Marx wrote in ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce”. One feels tempted to repeat the same in the case of BJP’s recent concluded ‘Ekta Yatra’ which started from Kolkata and which was supposed to be culminated at Lal Chowk, Srinagar with the hoisting of national flag on 26th January. The present campaign of BJP reminds of May, 1953 when Shyama Prasad Mukherjee along with some other Jan sangh members attempted to cross the state borders and were arrested. This campaign gives us a chance to revisit the BJP history from Jan Sangh onwards and analyze how and why they take such campaigns/yatras. What is it, that BJP targets again and again be it Mukherjee’s journey in 1953, Advani’s rath yatra in 1990, Murli Manohar Joshi’s ‘Ekta Yatra’ of 1992 or the present ‘Ekta yatra’ of the BJP youth wing, Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha. This campaign also gives us a chance to unravel the claims of nationalism, national integrity, respect to national flag and all other questions which they pick up while on the ‘Rath’ and forget after that. In this article I will attempt to briefly touch upon the Yatra which Jan sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mukherjee took in 1953 demanding assimilation of J&K fully into Indian union by abrogating Art. 370 and will try to juxtapose it with the recent concluded BJYM’s ‘Ekta yatra’.
Mukherjee and Jan sangh
Mukherjee started his career as a Vice-chancellor of Calcutta University and from there he turned to be the founder of Jan sangh in 1951. Apart from the political compulsion of his time, it seems that the influence of his mother was very much on Mukherjee. After his death in Srinagar in one of the letters written to Pandit Jawahar lal Nehru his mother wrote “I had long dedicated my son for the selfless service to the country and my son sacrificed his life for the cause of the motherland”, (Balraj Madhok, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, A biography, pp.3-4). Mukherjee while being the VC of Calcutta University also gradually started to drift towards the Hindu right particularly towards Hindu Mahasabha. Thus in 1941 along with Hindu mahasabha and a breakaway faction of Muslim league, Mukherjee formed a coalition ministry in Bengal. But soon in 1943, falling in line with the Indian National Congress, Mukherjee resigned from the ministry in protest to the repressive measures followed by the colonial state. When the debate of independence and partition started he became one of the biggest champions of Bengali Hindus and demanded that Bengal be divided along communal lines, West Bengal for Hindus and East Bengal for Muslims. But he was one leader from Hindu right wing i.e. from RSS or Mahasabha who was regarded as a moderate Hindu leader. This image gave Mukherjee the cabinet ministry formed under the prime ministership of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru in the first Lok sabha. But soon the conditions in West Bengal where a large no. of Hindus had started to migrate from East Bengal and the tribal raid in kashmir started changing Mukherjee’s future course of action (B.D Graham, ‘Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and the communalist alternative’, in Soundings in Modern South Asia,ed by D.A Low). In his highly passionate and articulate speeches in the Indian parliament he criticized the policies by Nehru and Congress regarding Bangladeshi migrants and ‘Delhi agreement’ signed between Pt. Nehru and Liaqat Ali khan, the Prime minister of Pakistan. Mukherjee resigned from the ministry on 1st April, 1951 and in October of the same year formed All Bharatiya Jana sangh, which was seen by many as an alternative to the Indian national Congress. Jan sangh though never declared openly but they had definite links with RSS since the very start of its formation, (Myron Weiner, State politics in India, the development of Multi-party system). This is the background from where we can try and understand Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and the whole politics which Jan Sangh did in the coming years.
Jammu and Kashmir, Sheikh and Mukherjee
The conditions in Jammu and Kashmir after the tribal raid were turbulent but despite this Sheikh Abdullah and National conference had been pushing hard to implement the agendas they had raised in ‘Naya Kashmir’. The first and foremost being of Land reforms and abolition of Land Lordism. The most radical clause in the ‘Big Landed Estates Abolition Act 1950’ was that no compensation was to be provided to the land lords and the ceiling of land had to be 22.75 acres (182 kanals). This step was not comfortably taken by the Landlords who were mostly Dogras and they by 1952 with the help of Ex-Maharaja of J&K started a vigorous campaign against Sheikh Abdullah and National Conference with the name Jammu Praja Parishad. The demand of compensation to the landlords was mixed with the emotional cry of Jammu being subjected ‘kashmiri raj’ and abrogation of Article 370. Jan sangh which was trying to build itself throughout these, found a fertile ground in Jammu and an able ally in Jammu praja parishad. From late 1952 onwards Mukherjee continuously raised the issue of ‘Jammu being discriminated’ in the Indian parliament, and in one of the letters dated 9th January, 1953 to Nehru, Mukherjee wrote. “If people of J&K think otherwise, must Jammu also suffer because of such unwillingness to merge completely with India? Ek nisan,ek vidhan, ek pradhan-one flag, one constitution, one president-represents a highly patriotic and emotional slogan which the people are carrying on their struggle”, (Integrate Kashmir, Mukherjee-Nehru and Abdullah Correspondence). Mukherjee later even went to the extent to suggest that Jammu and kashmir be divided into three parts in which Jammu and ladakh would be the completely merged into India while the fate of the valley to be decided by plebiscite or any other formula. Many scholars like Balraj puri look at the Praja Parishad movement as the first of those examples which did send a message to the Kashmiri people that their complete integration with India might not be so soothing as they had thought it to be. Apprehensions were seen from Nehru’s side also and in a letter dated 10th, January, 1953 he wrote to Mukherjee, “Suppose some remnants of the Muslim league in the valley of Kashmir started an agitation which was anti-India and pro-Pakistan, how should we deal with it? What affect do you think has Praja parishad agitation on such persons in the valley or elsewhere? If you open Pandora’s Box, then all kinds of unexpected and undesirable things come out of it.” But despite Nehru’s advice the Pandora’s box was opened and his apprehensions were to a large extent true and the very basic characters of the Indian state, be its democracy, socialism or its secularism for which Kashmiri’s joined India, are now the characters for which they are fighting.
