Wednesday, May 19, 2004
BJP essentially racist: Rushdie
By Hasan Suroor
LONDON, MAY 18. Novelist Salman Rushdie has attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party-led campaign against the Congress leader, Sonia Gandhi's "foreignness," saying that it would undermine the struggle of Indian expatriates to be accepted as equal citizens of their adopted countries. Mr. Rushdie, an India-born British citizen, said the personal attacks on Ms. Gandhi over her Italian origins were "highly unpleasant."
"Those of us who are part of the Indian diaspora, and who have fought for years to have Indians recognised as full citizens of the societies in which we have settled and in which our children have been born and raised, have found the attack on Sonia Gandhi's Italian origins highly unpleasant. Even more unpleasant were the BJP's suggestions that her children, the children of Rajiv Gandhi, were also somehow aliens."
Writing in The Independent at the weekend, he argued: "You can't have it both ways. If Indians outside India are to be seen as `belonging' to their new homelands, then those who make India their home, as Sonia Gandhi has done for 40 years or so, must be given the same respect."
The reported comment of a BJP leader that it was "shameful" for India to be led by a foreigner was "racist."
"Such slurs are a part of the reason for the BJP's defeat. They are essentially racist, and must cease."
Mr. Rushdie, who was feted by the Sangh Parivar when he was under attack from the Muslim fundamentalists over Satanic Verses, hailed the defeat of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance as a "rare moment of hope." He denounced what he called the outgoing Government's "politicisation of historical scholarship" and attempts to "impose textbooks peddling a narrow, revisionist, Hindu nationalist vision of India's past."
He warned that if, after its defeat, the BJP decided to revert to its "hardline" agenda, the "years could be full of conflict and violence."
Copyright © 2004, The Hindu.