By Vidya Bhushan Rawat,
The BJP government led by Narendra Modi at the Centre has completed one year and rightly it is time to evaluate the activities of this government. It was argued by the commentators that the government has come to power on ‘governance’ agenda as there was an absolute ‘policy paralysis’ during the Congress regime when the ministers as well as bureaucrats were not taking any decision. This government has overturned that and it is on a fast track to favor a few industrialists. It has continued with anti people agenda such as labor laws are being changed, consent part of the land acquisition act is being taken off so that it could be acquired at will to keep the crony capitalist in good mood.
Those of us who have been tracking the growth of Hindutva in India had already said that this government would unleash their hidden agenda once it comes to power through ‘media’ management to grab headlines as Sangh ideologue Arun Shourie said in an interview adding that the minorities are living in a fear and when a person like Juleo Ribero can feel unsafe and unwanted in India then it need to be seriously looked into.
Photo from PIB
Arun Shourie may be a case of grapes turning sour but the fact is that this government has wonderfully developed the cocktail of Corporate and Hindutva to strengthen its agenda. With huge flow of funds, corporate are enjoying the hospitality of the government. Some of these industrialists are part of Prime Minister’s business trip abroad, which actually never happened in the past in such an unashamed way. If the current government’s favoritism remains unstopped, one may see Adani Group becoming the biggest ‘corporate’ house of the country leaving behind another friend Mukesh Ambani.
There is no growth factor in India. Reports of farmers’ suicide are already there and the government has not shown any inclination to address the issue. Prime Minister Modi and his advisers felt that they can ‘convince’ the people all the time with high voltage media distortion campaign through raising various non issues and converting them into major polarization material everyday so that their economic agenda is smoothly implemented without any protest but the people can not be fooled all the time and there are restive signs all over the country against the policies of this government which favors a few and torture most of the poor.
Despite all our apprehensions about the government and the man who was leading it, the people all over the country actually got convinced that there is a ‘Gujarat’ model which would bring achhe din for all which was emphasized so much and for the first time in the past 28 years, a single party got absolute majority in Parliament. The Prime Minister had goodwill of the people and even many of the Muslim leaders felt that things would change and he would get away with the dark chapter of 2002 and initiate a new chapter with minorities particularly the Muslims but as things stand today we can only say that the government has not been able to create an atmosphere of good will among the people but an environment of fear and apprehension is being spread through lies and distortion campaign and cooked up stories in the media.
It was outrageous to see that there is no positive action to ensure that victims of Mujaffarnagar violence get justice and those who have lost everything in these well-orchestrated riots get rehabilitated. A large number of people are still living in relief camps and not being allowed to go back their home. Those who were behind these riots have been honored by the government and given important positions both with in the party and the government. It is also a fact that Uttar Pradesh government’s own track record in this regard has been highly questionable.
Mujaffarnagar experiment actually helped the BJP in a big way as it polarized people in Western Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi to some extent and the party tried to reap the harvest through creating similar conditions in Trilokpuri in Delhi but failed miserably as people realized the dangers of it yet different outfits of Sangh Parivar have emerged in the past one year to vitiate the atmosphere particularly to corner the Muslims and their cultural heritage. Over 500 riots have been reported in Uttar Pradesh at different places in the year 2014 particularly on smaller issues such as noise of the loudspeakers, petty squabbles, village land disputes particularly common properties, cow slaughtering or beef eating. The sudden growth in the number of RSS Shakhas make thing uncomfortable for many. Slogans like Vande-mataram and Bharat mataki jai are shouted in a provocative way particularly if it is passing through or being organized near a Muslim locality. Everywhere ‘controversial’ issues are being raked up and a new definition is being attempted to it. Everything in India has a Hindu past, is the new theory and hence ‘new’ ‘research’ is being forwarded to us through the likes of Deenanath Batras so that people of our country get ‘authentic’ information about our past. So Taj Mahal is a shiva Temple and fictitious cases are being filed. The problem is that such issues are being deliberately converted into ‘legal’ framework to create political controversy and create conditions for further isolation of Muslims to consolidate the ‘Hindus’.
It is important to understand the modus operandi of the Hindutva outfits these days and not all of them are necessarily creation of the Sangh Parivar yet all of them feel that nothing could happen as it is their ‘own’ government. These outfits are raising ‘non’ issues but they know it well that once they pick it up and convert it into political debate. They too get some time on prime time and while government will assure something yet place a rider on the issues raised by these nondescript outfits such as happened in Delhi recently which defaced all the names of the roads named under the Mughal rulers like Shahjahan Road, Feroj Shah Road and other like them and after the incident they spoke on Television and threatened to do again. This happened in the heart of the capital of India and the government could do nothing. No one was arrested and so far we did not hear any reaction from the government.
