June 1, 1998

No post-Pokhran temples please: don't let the tests get hijacked by the lunatic fringe.

Tavleen Singh

The trouble with the BJP is that for every sane man it can count among its ranks, there are at least 10 loonies. The party has been careful since it finally got its chance to rule India to keep its lunatic elements locked up. But the nuclear tests appear to have freed them.

Hence the absurd idea (later junked) to carry Pokhran dust -- "sacred soil" -- in sanctified vessels across the country in yet another set of yatras, this time in the name of gaurav or pride. Hence the even more ludicrous idea of building a temple to the bomb: a shaktipeeth. This latter idea emanates, unsurprisingly, from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and is unlikely to be abandoned since Ashok Singhal, its president, has shown himself in the past to be ever capable of the worst kind of dementia, specially when he thinks it has religious sanction.

This time his excuse is that religious leaders have favoured India going nuclear since 1974. Think of it though -- a temple to a weapon of mass destruction in a country where we still sacrifice children to satisfy some god's imagined bloodlust and where we still worship girls who dare to commit sati.

It is an invitation, in our wondrously illiterate land, to the most terrifying kind of superstition and stupidity. Those who still believe in human sacrifice and in burning inconvenient widows on their husbands' funeral pyres will undoubtedly soon think of radioactivity and related nuclear horrors as new objects of reverence. If the Government wants to be taken seriously in its new role as custodian of a nuclear India, then it needs to put down its loonies fast or at least direct them in a more constructive direction.

For instance, why can't our religious leaders get together and clean the Ganga and the Yamuna before the next Kumbh Mela? They can do it more easily than any government or any conglomerate of environmental groups. All the shankaracharyas need to do is issue a collective appeal against the dumping of human and other waste into these sacred rivers. God-fearing Hindus across the land will almost certainly obey.

As for cleaning up the sins of the past, why can't the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and other hyperactive members of the Sangh Parivar set their members this task? It could end up being the most constructive thing they have ever done in the Hindu cause. It might also divert their attention from the nuclear arena, which is surely the realm of science and not religion.

There are other worthy causes that they would do well to pay attention to. The Sangh Parivar fancies itself the guardian of Indian culture but so far its contribution in this area has been largely limited to burning M.F. Husain's paintings, attacking his home and so on. It was quite frightening to see Kushabhau Thakre, the BJP's new president, rise to the defence of the looters who targeted the artist's Mumbai home recently.

Thakre went on national television to announce the attack was justified as Hindu sentiment had been hurt by Husain's depiction of Sita. In fact, my sentiments as an Indian are as deeply hurt by Thakre's justification of thuggery. So would he consider it all right if I stormed into his home with my own gang of thugs?

Again, however, even hurt religious sentiment can be put to good use. Maybe the BJP Government's more lunatic supporters could be employed by the Department of Culture (DOC), of which Murli Manohar Joshi is the new boss. They could be asked to take care of some of our ancient temples and monuments which are falling to pieces on account of bureaucratic neglect.

The bureaucracy has dealt with preservation with the same benign neglect it has reserved for almost everything else over 50 years. Thus, many of our finest monuments are being destroyed. Konarak, Hampi, Nalanda and any number of ancient temples may disappear altogether in the 21st century unless the DOC adopts a radical new approach.

There are museums across the country where priceless artefacts are falling to pieces due to the same benign neglect. Some of the best museums in BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh don't even have proper buildings to house their treasures. This tragedy is largely on account of a culture policy that sneers at commercialisation. So museums are not allowed to make money out of shops or restaurants. If they did, they would almost certainly be able to pay for their needs. But for this to happen we need a new culture policy, some action from Joshi.

Modern Indian culture is in no better shape. Fifty years after we got rid of the British, it is still Indian writing in English that the world knows most about. Writers writing in Indian languages resent the fuss made about Arundhati Roy or Salman Rushdie. But the truth is had these writers written in Malayalam or Urdu, their audience would have been so limited as to be inconsequential.

The DOC should have been responsible for facilitating decent translations of modern Indian literature. But like every other government department, it seems to spend most of its resources paying salaries to armies of officials. With so much work to be done in the area of promoting Hindu gaurav, the BJP really needs to persuade its more lunatic sister organisations to lay off such things as nuclear bomb temples and nuclear dust pilgrimages. Their fallout could be harder to control than the international anger that the tests generated.

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