1. The experience over the last five years has been that the communal BJP-RSS combine still poses a grave threat to the secular fabric of India. Even though the Congress-led government came to power on a mandate against the communal forces, it refused to take stringent action against them. Moreover, the pursuance of neoliberal policies by the UPA has had an adverse impact on the livelihood and the living conditions of the people and this is bound to generate discontent and becomes fertile breeding grounds for their communal politics.
2. In recent years there has been an intensified threat to the security of the country and its citizens by various terrorist forces and groups. It is essential to mobilise the Indian people and strengthen their unity as a political counter to these forces, apart from the administrative and other measures to be taken. The CPI(M) holds that the fight against communalism and terrorism are interlinked.
3. The BJP and its RSS cohorts made every effort to utilise the levers of state power to push forward sectarian policies, often backed by violence that targets minorities, as in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, or where it was a coalition partner in the government such as in Orissa. The communal violence was targeted at the minorities, both Christian and Muslim.
4. The communal poison which continues to be fed to students in highly toxic textbooks in the BJP states is another case in point. Academic institutions, writers and artistes have been a special target of attack. Women and dalits are also targets of the communal forces.
5. Even as the violence in Orissa and Karnataka continued unabated, the central government did not have the political will or initiative to uphold the rights of minorities, refusing to use the constitutional provisions available to it and direct the state government to take action against the guilty individual and organisations like the Bajrang Dal despite ample evidence.
6. Despite a Supreme Court directive to hold CBI enquiry into the communal violence in Gujarat in 2002, the UPA has failed to initiate concrete steps in this regard.
7. Be it the question of implementing the Sri Krishna Commission Report or taking decisive action against the Bajrang Dal, the Congress-led government has displayed a distinct lack of political resolve against communalists.
8. The Hindutva brigade also practiced the worst form of reactionary obscurantist vigilantism and moral policing in the country. The anti-woman face of the Hindutva brigade was exposed in the attack on young women in a pub in Mangalore by the Sri Ram Sene (SRS) where women were brutally beaten up in the full glare of the media and the BJP government in Karnataka remains a mute spectator.
9. The BJP tried to incite communal passions on the Setu Samudram project. While it was the BJP which first gave the green signal to the project, it did an about turn as it suddenly realized that the setu issue could fuel its communal agenda. Shamefully the Congress-led government vacillated on the issue helping the BJP keep the issue alive.
10. The series of terrorist attacks in the country shows that the Congress-led government has failed to revitalise the intelligence agencies and the security set-up to track down the terror networks.
11. Instead of strengthening these basic requirements, the government went for the option of strengthening the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Shamefully, the Congress-led government has brought back draconian and widely misused POTA provisions like detention without bail for 180 days, three years imprisonment for withholding information, etc., within the UAPA. The CPI(M) and Left parties were the only parties in parliament to oppose such measures.
12. The double standards of the BJP on terrorism stand fully exposed. While it has no compunction in ascribing all terrorist activities to the Muslim community, it protects the Hindutva extremists accused in the Malegaon blasts case by branding the ATS investigation as prosecution of “Hindu religious figures”.
13. The CPI(M) argues that there is a need to create an atmosphere in our country where communalism cannot feed terrorism and terrorism cannot be used as an instrument for communal polarisation.
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