The Hindu : BJP juggernaut must be stopped: CPI(M)

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 06, 2002

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BJP juggernaut must be stopped: CPI(M)

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI DEC. 5. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) today came out strongly against the policies and programme of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government at the Centre and charged that the party was nothing but the "political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh."

"If India, as we know of it today, has to be saved from this fascist onslaught, then this communal juggernaut has to be stopped in its tracks,'' the CPI (M) noted in an editorial in the special number of its party organ, People's Democracy, brought out on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

"If ever any confirmation were needed, it has come in a stunning manner during the course of this turbulent decade. And, that is the following: the demolition of the Babri Masjid was not an individual isolated act of a frenzied communal mob but it was a part of well-thought out theoretical and ideological project that seeks to convert the secular democratic republic of modern India into a fascistic `Hindu Rashtra','' it said.

The editorial touched upon the various facets of the functioning of the BJP-led Government, including in the fields of education, economic policies and the ``State-sponsored communal carnage'' in Gujarat among others.

It said the recent years had shown that the RSS would leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of its fascist objective. "The mainstay of its activities, however, remains the whipping up of communal passions and the consequent riots engineered. Every single judicial commission of enquiry that was instituted to probe communal riots in India since independence has singled out the RSS as the main perpetrator. Since assuming power, its activities on this score have grown sharply.''

Referring to the Gujarat riots, the editorial said that it was the worst inhuman and savage act that "they have committed so far. What has happened in Gujarat recently is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.''

But for the compulsions of keeping the NDA together to remain in power, the RSS' ``fascist agenda would have been unfolded even more rapidly" under Mr. Vajpayee's leadership, it said. Only a popular people's movement to defeat these forces politically could save the country since some regional political parties which succumbed to both political opportunism and to share the spoils of office continued to prop up the Vajpayee Government and the RSS fascistic project.

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