Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] State secretary M.V. Govindan said the civil unrest in Manipur exposed the Janus-faced nature of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) approach to Christians, other minorities, and tribes in the country.
Mr. Govindan said the BJP courted Christians in Kerala with an eye on their votes. At the same time, Sangh Parivar cadres wantonly killed Christians in Manipur, vandalised churches, and torched their homes.
In Kerala, Mr. Govindan said, BJP leaders went around glad-handing Church leaders. Nevertheless, Sangh Parivar’s ‘pogrom’ against Christians in Manipur proved that the BJP’s made-for-television minority outreach in Kerala could not camouflage the party’s ‘fascist spots’.
The civil unrest in Manipur has exposed BJP’s run-with-the-hare and hunt-with-the-hounds approach towards Christians. It has revealed Sangh Parivar’s true ‘fascist nature’.
The Sangh Parivar’s attempt to drive a wedge between communities for votes and the BJP-led State government’s thoughtless decision to implement a reservation policy skewed towards a particular community provoked the riots. He said the Manipur civil unrest death toll was mounting, and the situation remained out of control.
Mr. Govindan said the CPI(M) would oppose the BJP’s bid to erase Mughal history, Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of a Hindu nationalist, and Jawaharlal Nehru’s secular statesmanship from the school curriculum.
Instead, the BJP sought to glorify in school textbooks Hindu nationalist ideologue V. D. Savarkar, who turned British collaborator and hard-line apologist for feudal princely States during India’s Independence struggle.
He said the BJP aspired to obliterate Darwin’s theory of evolution, the cornerstone of scientific temper and secular-rationalist thought, from the school syllabus.
The CPI(M) has backed the government’s decision to reject NCERT’s altered school textbooks that ‘distort history and dismiss science.’ He said the CPI(M) would muster students, teachers and opinion leaders to resist the Sangh Parivar’s attempt to saffronise the school syllabus.