The fact is that those in power today support such thoughts as India for them is of ‘Hindu’ nationalists as it is their ‘pitrabhumi’ or fatherland as defined by Savarkar. Hence it is important to instill a sense of ‘pride’ among Hindus which is only possible through ‘rewriting’ history and for that all Mughals have to be decried and denounced as ‘outsiders’ and hence as Rajnath Singh said, ‘Akbar may have been great but Maha Rana Pratap was definitely greater’, and interesting part is added in a ‘mythology’ which he just created saying that ‘even’ Vietnam’s revolution was ‘inspired’ by Pratap’s valor. To further strengthen his claim he said that even Bhagat Singh and Chandra Shekhar Azad got ideas from the ‘guerilla warfare’ of Rana Pratap.
Hindutva’s assault on Muslim is multi pronged and need to be understood well. On the one side there is a ‘history’ project and other side cultural isolation of the Muslims through deliberately raising ‘sensitive’ issues, which most non-Muslims too ‘support’ at certain point of time. The issue of beef is one such issue, which need to be seriously understood from a perspective of not just food diversity but also cultural habits of Dalits and Aadivasis in many regions. Even if we do not go to the historical fact of Brahmins eating beef in India, it is important to respect food as a culture. If we want to make India into Hindu nation as a counterpart of Islamic countries where selling and eating pork is constitutionally prohibited and only Halal meat is possible to eat then we are charting towards a dangerous road map which might create hundreds of problem as the fact is that India with its rich cultural diversity and its homogenization will only create Hindu Taliban who will control our minds and food habits. The Halal and Jhatka meet concept also come handy for the Sangh Parivar and hence all the non-Muslims too develop such tendencies to doubt Muslims. The racial prejudices are practiced in our society also when buffalo beef is allowed but cow beef is banned. We would appreciate if the government of India could release the list of main beef suppliers in India and their owners and we will have a hugely surprising list of those who fight against beef politically actually are the owners of big slaughter houses. The conspiracy of beef banned has to be understood. How has the same BJP stopped short of calling for beef ban in the north-east where their own colleagues in the party warned them against raising any such issue? Why has the chief minister of Goa not banned beef in his state when his ‘elder’ leader in Maharashtra done so?
We know people in our societies develop ‘cold’ feelings for those who have ‘different’ eating habits. Despite that we lived together for years. It is not that only Muslims eat beef or only they are doing business out of it but the attempt by the government is targeted at them. Jhatka and Halal meet controversy is also used to polarize as the ‘Hindu’ population would go to Jhatka while the Muslims would eat Halal meet but at the end of the day both serve the moblisation of communities and create an image of homogenization.
In the past few years the Khap Panchayats dominated the social debate though political parties were not able to take up a stand against it. Slowly, these Khap Panchayats actually became ‘mobilisation’ ground for the Hindutva in the name of community identity though media rose up the issue and asked difficult questions. Khap question actually created an image of caste ridden society and Sangh Parivar is keen to ‘eliminate’ the whole caste discrimination question and hence it created a new terminology of ‘Love Jihad’ to convert the whole issue of ‘right to choice’ into a communal question between the Hindus and Muslims. The old khaps jumped into the bandwagon of this new divisive agenda, which got justified by Sangh Parivar and their ‘experts’. The police failure to protect the people and their inter-religious marriages is a grave challenge to our fundamental rights particularly the issue of our choices. A khap cannot decide an individual’s right but slowly we are entering into that region where individual’s will has to be surrendered to these over dominating Khaps, a dangerous sign of things for the coming days. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamilnadu, Maharastra, Karnataka are some of the states where this ‘experiment’ is threatening individuals to protect their right to choice.
It is a well-established fact that Muslims in India are marginalized and need all efforts for their uplift socially and economically. There are many ‘castes’ among Muslims who are backwards and Dalits but every time the issue is raised there is an alarming signal from the Hindutva organisations. The issue of Muslim reservation comes handy for them to organize the Dalits and OBCs into a block to oppose it and seek the reservation outside their defined quota. The ‘Parivar’ is dead against any support to Muslims and that is why these contradictions are used by it to penetrate into the communities it has never been able to reach.
