1. Unabated Communal Offensive: Barbaric Times Under Saffron Brigade;
2. Communalising Education: Falsifying History;
3. Vajpayee (Kar)Grilled;
4. National Security -- Major Setback;
5. Pokhran to Kargil: BJP's Pro-American Foreign Policy;
6. Why These Elections? BJP's 13 Falsehoods;
7. Deteriorating Conditions of the Rural Masses;
8. Miserable living conditions of the working people;
9. Videshi in the name of Swadeshi; and
10. The great telecom robbery and other murky dealings.

These pamphlets would be released in sets of four clusters. Today's release, exposing the BJP's claims on eliminating bhay will be followed by pamphlets No. 3, 4 and 5 dealing with the Vajpayee government's handling of national security. Subsequently, the Vajpyee government's miserable performance relating to eliminating bhook and bhashtachar will be released.

 Extracts from the pamphlet

Unabated Communal Offensive : Barbaric Times Under Saffron Brigade

A paper as friendly to the BJP as Pioneer was constrained to observe on January 4, 1999: "From December 25 to 31, 1998 'forces of Hindutva' set fire to nine and vandalised eleven Churches across the Dangs, the smallest district in Gujarat. In pre-planned guerrilla style maneouvre, night after night through the week, hundreds of these men descended on to the villages to break, vandalise and set fire at their fancy, Churches, prayer houses and beat up men and women of the Christian faith. It is an attack on the fundamental rights and personal freedom that the Indian constitution assures to all citizens of the country. It threatens to reduce democracy to majoritarianism." ……………

All this is still early January. What happened in the later half of January of this year in Orissa is ghastly. The hate campaign of the Hindutva forces against Christians culminated in the monstrous act of burning alive of an Australian Evangelist missionary and two of his children in Keonjhar district of Orissa on the night of January 22-23. Graham Stewart Staines, 58 and his sons Philip 9, and Timothy 6, died when the jeep in which they were sleeping at Manoharpur village was set on fire by Bajrang Dal activists. An eye witness account of the heart rending incident was given by a friend of the victim , Shubhankar Ghosh : " Barely 300 yards from the chapel door where Staines and his children slept in the station wagon, I saw a mob surrounding the vehicle. I heard shouts, beating, screams, brick batting, banging of doors. They were shouting maro, maro and Zindabad. Then suddenly the station wagon was in flames. The mob prevented all rescue efforts. When they left an hour later, Staines and his children lay charred. It was gruesome. I will never forget." …………..

In yet another instance of the Saffron Brigade's provocative action, on December 3, 1998 more than 10,000 supporters of the Parivar came close to triggering off a blood bath at the Baba Budangiri shrine in Chickmanglur district of Karnataka. The shrine is managed by a Muslim priestly family for centuries and is visited by Hindus and Muslims alike. It has been a symbol of Hindu-Muslim amity. It was to disrupt this amity that the saffron Brigade had planned to 'liberate' the shrine and also announced their plan to 'liberate' another dargah in Raichur……………..

The Commission found that the BJP's activities had a key role to play in fomenting communal riots in Bombay. The commission noted, "From or about July 1992, the BJP orchestrated its campaign for construction of a temple at Ayodhya by holding Ram Paduka processions, Chowk Sabhas and meetings, using these occasions for delivering speeches exhorting the Hindus to become united on the issue".

Communalising Education: Falsifying History

All the bravado evaporated on the day the conference (of State Education Ministers in October, 1998) began. No fewer than 15 state ministers made it clear that they would rather kick the table over and depart than partake of an occasion that seemed solely intended to legitimise the intrusion of the divisive ideology of Hindutva into formative educational influences. Prime Minister Vajpayee made his introductory speech after several moments of bewilderment at the vehemence of the protests he witnessed. But in declaiming against bigotry in the educational process, Vajpayee did what he is best at -- he made a calculated overture to liberal political opinion while yielding nothing in terms of his loyalty to the Hindutva cause. In remarks made shortly after the conference, he made due amends to the Hindutva brotherhood by denouncing all objections to the Saraswati Vandana as an "insult to the nation''……..

Vidya Bharati (or the Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Siksha Sansthan) was established in 1978, with the objective of providing a coherent organisational setting for the activities of the RSS in education. Insiders claim today that the organisation runs 14,000 schools at the nursery, primary and secondary levels and has over 18 lakh students under its tutelage. These schools are spread all over the states (except Mizoram), and they employ an estimated 80,000 teachers. The Vidya Bharati also controls 60 colleges which offer graduate and post-graduate education, and 25 other institutions of higher learning. Further, the organisation runs two teacher-training colleges, in Jaipur and Ahmednagar………

The Vidya Bharati schools operate on the basis of a "core curriculum'' that operationalises the Hindutva worldview. The core curriculum among other things, seeks to pass off as historical truth the scientifically dubious claim that the site where the Babri Masjid stood at Ayodhya is the birthplace of Ram. And arguing in favour of a ban on cow slaughter, it states that the cow "is the mother of all beings and the abode of gods''.

The core curriculum further teaches that Homer's Iliad is not an original work but an adaptation of Valmiki's Ramayana. According to these teachings, almost all the civilisations of the world were inspired by, indeed founded on, Sanskritic culture…….

One historical period that has been completely reworked is the freedom movement. Here the BJP has reinvented its past and put the RSS and its leaders at the forefront of the historic struggle for national liberation, creating a history that is patently false. This has been done, among other things, to wash off the stains of past villainy -- the abject collaboration with British imperialism and the RSS' culpability, proven beyond doubt, in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi…….