FOLLOWING IS MY E-MAIL EXCHANGE WITH JAIRAM RAMESH, CO-ORDINATOR, ELECTION RELATED

AFFFAIRS,

LOK SABHA ELECTIONS 2009,, INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS

RE: BJP’S ELECTION MANIFESTO

Dear Friend,

I hope you have had a chance to glance through our Party's manifesto that I sent
you earlier.

While you make your important voting decision, I wanted to bring to your attention
five big unanswered questions in BJP's election manifesto 2009.

Question 1: Will the BJP abolish the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
(NREGA) scheme that is providing employment to crores of poor households across
the country, while generating tangible public assets?

Question 2: Why is the BJP manifesto silent on the role of the public sector? Is
it because it wants to continue its policy of indiscriminate and non-transparent
privatization by stealth?

Question 3: Why is the BJP's manifesto bereft on any ideas on industrial

development? Is the BJP intellectually bankrupt on ideas for the industrial
development of India?

Question 4: Does the BJP have any tangible plan on agricultural loan waiver beyond
the vague statement .Waive Agricultural Loans. that adorn its manifesto? Or is it
promising to do something that the Congress-led UPA government has already done?

Question 5: How exactly does the BJP propose to .improve upon the POTA.? What more
will it do that goes beyond the strong anti-terror law . the amended UAPA . that
the Congress-led UPA government has already enacted?

We believe that these questions must be answered by the BJP in order that the
electorate has a clearer choice. The attached link is a short note on these
unanswered questions.

5 Big questions on the BJP Manifesto

Please feel free to share this document with others, in order to generate informed
discussion and decision-making.

Best Regards,
Jairam Ramesh
Coordinator, Election Related Affairs,
Lok Sabha Elections 2009, Indian National Congress
jairam@congress.org.in

Dear Mr.Jairam Ramesh,

You have asked important questions to the BJP relating to the socio-
economic policies but missed asking the core issue of the BJP’s ideology of
‘Hindutva’. Your questionnaire is therefore like Hamlet without the Prince of
Denmark!
 The BJP’s impatient Prime Minister-in-Waiting, Mr.L.K. Advani is running
amuck in the electoral arena like a bull in a China shop throwing challenges dime
a dozen towards Prime Minister, Dr.Man Mohan Singh and the Congress President,
Mrs.Sonia Gandhi.

Dr.Man Mohan Singh has rightly taken Mr.Advani to task for shedding
crocodile tears when the 16th Century Babri mosque was demolished by a mob of
Hindu zealots in 1992.

"I may be not be very strong but at least I was not crying like a wimp in
one corner when miscreants were bringing down a mosque," is how the prime minister
referred to the opposition leader in one of his recent press interactions.

Mrs.Sonia Gandhi has given a resounding repartee to Mr.Advani by calling

him a “slave of the RSS”

But, yet I think the INC is not doing enough to confront the BJP and
Mr.Advani on the core issue of ‘Hindutva’ which is the heart and soul of their
existence. I cannot make out why the Congress has not yet questioned the
credibility of Savarkar, the ideological mentor of ‘Hindutva’ and the great icon
of Bharatiya Janata Party. A lasting blow should be to question Mr.Advani's
"Hindutva" ideology and its progenitor Savarkar who was an accused in the Gandhi
murder trial and escaped because there was no corroborrative evidence.

In all secular conscience, I think, it is an ultimate slap in the face of

India’s constitutional tryst with destiny proclaimed by Jawaharlal Nehru at the
stroke of the midnight hour when India was ushered into independence. The BJP
leadership has done a lasting damage not only to the constitutional destiny of
India but also an unforgivable insult to the memory of the Father of the Nation by
placing the portrait of Savarkar opposite that of Mahatma Gandhi in the Parliament
House.

Savarkar who was an accused in the Gandhi murder trial and escaped because
there was no corroborrative evidence. Twenty years after the assassination, the
Justice Jivan Lal Kapur commission of inquiry found that Badge’s evidence was
being corroborated by Savarkar’s bodyguard Appa Ramchandra Kasar and Gajanan
Vishnu Damle. Justice Kapur’s conclusion: "All these facts taken together were
destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his
group."19

The verdict of acquittal was sound in law. However, Union Home Minister Sardar
Patel,s conclusion was characteristically clear: "It was a financial wing of the
Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that (hatched) the conspiracy and saw it
through". (Emphasis added, throughout.)

The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Conspiracy to murder Mahatma
Gandhi, which was set up in 1965, deserves greater weight than the verdict of the
Sessions Court. It was headed by Justice Jivanlal Kapur of the Supreme Court and
was provided with evidence not produced in the court; especially the testimony of
two of Savarkar's close aides - Appa Ramachandra Kasar, his bodyguard, and Gajanan
Vishnu Damle, his secretary.

Had they testified in Court, Savarkar would have been convicted. There was none
of the ambiguity surrounding Godse and Apte's visits to Savarkar on January 14 and
17, 1948. Kasar told the Kapur Commission that they visited him on or about
January 23 or 24, which was when they returned from Delhi after the bomb incident.
Damle deposed that Godse and Apte saw Savarkar "in the middle of January and sat
with him (Savarkar) in his garden."

Justice Kapur's findings are all too clear. He concluded: "All these facts taken
together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by
Savarkar and his group."

As noted by Pyarelal in his Last Phase “On the 17th January according to Badge,
Nathuram Godse went to have a last darshan of Savarkar at bombay. while Badge and
Shankar waited outside , Nathuram and Apte went in. On coming out, Apte told Badge
that Savarkar had said to them, “Yashasvi houn ya- be successful and return.” Apte
was further reported to have said: “Tatyaravani ase bhavishya kele ahe ki
Gandhijichi shambhar varshe bharali, ata, apale kam nischit onar yat kahi sanshaya
nati: Tatyarao Savarkar has predicted that Gandhiji’s hundred years are over;
there is therefore, no doubt that our mission will be successful.”

“After the bomb explosion at Birla House on the 20th January, 1948 one Jagdish
Chandra Jain, professor in Ram Narain Ruia College in Bombay, contacted the Chief
Minister of Bombay, B.G. Kher, and informed him that he had been helping Madanlal
in various ways as a refugee in need. From him he had learnt that there was a
conspiracy afoot to assassinate Gandhiji. He also gave to B.G. Kher the names of
some of the conspirators and some other details. The Bombay Government passed on
the information to Sardar Patel, who was the Minister for Home Affairs in the
Union Government, and also to Gandhiji. I had cautioned Mrs.Sonia Gandhi when
this portrait was inaugurated. (Please refer to my article URL:
http://nonviolence.ning.com/profiles/blogs/1991979:BlogPost:284

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