Ambedkar’s writings are being used to push the double agenda of the Sangh Parivar. One, place Ambedkar as anti Muslim nationalist and second bring Dalits into broader Hindu fold by claiming that Buddhism is nothing but Hinduism. Already, the look east policy and attempt to woe Dalits and Buddhist is a clear agenda of ‘broadening’ Hindutva and stop them aliening with Muslims and other minorities. In fact, even minorities are being divided between those who are ‘considered’ Indian in the term of their ‘pitrabhumi’ verses those who ‘pitrabhumi’ is not India. So, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists are actually being placed in one block and being pitched against Muslims and Christians. It is therefore important for us to remind them clearly to study ‘Riddles of Rama and Krishna’ which was fiercely opposed by the caste Hindus when being published. One can not forget the 22 oaths that Dr Ambedkar asked his followers to take when embracing Buddhism maintain clearly that they will not believe in any of the Hindu gods and rituals. It is also clear that Ambedkar while critical of ‘political Islam’ said that Hindu Rashtra would be a calamity for the nation.
The issue of Ghar-wapasi is nothing but distortion of facts to twist them to fix into the agenda of Sangh Parivar to intimidate the Muslims and Christians. It is not an unknown fact that most of the religion in the world grew because of people converted after learning about them. It is also a fact that people are lured into conversion but we should also not underestimate people’s understanding of the issue. Most of the people in India actually converted to save themselves from the tyranny of caste system. The Hindus and the Sangh Parivar cannot shy away from this dirty fact and must accept it. If money were the sole criteria the upper caste Hindus would have converted fast as many of them did in Kerala and elsewhere and started practicing the same caste system in their respective religions too. While as an atheist, I have no love for religion but as a human rights defender, I stand with the rights of minorities to protect, promote and propagate their religious values as long as they are not in violation of human rights of an individual. It is true about the Hindutva people also so long as they do not violate the democratic spirit of the constitution. The problem with Sangh Parivar is not Christians that much as Muslims as they know it well that Islam in India gave people a choice to live with their head high. The biggest jolt to them came in term of mass conversion in Meenakshipuram in 1981 when over 800 Dalits embraced Islam.
The problem with brahmanical Hinduism is that it does not believe in conversion as the entire edifice of Brahmanism is based on theory of ‘purity’ based on our ‘birth’ and hence we cannot change that here. A Dalit will always remain a dalit as a Brahmin even if he is an idiot, corrupt and ignorant will have to be respected according to Manu Dharmshastra. This edifice based on superstructure of caste does not allow people to convert into ‘Hinduism’ as in case some body want to ‘convert’ to Hindiusm then which ‘caste’ would you place him and therefore it makes mockery of the entire ‘ghar-wapasi’ exercise even technically and in legal terms most of these campaign are intimidating the minorities and Dalits and using their vulnerabilities and yet no action has been taken against any of those who committed these crimes. Hate mongers like Sakshi Maharaj, Giriraj Singh, Adityanath, Niranjan Jyoti should face law of the land for their hate speeches yet they roam freely and are much in demand for ‘electioneering’. The manipulations of the first past the post system has damaged Muslims more as it has become relatively easier to create frenzy about Muslims through social media propaganda and therefore marginalizing them further. Rumors put as ‘stories’ on social media are used to create an intimidating environment for Muslims all over the country. It is using different tactics at different places particularly exploiting local ‘sentiments’ and minute property ‘disputes’ to build up an environment of terror. Assam and Bengal are the target zones as situation there will actually define the saffron politics elsewhere. Muslims continue to live in fear in Assam as in certain Bodo dominated areas there is a perpetual threat to their life. In May last year, Bodo militants massacred over 40 Muslims and there is a perpetual threat to the lives of Muslims in the region. The state government failed to protect the lives of Muslims being termed as ‘Bangladeshis’. In a similar case an innocent person was dragged out of Kohima Jail and lynched in the public for ‘raping’ a native woman. The fact of the story was different but the man whose father and brothers worked with Indian Air Force was termed as Bangladeshi. Whipping up sentiments through ‘cultural’ issues is the based practice to spread the poisonous agenda and intimidation.
