

But a defiant Jagdish Prasad Mathur, BJP vice-president, came out in strong support of Vajpayee. "We shoot straight from the hip. We don't beat around the bush like the pseudo-secularists in the Opposition," he said. "Everything the prime minister has said are facts that the people know and appreciate."

But some constituents of the NDA, like the Janata Dal (United), Samata Party and Trinamul Congress are yet to indicate their stance on the matter. These parties and N Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party are said to be unhappy with some recent actions of BJP politicians on matters of secular import, like the reported moves to construct a Ram temple in Ayodhya.

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