The Prime Minister, no less, has resorted to all the three techniques to whitewash the culpability of both the ideology he adheres to and represents, and the organisations of which he is so prominent a part. In the Orissa tragedy, Mr. Advani's first respone was to deny, even in the face of powerful prima facieevidence, that the Bajrang Dal had anything to do with the act. Mr. Advani does not say that prima facieevidence indicts the Bajrang Dal but that he would like to wait for the results of a full enquiry before the final condemnation and judgment. No, he uses the fact that a fuller enquiry has been ordered to assure audiences that he will do the needful while simultaneously denying that the Bajrang Dal has anything to do with it - a categorical claim he is in no position to justify but nonetheless makes. He and Mr. Vajpayee leave it to the others in the Sangh such as Mr. Ashok Singhal of the VHP and more minor underlings in the Orissa unit of the BJP to pursue the tropes of diversion and blaming the others.
Indian society is in deep crisis.
The desperatenature of the crisis is not signified by the fact that such forces of deceit and evil have gained tremendous political ground or because their ideology has captured so much of the minds of the opinion making and shaping elite. What is most frightening is that when in the face of the palpable and obvious evil such an ideology generates, the explicit and implicit excuses and justifications for the unacceptable are widely accepted. The minor issue is whether this utterly discredited Government led by the Sangh will be replaced soon or not. The more fundamental and decisive issue is whether the ideology it has let loose will be defeated in the next decade or more.