The Bharatiya Janata Party and its mentor, the RSS, or a portion of it, are in the middle of an internecine battle. And it is turning out to be a no-holds-barred fight. The gloves are off and the cannons are shooting fire and brimstone. The first salvo was fired by the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Mandal (BBSM) at a press conference where it said it would support an alternative to the BJP. This was followed by a counter press conference by the South Goa MP Narendra Sawaikar, who categorically stated that the RSS leader in the BBSM has lost his bearings. The BBSM came back with another press conference where it accused the BJP of being the ‘baap’ of all liars. Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar has said his government would not go back on its medium of instruction policy and added that no purpose would be served by passing the MoI bill in the Assembly. The BJP has also asserted that it stood by the promise made in its election manifesto for an amicable settlement to the MoI issue.
Of the many questions raised during this slugfest, one is whether the BJP used the BBSM during its 2012 election campaign and the answer to that is a categorical ‘yes’. Irrespective of what it says today, senior BJP leaders, including Manohar Parrikar actively participated in the agitation against the decision of the then Congress government to give grants to all English primary schools. While the BBSM spearheaded the agitation, the BJP and RSS backed it wholeheartedly. But despite taking such a hard stand, the BJP pointed to an amicable solution to the MoI problem in its election manifesto. Why?
Somewhere between 2007 and 2012 the BJP and Parrikar realized that the party had to move closer to the centre or at least right of centre in order to build a broader base. This strategy paid rich dividends in 2012 with the party winning 21 seats and its partner the MPG bagging three. With these numbers the BJP-MGP could easily have ignored the rest, but Parrikar quickly forged alliances with the GVP and independent MLA from Navelim so as not to alienate Salcete. The MoI policy in its present form flowed from the compulsions of governance thrown up by this combination.
The ongoing political battle is between the extreme right represented by the BBSM and the BJP which wants to go back the polls in 2017 with a centrist agenda. The biggest success of the BJP today is that, in Goa, it is no longer referred to as a communal party. There are sections of society which might point to U-turns and broken promises, but charges of communalism have not been levelled by even the Congress. This is its real victory. And it is this victory that the BBSM is seeking to destroy because it cannot implement its agenda in the present setup.
When Narendra Sawaikar challenged BBSM leaders to enter active politics in order to implement their agenda, he was probably pointing to the compulsions of governance and the difficulty in fashioning a broad-based platform in order to get elected. In the present crisis, the BJP comes across as a political party with a more inclusive MoI solution as against the BBSM which seeks to divide society along communal lines.
The MoI policy is not perfect, but it seeks to draw a balance between the demand to support Indian languages and the demand of parents for free primary education in English. The MoI policy is a work in progress and the government is right in refusing to reverse it.