Ambedkar’s name is being used for ‘Ghar-wapasi’ as he claimed that embracing Buddhism was not ‘conversion’ but reclaiming our old glory. Yes, DrAmbedkar said that Dalits were the original Buddhists and definitely Buddhism was a war against unequal caste based brahmanical social order. There should be no doubt in any body’s mind that Buddha was thrown away from the land of his birth by the same forces who are today trying to claim him and coopt the Dalits into their system which never respected them and treated them equally.
One of the biggest ironies of our constitution was ‘conversion’ of all the non-Muslims and non-Christians into Hindu consolidated block and therefore Dalits, tribal, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains all became automatically Hindus. Today, these different identities are questioning and seeking their own identities and cannot be merged as a Hindu identity as most of them emerged as a protest and revolt against the caste-ist brahminism. There was a common thread in them against caste discrimination and inequality among people.
Newspapers are writing that there have been no riots in the past one-year and hence Muslims are happy.One does not need to think of Gujarat 2002, Mujaffarnagar 2013 happening all the time. Their symptoms are serious and continue to haunt people. No attempt is being made to reach Muslims and protect their interest though every thing is being done with sole target to erase their historical role in India’s development and keep them isolated socially, economically and politically.The history of communal disturbances in India shows that these are created in the regions where Muslims have substantial business presence and therefore harm their business interest. In the new modus operandi the effort is on creating ‘low-intensity’ disturbances, which are more powerful in creating political ‘impact’to further isolate the Muslims in different areas particularly the new ones so that the issue continue to remain in the news. The common symbols are used to segregate the Muslims further. Muslim properties are targeted and a small ‘altercation’ ensures big social media propaganda with hate messages immediately. By the time media picks up the story, it is already too late and damaged is done. Just a few days back when the Muslim students were protesting at the Railway station in Shamli(they had certain grievances and the issue was not communal but a law and order one) some of the local leaders started tweeting the with threatening hate messages and openly asking for eliminating the Muslims. This hate campaign did not become the major issue in the media but Muslims ‘rioting’ became the talk of the town. Cow slaughter issue has already picked up as campaign by Hindu organisations all over Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and one can see the wall writings with slogans like ‘Gau mata ke hatyaaro ko fansi kee saza do’.
The common heritage and cultural symbols are being attacked. Most of the sufi shrines and Dargahs are now under the threats. Shankaracharya had already tried to communalise the issue against Shirdi Sai baba but failed as ‘faith’ in Sai remains undented. A city like Delhi which is known world over for its heritage and which could have got the ‘World Heritage City’ title for which the last government had put forward the application is denied that heritage by the current regime just because it does not want to claim the Mughal Heritage our own heritage. Moreover, in the time of land for sale perhaps a heritage tag would deny the ‘profit mongers’ a chance to mint money but it reflect the mindset of the those in power.
The ghettoization and isolation of Muslim is complete. It is difficult for a young Muslim to find a house on rent in a non-Muslim space. Apartments are being advertised as per community lines. Muslims today are unwanted in jobs and looked in great suspicion elsewhere. There were popular myths against them but now these have become prejudices and are reflected shamelessly in open without any hindrance and fear. That a Mumbai based diamond company rejected the application of a Muslim boy by openly saying that non-Muslims alone can be part of their company shows how the political ‘environment’ is emboldening the people and organisations.
Contrary to creating an environment of good will, which could have been done through various means including some specific measures for the welfare of the community, creating an environment of trust and confidence, we find that those who are facing serious charges of crimes, in various riots are getting bailed out by the government and its investigating agencies. Ironically, those who stood with people, fought for their rights, documented cases and took the constitutional and legal route to get the people justice are being hounded out and criminalized. A government or a political party should not isolate a community which has glorious history of over 500 years in this country and which is part and parcel of our living togetherness. Facts are clear that Muslims in India carried the heavy weight of ‘partition’ of India for no fault of their own and suffered heavily on account of it as any attempt to support their participation in power structure is being termed as ‘separatist’ and threat to nation. There is no doubt that current threat to their cultural identity and life remain in the absence of a strong and correct stand of parties claim to be secular. In fact, Muslim faced more betrayal from them than believing in a government or a party, which always blamed parties for ‘appeasement’ of Muslims. Now the party is in power and should ask its ministers to reveal all the data of ‘appeasement’ of Muslims for our knowledge as what is their percentage in our government services, police, army, administration as well as in Parliament so that the nation know what is the ‘reality’ of appeasement’.
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( Vidya Bhushan Rawat is a human rights activist and political analyst. This article is part of civil society report published by ANHAD under title ‘365 days : Democracy and secularism under the Modi regime’.)