Whither Democracy, Welcome Mobocracy
By Ra Ravishankar
In his famous speech on August 14,1947, Nehru said, "We have often been unworthy followers of his [Gandhiji] and have strayed from his message ..." and expressed hopes for a better future. However, his optimism proved to be unfounded for we first killed Gandhiji and then set about killing whatever he stood for. Hardly had we recovered from the trauma of partition when trouble started brewing again. In December 1949, a crowd illegally broke open the Babri Masjid locks and installed an idol of Ram claiming that the mosque had been built on the debris of a Ram temple.
In the absence of conclusive evidence, maintaining the status quo would have been the natural choice. But the then District Magistrate KK Nayyar, who later joined the Jan Sangh, promptly closed the mosque for prayers. Thus started one of the longest, bloodiest and evidently avoidable disputes.
Subjudice for more than 50 years now, the Ram Temple issue has caused numerous communal riots claiming thousands of human lives, not to mention the stark polarization of society along religious lines. Significantly, when reliable historical records existed, as in the case of the Somnath temple, there was no opposition to a reclamation. Infact, the Somnath temple was inaugurated by no less a person than the then President, Rajendra Prasad.
The recent pogrom in Gujarat has alone claimed more lives than the Kargil war. In a recent interview, noted political scientist Ghanshyam Shah recounts the sequence of events that led to the Ahmedabad riots of 1969. A few months before the riots, the RSS formed the Dharma Raksha Samiti (Religion Protection Council), and the 1965 war with Pakistan was used to whip up nationalist and anti-Pakistan sentiments.
Just before the riots, the Jan Sangh leaders Balraj Madhok and Vajpayee made provocative speeches, with the latter appealing to the 'rashtra bhakti' (patriotism) of the people. I have chosen to highlight the Ahmedabad riots, for when analyzed in conjunction with the present carnage, it's easy to see how far we have slipped in the 33 years since then.
The Hindu Right (HR) had then boasted that it was for the first time in India that more Muslims were killed than Hindus, and that the Muslims had been taught a lesson [Shreekant Sambrani, Gujarat's Burning Train: India's Inferno?]. The death sheet is even more to its liking today, and yes, the comments are the same too. Pakistan-bashing and 'protection' of Hinduism continue to be their pet themes.
The brutish majority that the Hindus were/are, they were/are hardly the ones requiring protection. Therefore, the name 'Dharma Raksha Samiti' does sound ludicrous. Ludicrous it is, no doubt, but the joke is on us who let such labels pass. Before I go any further, a brief digression on the HR - its views and aims - is in order.
V D Savarkar, president of the Hindu Mahasabha from 1937 to 1942, and the 'father' of the HR in India, declared in August 1938: "Germany has every right to resort to Nazism and Italy to Fascism and events have justified that those isms and forms of governments were imperative and beneficial to them under the conditions that obtained there." [Marzia Casolari, Hindutva's foreign tie-up in the 1930s]
In October 1938, he went further in his defence of Nazism: "A Nation is formed by a majority living therein. What did the Jews do in Germany? They being in minority were driven out from Germany". And in July 1939: "Nationality did not depend so much on a common geographical area as on unity of thought, religion, language and culture. For this reason the Germans and the Jews could no be regarded as a nation".
Later that year, in the 21st session of the Hindu Mahasabha, he laid all doubts to rest with his comment: "...the Indian Muslims are on the whole more inclined to identify themselves and their interests with Muslims outside India than Hindus who live next door, like Jews in Germany".
The obvious conclusion is that since Muslims and Hindus don't possess a 'unity of thought, religion, language and culture', they can't coexist. And being the minority community, Muslims need to be at the mercy of the Hindus. The following comment by Golwalkar, one of the early stalwarts of the RSS, further exemplifies the exclusionism of the HR:
"To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races - the Jews ... Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by ... in one word, they (Muslims) must cease to be foreigners or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizen's rights".
This comment being too explicit for public consumption, Vajpayee sought to distance himself from this saying this was Golwalkar's personal opinion. However, a recent RSS declaration passed after the Gujarat carnage, "Let the Muslims understand that their real safety lies in the goodwill of the majority", suggests otherwise. Golwalkar's legacy certainly lives on in the RSS.
Fear, hatred or resentment of the minorities is understandable if
i). they have been in power for a long time and have consistently discriminated against the majority, like the erstwhile apartheid regime in South Africa.
The HR has constantly harped on the atrocities on Hindus in the era of Mahmud of; Gazni and the like. Call it selective magnanimity or selective amnesia, it ignores the centuries spent under the not-so-benevolent British rule.
Savarkar, after initially having been very active in the freedom struggle, later veered around to the view that
"... our interests were so closely bound together the essential thing was for Hinduism and Great Britain to be friends; and the old antagonism was no longer necessary". [Letter to the Secretary of State for India, October 1939].
Clearly, past atrocities don't seem to weigh heavily in deciding the object of retribution. In any case, in avenging the misdeeds of Gazni et al, the HR ends up emulating those it claims to despise. Whether this reflects its hypocrisy or moral and intellectual bankruptcy (or both) is open to debate.
ii). successive governments have appeased the minorities (at the expense of the majority).
