Even in normal times, if the RSS head of a state (vibhag) was sacked and he decided to form a separate unit, taking with him almost the entire RSS organization in the state, it would have been a very big development. But when the same “event” happens during an election year, where the split in the sangh parivar is directly linked to the elections, it no longer remains a sangh issue or parivar issue but a hardcore electoral issue.
And it is Subhash Velingkar’s absolute refusal to budge, even at this stage and arrive at a compromise where the BBSM backed by Velingkar’s parivar can work with the larger sangh parivar which is backing the ruling BJP, that makes him and the BBSM, very attractive to political hawks, who see this as the only opportunity to make inroads into BJP’s strongholds in the state. Strictly speaking, any political formation, which backs the BBSM or takes political mileage out of it by hobnobbing with Velingkar, will show naked political ambition where principles will be sacrificed at the altar of politics. But if politics makes strange bedfellows, politics in Goa makes impossible bed fellows where even a pariah of secular forces, like Subhash Velingkar, may become a pet of the Congress, the Goa Forward and the Aam Aadmi Party.
But political opportunism has its limits. Subhash Velignkar has been a champion of division and fragmentation. Couched in his championing of education in the mother tongue, is a larger game plan of grants for education going to the majority community and squeeze the minority institutions out of all grants. All along he, in his avatar as Goa’s RSS chief as well as the convenor of the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch, has consistently demanded an open violation of Section 3 of the Goa Language Act of Daman and Diu 1987, which prohibits the state from discriminating against any educational institution on grounds of language. The Education Policy and the cabinet decision which allows for grant in aid only to Church backed Diocesan schools, is also violative of Section 3 of the Goa Language Act, since it discriminates against giving grants to all English medium schools i.e. even those which are not managed by the Church. Therefore if the government withdraws grants, it will upgrade the violation and take it to an extreme which can be easily challenged in court and struck down. Hence what Subhash Velingkar is asking for is not only impractical but blatantly illegal.
What is shocking is that some elements in the opposition parties are actually praising Subhash Velingkar for his “conviction and consistency”. A senior medial practitioner in the Aam Aadmi Party even shot off a letter demanding why Manohar Parrikar had not been seriously questioned by the media to respond to Velignkar’s charges of him betraying the BBSM and the cause of education in the mother tongue. If anything, Mr Parrikar has to answer why the choice of choosing a language for one’s children hasn’t been left completely to parents, not as a favour but as envisaged in the Goa Official Language Act, which still continues to be legally in force. He doesn’t need to be questioned on why he “betrayed” Subhash Velignkar because it just doesn’t matter. No one can support the divisive agenda of Subhash Velignkar and the BBSM even though his actions have caused serious worry in the BJP camp, of a split in votes over the issue.
The non BJP forces who are planning to use Velingkar to capitalise on the BBSM-BJP split are guilty of principle-less and illegal politics, which has no place in Goa’s civil society. It also tears the fabric of harmony, which forces like the BBSM have consistently tried to break. Thus the letter of the AAP leader is not just in poor taste but politically deplorable.
Irrespective of how successful Velingkar’s breakaway convention today (Sunday) is, right thinking people of Goa must decide not to back forces which divide Goa. They should allow parents a level playing field of equal opportunities for their children. Dirty opportunistic politics should be kept out of this.
