Go
Ahead, Take A Dump Mr. Advani
By Raja Swamy
10 March, 2004
countercurrents.org
Picture
this. The Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests is videotaped
accepting wads of notes, touching them reverentially to his forehead
before keeping the bundle next to him, he had exclaimed that God was
great, but money was no less than God. - http://www.hindu.com/2003/11/19/stories/2003111907081100.htm
God must certainly
have sent Australian mining interests to this exemplary devotee, who
despite his inability to decide whether God or money were more important,
preferred to stick with the latter since it was after all for the former
that he accepted wads of dollar bills, or so as he and his venal supporters
claimed.
Unperturbed by the
fallout from this, the Deputy Prime Minister of India, LK Advani, treated
this individual as a star campaigner for the BJP in the state
of Chattisgarh. Months later, this individual, now a member of
Indias upper house of parliament (Rajya Sabha) has gone out of
his way to return Mr. Advanis doting support. Caught in a fit
of shining propaganda; the neoliberal-friendly Hindutvadi
hordes insist that the streams of blood, poverty, oppression and misery
characteristic of their atrocious misrule, is actually so full of shine
that only rabid anti-India agents of the ISI or worse, evil papists
seeking to turn India into Romes backyard, can consistently fail
to see it.
Nervous about the
prospects of electoral defeat, the time-tested tactic of nationwide
incitement through so called yatras seems to be the only
means left in the arsenal of Hindutva, if one leaves out the not completely
unrelated, parallel mob pogroms, which Hindutva has become famous for.
Since Mr. Advani
wants to yatra from Tamil Nadu to North India, hoping to
garner as much political mileage as possible, while stampeding on the
heads of hapless Indians, with thousands of paramilitary cadres hell-bent
on destroying any pretenses of democracy left in India, the ritually
devout bribe-taking Judev has found a wonderful opportunity to please
the Deputy Prime Minister. A new bus has been delivered for this purpose,
fully equipped with a chemical toilet and a hydraulic platform,
to enable Mr. Advani to hover at great heights over Indians caught between
the allures of Hindutva and the pangs of hunger, despair and sheer state
sanctioned and sponsored terror. (http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=42327)
It is heartening
to note that the chief minister of Chattisgarh has given special consideration
for the personal needs of the Deputy Prime Minister, but is it any solace
to the people of India that the latter can now relieve himself all over
India with the knowledge that his friend Mr. Judev has facilitated prudent
chemical disposal? An apt metaphor for the rolling juggernaut of Hindutva:
a highly toxic political traveling toilet, which unfortunately
will not cleanse the world of Mr. Advanis expected rants of incitement,
or their predictably violent results.
In addition to a
predilection for rituals and Hindutva ideology, Mr. Judev and Mr. Advani
also share another common bond: that of serving the greedy appetites
of rampaging capital, led by foreign mining interests (allied with NRI
capital). The obscenely illegal sale of Chattisgarhs minerals,
while workers, peasants, tribal communities are brutalized on behalf
of domestic and foreign corporations, is made possible through a two-pronged
assault: crush labour through the state, as it was done against BALCO
workers, and use extra-state mechanisms like Hindutva mobilization,
and anti-terrorism repression to terrorize the population
and capture electoral seats; where resistance occurs, Vedanta-Sterlite
uses Ariel Sharons favorite diplomatic tool: the bulldozer. (http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/sterlite1.htm).
One cannot escape
the uneasy conclusion that Mr. Judevs efforts to cleanse
the bus with 101 coconuts and the blood of a sacrificed goat, are metaphors
for the destruction of India by these venal and inhuman tyrants, fiending
on the blood and misery of a billion human beings. It is time to knock
them out of their perches, by exposing the comfortable relationship
between the Hindutva agenda and the economic destruction of India. 50
million workers stood together and brought the country to a standstill
in defence of the right to strike on February 24th. Tellingly, Hindutvas
minions and the venal opportunists of the soon-to-be extinct paleolithic
Congress, opposed the strike; after all the BJPs anti-people cabinet
has led the way for corporate plunder and the destruction of Indian
workers livelihoods for a while now, following nevertheless on
the heels of the stalwart supplicants to international capital in the
Congress. Against these cohorts of colonial plunder, Indias industrial,
banking, insurance workers, students, teachers, activists, and others
stood together on February 24th(http://labourfile.org, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/feb2004/labo-f28.shtml).
Could this be a sign of things to come? Hopefully! Meanwhile, voters
should tell Mr. Advani to go take a dump on Judevs bus.