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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 India’s upper house of parliament (Rajya Sabha) has gone out of his way to return Mr. Advani’s 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 Rome’s 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. Advani’s 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 Chattisgarh’s 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 Sharon’s favorite diplomatic tool: the bulldozer. (http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/sterlite1.htm).

One cannot escape the uneasy conclusion that Mr. Judev’s 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, Hindutva’s minions and the venal opportunists of the soon-to-be extinct paleolithic Congress, opposed the strike; after all the BJP’s 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, India’s 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 Judev’s bus.