Ritual retaliation

Impending elections provoke strange actions and reactions from rival parties, as the latest bout between the local units of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)/Rashtriya Swayamsevak (RSS) Sangh in Madhya Pradesh shows. In Mandsaur, 325 km west of Bhopal, members of the Congress, including sitting municipal corporaters, organised a cleanliness drive in the party office. But this was not the usual exercise with brooms and vacuum cleaners. Instead, pundits were invited to perform a purifying hawan, and even spray a non-toxic, non-synthetic disinfectant concocted by mixing neem, rose-water and cow urine. What prompted them to do so was an alleged attack by the BJP and RSS activists on the office. "They are dirty-minded people and after their attack the office had become ashudha (impure). Instead of lodging a police complaint we preferred to purify the office," a Congress member said disdainfully. The attack by members of the Sangh Parivar duo followed a remark by Congress state president Kanti Lal Bhuria that RSS workers and BJP members were involved in provoking the elopement of tribal girls. No doubt the irony of an avowedly secular party using Hindu purification rituals as a retaliation against Hindu nationalist parties escaped local Congressmen.