Congress created Pakistan, Pakistan created the BJP?

The rise of fundamentalists in the third world is a reaction to the liberal sway post WWII plus the increasing economic divide between the haves and the have-nots. The sad irony is that this rise is mirrored in the developed nations too. The neoconzix, some Christian evangelists and the fringe rightist parties in europe for instance. And India is no exception. The rise of fundamentalist parties mirrors the rise of fundamentalists in Pakistan.

Fehmida Riaz recited a poem of hers in the Baithak some years ago. This was the same poem she had recited at a Mushaira in Delhi which she attended along with Ahmed Faraz. She told me when she recited this poem, hooligans started disrupting the Mushaira.

What she was lamenting in her poem was that post Gen. Zi(n)a, the fundamentalist fringe had received a shot in the arm and were rapidly spreading their cancer and addressing her audience was asking Indians why have they not learned anything from the spread of hate, distrust and communalism that the fundamentalists promote.~~~t

Columnist A.G. Noorani last week quoted an encounter Nehru had in 1963 with young and senior foreign ministry officers. His foreign secretary Y.D. Gundevia reminded Nehru that the communists had won power in Kerala in 1957 and asked: ‘But what happens to the services if the communists are elected to power, tomorrow, at the Centre, here in New Delhi?’

Gundevia records: ‘He pondered over my long drawn out question and then said, looking across the room, ‘Communists, communists, communists, why are all of you so obsessed with communists and communism? What is it that communists can do that we cannot do and have not done for the country? Why do you imagine the
communists will ever be voted into power at the Centre?’ There was a long pause
after this and then he said, spelling it out slowly and very deliberately, ‘The danger to India, mark you, is not communism, it is Hindu right-wing communalism.’

[thanks FK]