The establishment of a secular state ruled out, at least in principle, discrimination against Muslims. Equal rights to Muslims is a far cry from the dictatorship of the Hindus that the HR had envisaged. Caught as it is in a fascist time warp, the HR perceives secularism to be a form of minority (Muslim) appeasement, and has propagated this myth (of Muslim appeasement) to whip up anti-Muslim sentiments. The 'Hindu Rashtra' that it couldn't attain through legislation, it hopes to attain through Hindu 'revival'.
But why go to such great lengths to vilify the Muslims, why not directly eliminate them? The democracy, however imperfect, that we are, it's not possible to suppress active opposition of the multitude, certainly not for long, as Indira Gandhi learnt the hard way.
Thus, for any action to succeed in the long term, you need to win the support (or ensure the apathy) of the majority. And naked aggression is anathema to the majority. Infact, one of the many reasons attributed for the fall of Napoleon is that of his troops losing their motivation when it finally dawned on them that they were no longer defending themselves, but were invading others. The inherent goodness of humans coming to the fore, if you like.
To get over this unpleasant (and fast diminishing) facet of human nature, one needs to get the facts 'right'. And history is evidence to the pivotal role of propaganda. Repeated over and over again to a captive audience, the hunter often becomes the hunted. The good students of history that they are, all this was not lost on the HR. Over the many years, they have therefore focused extensively on the demonisation of Muslims, mostly through lurid details of atrocities on Hindus in the era of Mahmud of Gazni, and also on exaggerated accounts of more recent acts of violence by Muslims.
Contrary views are summarily dismissed as either Marxist rants or acts of Muslim appeasement. While on this, let me also point out that their having to harp on events of the distant past is a give-away to the patronage they have enjoyed under the various governments since 'independence'. At the very least, it's clear evidence that successive governments have been anything but inimical to them.
While anti-Pakistan rhetoric has always been used to whip up anti-Muslim frenzy, the HR now seems to be preparing to use it to retroactively justify the current pogrom in Gujarat. Advani's recent statement "There are reliable reports (including intercepts) that speak of underworld elements being in touch with their mentors in Pakistan regarding retaliatory action in Gujarat and even in parts of Maharashtra" conveys as much, if not more.
No one would dispute the propensity of the underworld to foment trouble, but Advani seems to have completely missed a point. Maybe, just maybe, it was intentional, but I would like to remind him of it anyway. While the Muslim Right (MR) operates from underground, the equally (if not more) odious Bal Thackarey roams around in broad daylight, secure in the company of his thugs and often under police protection. And with him, you have the added benefit of not having to depend on cell phone intercepts, for he sends out instructions thick and fast in his venom-spitting editorials in Saamna.
In the words of Justice Srikrishna, "There is no doubt that the Shiv Sena and Shiv Sainiks took the lead in organizing attacks on Muslims and their properties under the guidance of several leaders of the Shiv Sena from the level of Shakha Pramukh to the Shiv Sena Pramukh Bal Thackeray who, like a veteran General, commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organized attacks against Muslims."
Is not Matoshri as much a hub of terrorist activity as the underworld? Apparently, Thackarey is not a threat to national security. Nor are the moronic drivels of the Ashok Singhals, Giriraj Kishores and Vinay Katiyars. And Advani's oft-repeated (in his election speeches in the past) claim "Mandir Wahin BanAyenge" (We will build the temple THERE). None of them got taken to the cleaners, did they? For men may come and men may go, the Thackareys go on for ever.
Contrast this with how we have treated the Muslims. A recent remark by an Inspector General of Police, "the Kolkata police is considered soft by Pakistani criminals ... the Kolkata police does not enter the Muslim areas of the city and that is helpful [to terrorists]" aptly sums the attitude of the police. Muslims and terrorists and all terrorists are Muslims. No doubt they have had to re-assert their patriotism whenever the self-anointed upholders of Hinduism demand.
The Srikrishna Commission, like several other inquiry commissions before and after, was highly critical of the role of the police:
"The response of police to appeals from desperate victims, particularly Muslims, was cynical and utterly indifferent ... Police officers and men, particularly at the junior level, appeared to have an inbuilt bias against the Muslims which was evident in their treatment of the suspected Muslims and Muslim victims of riots. The treatment given was harsh and brutal and, on occasions, bordering on the inhuman."
Time and again, the state has also sought refuge in the age old dictum of the police being vastly outnumbered, and the trishul and spear-wielding mobs have had a free run. So emboldened have they become that an armed gang of VHP and Bajrang Dal activists recently ransacked the Orissa assembly. Reluctance to act tough on those who have been named by eyewitnesses - Parveen Togadia, Jaideep Patel, and more of their ilk, and shameless partisanship as evidenced by the discriminatory charging of Muslim and Hindu rioters (the former booked under POTA, and the latter under ordinary criminal charges) doesn't augur well for the future.
If there is no hope for justice, the more militant among the Muslim youth, be it of their own accord or through the prodding of the MR, may resort to violent retaliation. The whole of the Muslim community will then be discredited and the Ashok Singhals will jump out to say "It is time to catch Muslims by their necks and tell them where their place lies". What do you expect them to do, chant "Jai Shri Ram"?