The movement in Jammu had soon turned to be violent and huge public property was lost, not only that, the movement soon took a communal angle and Muslims of Jammu were targeted. To prevent the influence of external forces like Jan sangh Govt. of India had put a permit system on the movement across the state. Mukherjee and Jan Sangh saw in it an easy method of raising an issue and thus on 11th May, 1953 as he was about to cross the state from the Madhopur bridge he was arrested with two other leaders of Jan sangh. From there all the three were made to sit in a jeep and after spending their night at Batote next day they reached Srinagar where they were made to stay in a small Villa. Due to his ill health, (cold and symptoms of Gouts) Mukherjee died while in valley on 24th June, 1953. The death of Mukherjee was the last nail in the coffin and sheikh Abdullah was charged as a murdered and slogans like ‘Gaddar Abdullah ko fansi do’ were raised. Even the attitude of Nehru had started to change towards his friend Sheikh Abdullah and eventually on 8th August, 1953 Sheikh was dismissed, put behind bars and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed was made the puppet Prime Minister.
Slogans and rhetoric of National integration continues
From 8th August, 1953 to the present day when the ‘Ekta yatra’ is the talk of the town the unending saga of repression of Kashmiri’s continue and their only crime being that they time and again tried to make Indian leadership realize its promises and to fulfill the same. The Jan sangh in the Lok Sabha elections in 1957 won only 4 seats and their vote percentage increased from 3.1% in 1952 to 5.9% in 1957. Though the results show that they couldn’t cash on the Praja Parishad agitation and the slogan of ‘national integration’, but the whole period of 1952 to 1957 set the trend for the future generations of Jan sangh/BJP, and even know the same slogans are invoked time and again by BJP or other right wing Hindu organizations. I go back to my basic argument what is it that BJP is targeting and when? The rhetoric of Nationalism and national integration is one of their biggest weapons, a nationalism which is majoritarian and exclusive. Muslims and Christians don’t form a part of this national discourse. They are the ‘others’ of ‘us’, ‘outsiders’ for the ‘insiders’, because nationalism as defined by their ideologues is not only decided by religion, but also by history and culture. Thus M.S Golwalkar wrote, “The non Hindu people of Hindustan must either adopt Hindu culture and language, must learn and respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but the glorification of the Hindu race and culture” (Gowalkar, M.S ,We or Our Nation defined.. pp-. 55). Every nation requires the creation of a ‘self’ and ‘other’ dichotomy, sometimes the ‘other’ is inside (like Muslims in India, Jews in Germany) the national boundary while at other times it might be outside (French for Britons). In both the cases nationalism acquires an exclusionary tendency.
BJP often plays upon the basic fear psychosis of the majority i.e. of Hindus and fabricates the history and narratives of ‘Muslim oppression’, ‘Muslim population explosion’, demonize Islam as a ‘violent religion’. Apart from this creation of Muslim as ‘other’, the cartographic anxiety of a nation is continuously evoked. A post-colonial state like India which has fluid boundaries around it (be it Bangladesh in 1971, Sri Lanka, or even Kashmir in 1948) is extremely conscious of its boundaries i.e. has a great degree of ‘cartographic anxiety’. Like a ‘female body’ the body of a nation is linked to pride or izzat and any impingement upon that challenges/invokes the masculine identity of any nation. Evoking the similar notion of nationalism and ‘cartographic anxiety’ Mukherjee in letter dated 9th January, 1953 asks Nehru, “one third of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir is now occupation of Pakistan… It will be nothing short of national disgrace and humiliation, if we fail to regain this lost portion of our country”. In this definition of nationalism, Kashmir gets the most focus because unlike other parts of India, it has a majority Muslim population and also it’s close to Pakistan thus invoking the worst kinds of cartographic fears among the Majority in India. As one of the columnists recently wrote the message of the yatra isn’t the Ekta or integrity, but it’s rather an invasion to a foreign land. Infact kashmir has always been as invincible territory which despite being within the boundary of India, still is not fully into, which despite being a physical part of India is mentally something to be conquered.
Symbols play an important role in right wing yatras and they are used to generate more passions and thus sometimes the body of country is shown as ‘Bharat Mata’ and sometimes furling of flag (the recent campaign and M.M Joshi’s yatra of 1992) demarcates a nationalist from that of an anti-national. If Somnath (BJP argues that it was it was at Somnath where the assault on Hindu temples and shrines is was started by Ghazni) choosed to be the starting point of the yatra in September, 1990 by L.K Advani, Kolkata the ancestral home of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was used in the recent ‘Ekta Yatra’. In this game of politics everything is arranged strategically by BJP. One more aspect of all the yatras has been the timing of these yatras, if Mukherjee defied the permit system when Jan Sangh was at the lowest ebb, the recent Yatra aimed at full filling Mukherjee’s mission when they have almost been rooted out of last Lok sabha elections. Also the coming elections in UP and West Bengal is of course very well in the mind of the BJP ideologues and strategists. Apart from that as the issue of Ram Janam Bhoomi is more or less dead, Yeduruppa is also involved in corruption and most importantly when Assemananda case has surfaced so BJP is desperately in need of an issue which brings it back into the picture and also veils ‘Hindu terrorism’ and huge scams throughout the country. Nothing better than the rhetoric of Nationalism and that also when linked with Kashmir gives the best response.
Amit Kumar, Research Scholar Dept. of History, DU
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