people would like to say that only a few bad apples do not condemn the entire
orchard: but we are not talking about a few apples, but the core itself, the
president of the party, the leaders of its main alliance partner and trustees of
its ideological wing. And, besides, these few names are only those released in
the first set of tehelka.com tapes (knowing them from the cricket scandal, they
will carefully release their tapes for maximum media impact). Also, the scandal
was uncovered by two journalists who spent a mere Rs. 11 lakhs on the story. If
a national inquiry was conducted at a larger scale, it would surely have shown
that the RSS-BJP patriotism was rotten to the core, but true to those classes
that benefit from its rule.
The
scandal is not only in the bribes. These are nothing. A lakh here, a lakh there.
Journalist Ken Silverstein informs us that the U. S. Congress is no better. The
return on investment to U. S. lawmakers is astounding: in 1996, Lockhead spent
$5 million to lobby Congress and earned $15 billion of tax-money to underwrite
foreign weapons sales, while in that same year, Microsoft spent under $2 million
and earned tax credits worth hundreds of millions of dollars for license sales
to software programs manufactured overseas. Washington D. C. on $10 million a
Day. New Delhi on $2000 a Day, a few cowries more or less.
The
scandal is not just the bribes, but it is the institutional rot. Whatever the
RSS-BJP touches is fundamentally corrupted. As it came to power in 1998, the
Hindu Right stuffed its people into government bureaucracies and fired many
long-time civil servants (no government before had done such extensive
house-cleaning). The scandals over the Indian Council of Historical Research,
the NCERT, and every other government bureaucracy is by now well-known. This is
just how fascistic movements operate: they do not allow state institutions an
autonomous logic, but try to make them subservient to its own will. The ICHR,
for example, ceases to be about the discipline of history, but it becomes about
the glorification of the past as represented by Hindutva. But the RSS-BJP did
not stop at the civilian bureaucracy, for it also put its paws into the
military. The scandal over the firing of Admiral Bhagwat, the favoritism in the
promotions in all three services and the scandalous use of military honors after
the Kargil War — all point to the widespread disruption of the military
establishment for nefarious political purposes. That the military is now so
heavily involved with the corruption is thanks to the RSS-BJP-type regime.
Major
General Manjit S. Ahluwalia, Director General of Ordinance and Supply, one of
the top men in-charge of goods, told the tehelka.com journalists "you can’t come
to my house without a bottle of [Johnny Walker] Blue Label [whiskey]." The
dollars are in liquid form. On 22 December 1998, the BJP welcomed 90 retired
military personnel into the party. At the event, one ex-officer noted that "the
armed forces can do anything better than others, whether administrative work in
the government or running the politics of the country." This undemocratic, and
fundamentally fascistic, sentiment should have been hastily condemned by the
RSS-BJP, but no, the party of "stability" and "honesty" went along with it. We
had a senseless nuclear blast which provoked the Kargil War, and now we have a
fundamentally compromised military.
The
RSS-BJP-allies government refuses to resign. It may hold onto power in the
short-run, and its friends in the U. S. may claim that the entire episode is
politically motivated. No-one, however, is misled that this party of "dharma" is
nothing but the pious face of dalali and hawala, of those who want to sell off
the country’s assets (such as profit-making public sector concerns like BALCO)
or else bankrupt the country for multinational firms (as with Enron). The
"patriotism" of the RSS-BJP is the patriotism of money, of the saffron dollar
that is insatiable for profit and unconcerned with the welfare of the people.
Some will nod their heads and say that "everyone takes bribes" as if this is
normal, and therefore forgivable. Others will say that only some are involved,
that Vajpayee (always Vajpayee) is above it all — this is like saying that
Ronald Reagan did not know about the Iran-Contra affair, when in fact the point
is that these people tell us that they operate as a disciplined party that has
an ideological face. There is no way to tell this story and not offer a
fundamental criticism of the Hindu Right and its shenanigans whilst in power. We
urge all those who love the idea of India to condemn this scandal in the
strongest possible way.
Biju Mathew is Professor of Business at Rider College (New Jersey); Vijay
Prashad is Director of International Studies at Trinity College (Connecticut)
and author of <Karma of Brown Folk> (Minnesota, 2000). Both are co-founders of
the Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL) and members of the collective of Youth
Solidarity Summer (YSS).