Challenge To Values Of Pluralism

By Walter Fernandes

28 October, 2015
The Assam Tribune

If you are a Muslim you are automatically anti-national or terrorist till you prove your innocence. That seems to be the line of thinking of the present leaders of India. For example, the Union Minister for Culture proclaimed that the late President Dr. Abdul Kalam was a nationalist despite being a Muslim. Hundreds of Muslims have served the country in different capacities and many have died for its people. But that does not matter. The Minister tried to wriggle out of it by claiming that it was a slip of the tongue, forgetting, as Tunku Varadarajan said (Indian Express, September 20, 2015) that the tongue slips where the mind is. That slip seems to have become the norm as the Dadri, Mainpuri, Himachal Pradesh and J&K incidents show. This late reaction to these fundamentalist acts comes because such accusations continue even at this stage. One would have kept quiet if it were a stray incident. But there is method in this madness and indications are that the incidents are organized.

Beef has become its symbol and Muslims have become a dispensable commodity in this effort to impose Hindutva on secular India. In every case a rumour is spread and mobs react “spontaneously” and kill people. In Dadri it was a false accusation of a calf killed by a Muslim family and a mob killed a 52-year old Muslim man. In Mainpuri there certainly was a dead cow, given by its Hindu owner to a Muslim friend. The Muslim was declared guilty and was attacked. Fortunately, he was not killed unlike the Dalit man at Najafgarh to whom was assigned the task of transporting a dead cow. In J&K the driver and cleaner of a truck are attacked on the pretext that they were smuggling cows for slaughter. Himachal Pradesh witnessed a similar incident.

The reaction of senior leaders or lack of it shows that they are not stray incidents. Sangeet Som, an elected BJP legislator and an accused in the Muzaffarnagar communal riots, goes to Dadri, incites people and demands the release of some “innocent Hindus” arrested for the murder of the Muslim man. There is total silence from senior leaders till the President breaks the protocol of sticking to the prepared text and reminds the nation that its people cannot abandon the core values of pluralism. After it at the fag end of an election speech Mr Narendra Modi says that the President’s advice has to be followed without, however, mentioning, leave alone condemning, the Dadri incident. After this incident and the one at Mainpuri the Minister for Culture makes more statements and he is greeted with silence from the senior leaders, so are the statements of a four-term BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj. There is silence over the attack on the workers of a truck in J&K and HP on the pretext that they were smuggling cows for slaughter. The BJP chief minister of Haryana tells Muslims that they can remain in India only if they stop eating beef. One is informed by “sources” that he and three others were reprimanded by the BJP President but no official statement is made. Sakshi Maharaj reacts to the news item by saying “I looked at Amit Shah and he looked at him” and it seems to have ended there. They are not fringe elements but have become the mainstream.

The leaders found no time to comment even when its ally, the Shiv Sena blackened the face of the RSS ideologue and Advani protégé, Sudheendra Kulkarni for the “sin” of organizing the book release of the former Pakistani foreign minister. The alliance has continued both at the Centre and in Maharashtra without even a public reproach or threat. Some writers surrendered their Akademi awards because of the silence of the Sahitya Akademi on what they perceived as attacks on the democratic and secular culture of India. The reaction of Mr Arun Jaitley, a senior minister, was to state that it is a Congress conspiracy to defame the BJP and to ask what the writers did during the Emergency. Obviously he is unaware that Nayantara Sehgal, a cousin of Indira Gamdhi and her husband were victimized because of their opposition to the Emergency. Also a few more of the writers had opposed it while many others were too small to do it or were probably not born at that time. He also forgot that many of the same authors have been critical of the Congress Government and were victimize for it. Finally when the Shiv Sena made it difficult for Pakistan to play in the forthcoming T20 World Cup in Mumbai Mr. Jaitley made a strong statement that the Dadri murder was “unfortunate and condemnable” but added that publicity given to such incidents encourages more of them and that vandalism gives a bad image to the country. There was no direct condemnation of the killings. For the Finance Minister, the image of the country with foreign nations is more important than the people of India.

Another strategy is for the leaders to dissociate themselves from such statements or incidents after they occur but take no other action. For example, Panchjanya, an RSS Hindi weekly stated in an article that the Vedas suggest death to people who kill cows. Initially the leaders said that it was not the view of the weekly. When that did not hold water they said that Panchjanya is not a mouthpiece of RSS. They ignored the fact that its website states clearly that this weekly was started in 1948 as its mouthpiece, with Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee as its editor. A Hindi book “Param Vaibhav ke Path Per” published in 1997 by the RSS publication house Suruchi Prakashan of Delhi gives details of all the organizations and publications it has created. On page 61 it mentions The Organiser (English) and Panchyajna (Hindi) as its official organs.

Such doublespeak will continue as long as efforts are made to turn the country into a Hindu Rashtra. Some vague statements will be made when the situation embarrasses the leaders. For example not a word has been said about the decision of Hindu Mahasabha to observe November 15 as Balidan Divas of Gandhi’s murderer Naturam Godse. If there is an uproar the leaders will come up with some vague statement and may even call it a leftist or pseudo-secular conspiracy. In the meantime Muslims will continue to be treated as enemies of the nation till they prove their innocence.

Dr Walter Fernandes, Senior Fellow, North Eastern Social Research Centre