COMMENTARY

Ram and Roti

--Gopal Pradhan

When the BJP’s trouble-shooting President L K Advani called the first meeting of the newly elected Office-Bearers, even he could not have had an idea of the toll that the Party’s publicity-hunger would take. A strong contender for the post of Party President, Uma Bharti, evicted from the post of Madhya Pradesh CM, seemed reconciled to the post of General Secretary. But her public performance on that day made her the subject of discussion and analysis ever since. For some backward leaders, she became comparable to Kalyan Singh, while to some intellectuals, she seemed mentally unbalanced. When the Hindustan Times carried a detailed psychological sketch of her, she sent a letter in reply, explaining, “Problems have been created because I speak of Ram and Roti together…that is why I have become the cause of problems for everyone”.

As a rule, BJP leaders do exercise extreme caution in their choice of words; still, as the noted Hindi poet Dhoomil pointed out, language is that wet ground where one tends to leave footmarks as one runs. Uma Bharti seems to have used ‘Roti’ to connote the material problems of people, and ‘Ram’ for their hunger for culture. The BJP leader’s choice of words is most revealing, especially of their attitude towards people’s problems. Her choice of ‘Ram’ to connote culture indicates that she considers culture to be based on religion, that too, on organised religion. Ram may have been termed a popular hero, ‘an ideal among men’, but his creator Valmiki did not forgive him either for the killing of Shambuk or for the banishment of Sita. Tulsidas did away with these episodes to make him an avatar. Later, the BJP turned the friendly greeting ‘Ram Ram’ into the tragic war cry of ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Given that she sees the people’s hunger for culture being satisfied merely with organised religion, it is hardly a coincidence that the BJP is the most favoured party for all kinds of feudal powers (in her letter, Uma Bharti refers to the grace of Rajmata Vijaya Raje Scindia), obscurantist capitalists, brahminical forces, and even international revivalist forces. This understanding of cultural needs shapes her perspective of material needs as well, for which she uses the word ‘Roti’. ‘Roti’ is flung as charity towards dogs and beggars. Such a feudal approach to solving the problems of the people is the foundation stone of the BJP’s style of thinking; according to which charity would be sought from MNCs and international loan agencies for the nation’s ‘development’, and would then be distributed to the people as a gift at Christmas (Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s birthday was December 25)! The culture of ‘Janata Durbar’ was trademark BJP.

In this letter, she also refers to the Communists, but reduces their agenda to that of a struggle for ‘Roti’. But Marxism, which is the philosophy of Communist politics, does not take a one-sided view of human beings. Marxism holds that human beings labour in order to meet their material needs. Through this labour, they learn the laws of nature, and use them to go beyond natural inevitability to construct a culture based on freedom. Humans create culture by in the course of ‘culturing’ nature. That is, they create culture in the process of fulfilling their material needs. This is why culture is linked on the one hand to human labour and on the other, to freedom. In contrast, Uma Bharti’s understanding of culture does not acknowledge human creativity. This is why she attempts to link ‘Roti’ with ‘Ram’, whereas for Marxism, the material needs of human beings are linked with their hunger for culture. Any Communist politician understands the role of a culture of struggle in mobilising people. Not only is culture produced by human labour; culture, in addition to entertainment, also prepares human beings for struggle. Such culture, and such a cultural movement are the trademarks of Marxist politics.

Uma Bharti’s letter also resorts to the typical arithmetic of 85-15. She writes that she herself belongs to the 85% that represents ‘Bharat’, while her critics represent the 15% that is India. She acknowledges, however, that people like L K Advani, by giving her a voice in the media, allowed her to come closer to the 15%. She knows, too, that now she can no longer free her understanding from this 15%. Certainly, her attempt is to secure the consent of 85% for enslavement by the 15%; but unfortunately for her, this wish of hers will never come true.