An Hour Of Saffron Democracy
By Bhat iqbal
02 September,2010
Countercurrents.org
The epitome of justice for which human conscience has to stand was on the night of 28th August brutalized by the tyranny of saffron democracy. It was by the time of 10.00 pm when the public talk on Anarchy in Kashmir organized by ABVP (student organization of BJP) in JNU was going to start. As per the existing ethos and vibrant culture of this institution many students had turned up for the talk. Among them were may kashmiri students who had also come to hear out the speakers. As usual not to surprise, first speaker turned out to be a kashmiri pandit. As he began to deliver the speech by tracing out the shaivism in Kashmir and adding to it unrelated and tampered historical facts. Irony of the hour was that he even argued that Alexander ( sikander ) taking him as a Muslim ruler came to Kashmir and forced the Hindus ( pundits) living there to change to Islam or perish and this is where from the exile of the kashmiri pundits has a beginning. For clarification, Alexander was a pagan and not a Muslim ruler. Delivering his speech along the communal lines and recoursing the Kashmir’s struggle as a pogrom against Hindus and what not. Even though the speaker was objected by many Kashmiris not to speak along the communal lines and always the reply was India is a democracy and everyone has right to speak. The speaker left nothing out in the conclusion by comparing the sacrifices and killings in Kashmir with the talibanisation and not regretting even for a minute on the blood of those innocents who were just eight or nine years old.
In the line stood up the very gentle and eloquent and ofcourse the able sympathizer of the Hindus if not Indians. The speaker which I am talking about turned out to be the parliamentarian of the biggest opposition party in Indian parliament. His speech in no way different from the earlier one and had only single face of the coin and it was the Hindu kashmiri and their victimization. Believe me the tragedy is that even not a sigh and mention of what kashmiris have been suffering from several decades ……….Oh anyway I should realize that they have their own saffron democracy to which in no way Kashmiris are a part. Being part of the audience my emotions began to burst out when everything was labeled on the part of kashmiri for a crime of being Muslims. Claiming so many times as being secular and democratic people but the notion was vivid that they were spreading the message that Kashmir issue is a communal one. Quoting the one incident of kashmiri pandit being killed and attributing it to the kashmiris was all what they had to say. But the unfortunate episode is that the audience was not told about the number of disappeared persons in Kashmir, no memory of kunanposhpora (where in 46 women were raped in a single night by the brave Indian army), no memory of the number of persons who are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and what not. To the great level of our acceptance and patience we were hearing out as it was question of liberty and freedom of which Indian constitution guarantees to them but not for the kashmiris who are oppressed killed and brutalized for maintain the colour of their tricolor with our blood.
But at the end many of the kashmiri girl students objected against this criminalization and communalization of kashmiris and to wrong information that was being given out to the audience. As a reaction to this there happened mayhem and objectionable and rude remarks and behavior was shown by the saffron brigade. At the end we had as always to leave the hall but with a message which stone pelters and not terrorists have been giving to the Indian nation from last 80 days of strike in Kashmir.
I am worried how long they are going to mislead the people of their nation and how long they are going to keep this misleading dilemma of accession hidden from their people. Why they can’t see history as it has been. In the below I am taking an excerpts from an article “KAK AND SHEIKH” by A G Noorani which appeared in frontline dated 28th August 2010.
If Jayaprakash Narayan is hailed as India's conscience-keeper it is because he never hesitated to speak the unpopular truth. He wrote to Nehru (“Dear Bhai”) on May 1, 1956: “May I also take this opportunity of saying a word about Kashmir – merely to put my views before you, without in the least wanting to criticise or influence. From all the information that I have, 95 per cent of Kashmir Muslims do not wish to be or remain Indian citizens. I doubt therefore the wisdom of trying to ‘keep' people by force where they do not wish to stay. “This cannot but have serious long-term political consequences, though immediately it may suit policy and please public opinion. From the point of view of the desirability of establishing a peaceful social order, it cannot but prove disastrous. I do earnestly wish that this question be considered more from a human, rather than a nationalist, point of view” (Bimal Prasad; Selected Works of Jayaprakash Narayan, 1954-60; Vol. 7; page 115).
Then again and again why are they propounding the myth that Kashmir is an integral part of India? If they project the kashmiri movement as a communal one why they forget to take a recourse to history and see, was Kashmir communal during partition when Muslims and Hindus were butchering out each other. If Kashmir struggle is communal then how come five lakh Hindus perform Amarnath yatra peacefully. I have no grudge in saying that Gujarat pogrom and Babri Masjid demolition have casted the colour of your democracy which Thomas Blom Hansen called Saffron democracy in book titled as Saffron wave: Democracy and Hindu nationalism in modern India. If within year’s time of your rule in India’s one of the states you come up with the bill “ban on cow slaughter” justifying it on the grounds of public order and aspirations of major segment of the society. Then where does the secular character of your country go when you cannot take the cognizance of the issue of pork meat with which aspirations of certain section of community of your nation are associated. Arundhati Roy in an essay on democracy in his book Algebra of infinite justice put as, “Increasingly, Indian nationalism has come to mean Hindu nationalism, which defines itself not through a respect or regard for itself, but through a hatred of the other. And the other, for the moment, is not just Pakistan, its Muslim”. How can one forget the myth these people have been propagating that Muslims are breeding like anything and there are going to outnumber the Hindus. But thinkers like Prof. Mohan Rao have shown that the fertility rate of Hindus is more than Muslims.
These people are putting kashmiri struggle along the lines of talibanisation as they have to somehow equate it with their own agenda of saffronisation. Time has come where in communication barriers are being overcome and common people are getting aware of what actually exists on the ground. You may befool the people for many generations even by distorting the history but you cannot make the sentiments to die.
Revolutionaries can be wiped out but not the revolution.
(Bhat iqbal is a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru university and can be mailed at [email protected])
