 India could meet the same fate as the Soviet Union, if its political parties continue to speak the language of violence and promote communal hatred. The one-man Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan Commission on the demolition of the Babri Masjid tells the story of how the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), both advocating Hindu fundamentalism, conspired to demolish what had come to represent India's ethos of secularism. The report, submitted a few months ago, is 17 years old. Yet it is a warning against communalism that can make a mockery of our policy of pluralism incorporated in the constitution.
There should have been regret in the RSS and the BJP circles. But when their representatives spoke in parliament this week on the commission's report they had no word of remorse, much less repentance. The two outfits which speak in the name of Hindus are a bugbear for Muslims and other minorities.
True, the communal thesis went against the BJP in the last Lok Sabha election and tilted voters in favor of the ruling Congress party to voice its dissent against the communal type of politics. Yet the Muslims feel insecure when pluralism is attacked openly. The government has announced that it would have a legislation to disqualify communal parties from taking part in elections. But this was an effort made many years ago and given up because it was hard to prove in the court the parochial credentials of a party.
Were the government to take punitive action against the BJP leaders like Atal Behari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, named in the report, it would indicate that those who conspired to demolish the Babri Masjid would not go scot-free. It would also send a message that the perpetrators of crime would be punished. Not only Muslims but also other minorities would take heart from such action.
 Take the Sikhs. More than 3,000 were butchered in Delhi in1984. Till today none had been hanged for the murders committed. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has expressed regret and announced liberal rehabilitation grants. But the compensation does not bring back the dead, nor does it show that the guilty have been punished. The Sikhs are the closest to Hindus because there are inter-caste marriages and the god-like Lord Rama figures many a time in the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs. No doubt, population-wise, the number of Sikhs is only 2.5 per cent as compared to 15 per cent of Muslims, the former are more prosperous and occupy key positions in the government.
As for rehabilitation, the Muslims are slow to get the benefits. In Gujarat, where ethnic cleansing was carried out, they have had no compensation from the state. Even the guilty would not have been brought to book if the Supreme Court of India, on the application of some grieved families, had not ordered a probe through the team it designated. The rehabilitation of uprooted and ruined families has come through some private agencies. That the state government, led by Narendra Modi, has not been taken to task does not send a good message to Muslims or, for that matter, other minorities. The state government should have been dismissed, as the centre did in the case of Uttar Pradesh government in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992.
The Christians, a little more than one per cent of India's population, were recently the target first in Orissa where one priest was burnt alive, and then in Karnataka where a church was damaged. The constant harassment of the community at the hands of Hindu fundamentalists, blessed by the RSS, has created a crisis of confidence.
It is unfortunate that the alternative to the Congress before the electorate is the pro-Hindu BJP. Leftists have been vanquished and there is no liberal element on the horizon. The regional parties have established their identity and they are not against the minorities when a couple of states are run by their members. Still their emphasis is on parochialism and hence the sway is restricted.
 Ultimately, the responsibility of evoking confidence among the minorities is that of the majority, the Hindus who constitute nearly 80 per cent of the population. If the country is to remain pluralistic, they have to make efforts to knit together the different communities socially, economically and politically. The virus of communalism does not represent the ethnic conflict. It is purely Hindu chauvinism which distorts the democratic republic that India is.
One disconcerting development is the contamination of police or such other security force. They are there to protect, not to participate. The analysis of communal riots shows that the police are on the side of the Hindus if they are being chastised. Training institutions have to do a better job than they have been doing so far.
The Indian nation also has to put its act together. It cannot remain secular if communal parties, whether among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or Christians, operate freely. The constitution which ensures freedom of religion, even the right to propagate to every community, loses its slat when the culprits of the Babri Masjid demolition, of program in Gujarat, of killing in Delhi or destruction in Karnataka, remain unpunished. People have to rededicate themselves to secular ideals so as to evoke confidence among the minorities which at present live in uncertainty and even fear.
I recall that when I was India's High Commissioner to the UK, the Soviet Union was tottering. Margaret Thatcher, the then British Prime Minister, told me about the advice she had tendered to Moscow: Learn from the example of India, which had stayed together for hundreds of years despite people professing different religions, following different castes and speaking different languages. She asked me what I attributed it to. It took me some time to explain to her that we in India did not divide things into black and white. We believed there was a grey area which we had been expanding for decades. That represented our pluralism and unity.
Nearly 20 years later, I feel what I told Thatcher is changing to the detriment of our nation. The spirit of tolerance, or the sense of accommodation, which provided the quintessential glue to our integrity is drying up. Parties which are attempting to deny or defeat the ethos of secularism are harming the country's unity and its catholicity. They have their own agenda and want to pursue it even at the expense of the nation's unity. Methods do not matter to them.
I believe in the basic dictum that wrong means will not lead to right results. This is merely no longer an ethnical doctrine, but a practical proposition. India can disintegrate like the Soviet Union, if the nation does not awaken to the dangers of conflict. Political parties should eschew not only violence, but also the language of violence, which instills division and hatred. The situation is too uncertain to be complacent, particularly after what the Liberhan Commission report has said on the spread of communalism.
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