First consider this BJP-led government's attitude towards the Prasar Bharati. When it was in the opposition, the BJP shouted the loudest for granting autonomy to the official media in the name of "objectivity" etc. Once it came to power, one of its first measures was to exercise a strict control over the contents and programmes being aired by the DD and AIR. Given the reach of these two media, far outstripping the reach of all private channels put together, control over them facilitates the BJP's designs to manipulate public opinion and influence the minds of the people, far removed from "objectivity." What we have seen in the earlier regime of such manipulation is now sought to be legalised by the removal of these two members and facilitating the appointment of communally motivated people.

What the RSS seeks is to control the minds of the people through poisonous communal propaganda. This is necessary for achieving its rabidly intolerant project of Hindu Rashtra. The Vajpayee government is facilitating this objective by systematically seeking to control media, education, culture, and Indian history.

The efforts at achieving such a control on all such spheres as relate to shaping and influencing the minds of Indian people are evident in the appointments made to key positions in the Indian Council of Historic Research, the Indian Council for Social Science Research and the National Council for Educational Research and Training. These are only the prelude of a chillingly fascistic plan to remould the secular content of our education system and historical research in consonance with the sectarian communal outlook.

In the background of all such nefarious efforts, the attempt by the BJP-led NDA to "review" the Indian constitution assumes ominous proportions. The home minister has recently voiced the RSS vision of replacing all institutions of a secular democratic republic with those more conducive for an authoritarian state.

Barely a few weeks after assuming office, the Vajpayee government clearly indicates that the claim of leaving aside the communal agenda from the government's programme was only an eyewash. The widespread anti-Christian propaganda unleashed around the Pope's visit was only the beginning of the effort to whip-up anti-minority communal passions, which serve to advance the cause of the RSS vision of a Hindu Rashtra.

It would be naive to assume that the BJP's allies in the NDA are unaware of such designs of the RSS. Clearly, in an expression of crass opportunism to share the spoils of power, these allies continue to turn a blind eye to such diabolic designs to subvert the republican character of the Indian constitution and the diverse character of the country. Many of these allies who claim to be secular can continue to acqueise to the RSS vision only at their own peril.