"Har Saans Aakhri saans maaloom hoti hai" (Every breath seems to be the last one) says a tired old Muslim in one of Anand Patwardhan's films. How do we convince him and others and ourselves of a better morrow? From our safe environs, we can always say 'Satyameva Jayate' (Truth alone triumphs), but when truth ultimately triumphs, will there be any Muslim left in India? Not if the 'experiments' continue at the present rate.
Last week, the police picked up 300 swords and daggers and their owner, a Bajrang Dal 'sanghathan mantri', in Rajkot. How long before the 'silent majority' decides we have had enough? Continual violence, be it in Punjab or Kashmir or Gujarat has dehumanized us. No one exemplifies this better than George Fernandes, ex-socialist turned Hindutva apologist, who had the temerity to remark "A pregnant woman's stomach being slit, a daughter being raped in front of her mother aren't new things". Mass homelessness is not new too; the Narmada dam evictees were victims of 'the greater common good', and the Muslims in Gujarat victims of Hindu fascism.
The end result is the same - summers in tin shelters, and an uncertain future. But this doesn't pain us, for didn't Lord Ram spend 14 years in a forest? We have seen and forgotten Bhopal, so that doesn't shock us too. So what's new? Getting nuked, maybe. The rate at which we are arming ourselves and thereby promoting an arms race, one more term for this government and this day won't be too far off.
The Gujarat pogrom has punctured holes in the pervading sense of security that the BJP and its spin-doctors had managed to instill in the gullible sections of the populace. It's also a timely reminder that we have got our priorities wrong. Now that we have Prithvi for Pakistan and Agni for China, we should have had nothing to worry. Why then do we still find ourselves in such a mess? What makes us so vulnerable to the supposed machinations of the evil forces from outside?
No use blaming the ISI for all violence. There's so much dormant anger that a volcano is always waiting to erupt. Our 'leaders' have sidestepped the main dangers and concocted convenient new ones. Communalism has plagued us for long, and because of the brutish majority and a 'sympathetic' bureaucracy, the HR has wreaked considerable havoc. Some opine that tolerance is the need of the hour, that harsh criticism will ensure further polarization. I beg to differ.
We have been sucking up to the HR for a long time now, all the time advising restraint on the part of the Muslims, for it's easy to make demands of a hapless people than face up to a violent and 'awakened' HR. After all that has happened, Vajpayee still chose to blame the victims themselves for "resorting to terror, threat and intimidation".
Even outside of the HR, there's a tendency to blame the victims - that they deserve their 'misfortune' - and 'get on with life'. Several women's groups and the English media have been extremely courageous in getting to the truth. It behooves upon us to spread their findings, to inform people as to who is really being appeased, to confront the perpetrators of the pogrom with the truth, and do a modicum of justice to the victims.
The horrifying Jammu suicide attack has already shifted media focus from internal to cross-border terrorism, which is what the HR wants. Therefore, unless we continue to highlight the sorry state of the victims, Gujarat will soon be history, and the victims will fade into oblivion.
We have dug ourselves a deep hole. How do we get out of it? What faces us is not a purely political problem, but there's no denying that the political ascendancy of the BJP has greatly facilitated the saffronization of the police, bureaucracy and education. If it's not to get any worse, and I say so for it's always comforting to think we are not already in an abyss, we need to vote out the HR.
The Indian Left has always been at the forefront of the anti-fundamentalist campaign and would have been the ideal replacement, but confined as it is to a few pockets, it is certainly not strong enough to wage a lone battle against the HR. Therefore, it needs to ally with other parties opposed to the HR and present a united front against the HR. This is all the more essential for we don't have the luxury of a second round of run-off elections.
The opposition parties don't have a very flattering record either; in the past, some of them have even hobnobbed with the fundamentalists. For this reason, there's a tendency to dismiss all of them (and those that ally with them) as equally bad and undeserving of any support. However, as Arundhati Roy points out in her recent essay, they are not all the same. While others sinned with trepidation, the HR does it with pride; a change of guard can only result in an improvement in the status quo.
It also suits the Congress, the most likely beneficiary of a broad anti-HR alliance, politically to implement the recommendations of the various inquiry Commissions, for several of them (except maybe the one pertaining to the Delhi carnage) have squarely blamed the HR. So, the Congress can be expected to act, if not out of good intentions, at least to score political brownie points.
Thus, myopic as it might seem, the immediate objective should be to install a less evil government. As Bhagat Singh said, compromise is not as ignoble and deplorable as we generally think; it is an indispensable factor in the political strategy.
After the Gujarat carnage, Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar said, "... if Modi stands today from any constituency in India, Hindus will vote for him." I hope the public sends a strong message that violence begets ostracization, not votes. A clear message will not only discourage the fundamentalists, but will also serve a warning to the future governments not to hobnob with them.
I hope we take a leaf out of the French. Jacques Chirac was no darling of the masses, but the French still turned out in large numbers to keep out the bigger evil. Will the Indian voters do an encore? Yes, I hope.