Hindutva's hit list

We have documented no less than seven widely publicised statements made by the VHP and BJP, in tandem since December 2002, that are indirect threats to demolish mosques and churches in different parts of the country, in the guise of ?liberating 30,000 Hindu temples?. These statements are particularly ominous in view of the as yet "incomplete" yet extraordinarily long list of shrines targeted by Hindutva that we have so far obtained and are reproducing below (first instalment), as a warning to defenders of the Indian Constitution and law to deliberate over and to plan local and national resistance to the sangh parivar?s
impending agenda.

The temples ?liberation? statements have been widely reported in the national media. In Varanasi, on December 29, 2002, the BJP MP Vinay Katiyar who built his political career through the Bajrang Dal, demanded that Muslims hand over the Kashi and Mathura mosques to the VHP-Bajrang Dal. Thereafter, on March 1, 2003, in Bhadohi, UP and again on March 10, Praveen Togadia repeated the threats with more potent venom. The RSS,too, through its spokesman, MS Vaidya declared it?s full support to the VHP plan to ?free? the Kashi/Mathura shrines.

There are good chances that the ruling BJP with little to show in it?s progress chart before the run-up to the polls next year, may find the violent and diversionary politics of the VHP-RSS useful to romp back to victory on the strength of a communally divided electorate. Once again, as we record and document the ominous portents, can we hope for pre-emptive secular resistance? For the past 18 years, the discourse of this country has been entirely dominated by ?Build Temple, Bring Hindu rashtra? slogans that apart from anything else directly subvert and rubbish the Indian Constitution. However, our institutions of democracy, be it the Parliament or the political class, the judiciary or the law and order machinery (the executive is for the moment in hostile hands) have failed, singularly, to rise to this threat to our Constitution and Indian democracy.

Are there other ways that citizens, groups, mass organisations can begin to think of impacting on this political process, so that the issues that go to the polls next year are substantive ones, issues of bread and butter, jobs and livelihood, development and progress, not the diversionary ones of hatred, blood and gore?