Respected Hitlerji, Please Don’t Be So Unfair!
By Jawed Naqvi
26 July, 2010
Dawn
With clockwork precision and often with a detailed script, fascism
consolidates itself in stages. In the advanced mode, ideologically
driven street lumpens are let loose to terrorise the people and then
quasi-legal measures are summoned comprising police and military to
rein in the minions who were only carrying out orders. To the average
TV watcher in India this may give the impression that rule of law has
been restored when in reality fascism has just got more streamlined,
more institutionalised.
Sunday’s arrest of Amit Shah, Gujarat’s minister of state for home
affairs, for the alleged murder of an alleged gangster and his wife
has the trappings of Ernst Rohm’s isolation and eventual liquidation
by Adolf Hitler when he began to become an embarrassment to the
Fuehrer. Rohm was one of Hitler’s closest aides and headed the
powerful SA of brown shirts, the storm troopers who gave the Nazis the
street-fighting capability to seize power.
Like the old-fashioned cataract operation in which the eye disease
would have to ‘ripen’ before it was ready to be surgically removed,
India’s march towards rightwing consolidation is still at an uncertain
stage in the ripening process. This has led to confusion in the public
discourse about fascism’s many 0signs and symptoms.
Recently, the Headlines Today TV channel, on most occasions
sympathetic to rightwing Hindu ferment, was attacked by a group of men
for carrying a report in which the revivalist Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh (RSS) was linked to a series of false flag attacks targeting
Muslims but blamed on Muslim extremists. Those complicit in the
propagation of the planted stories included a section of the media and
the main political players — the ruling Congress and the opposition
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), an adjunct of the RSS.
The assault on the Headlines Today offices displayed all the qualities
of a Rohm-like operation in Germany of the 1930s. It also fitted with
the ideology of the attackers. However, since an in-depth discussion
on rightwing politics in India was never the forte of its
self-congratulating TV channels, the Headlines Today editor just about
barely managed a mumbled protest.
“I have no problem with a protest but what they have done is grossly
incorrect. They have not acted in a fair manner,” complained Headlines
Today editor Rahul Kanwal. “If they had a problem with the contents of
the story, they could have protested through democratic means. They
could have approached the Editors’ Guild, the channel editor or held a
press conference. Barging into the office of a channel and indulging
in hooliganism cannot be defended.” It’s a little like saying that
Hitler was sometimes an unreasonable gentleman.
A close look at the Headlines Today episode would reveal that its
claim about the involvement of Hindu fanatics in terror activities was
based on video tapes that were a couple of years old. All this time
the view propagated about fanatical Muslim groups being involved in
the attacks was unquestioningly carried by the media. Whoever gave the
channel the tapes at this juncture was interested in releasing them at
this particular point in time. Consider also the fact that at least
two popular weeklies with a soft corner for the ruling Congress
carried cover stories on Hindu terror very recently and the federal
police (CBI) decided to give a chase to Mr Shah only at this
particular time. Perhaps there is an alternative narrative lurking in
the background.
Everything coincides with the opening of the parliament’s monsoon
session on Monday. Is the Congress government trying to use the
(orchestrated?) protests by the BJP over Shah’s arrest to quietly push
some legislation or to avoid discussion on more serious issues? Apart
from the nuclear liability bill, which the government wants to ram
through supposedly at the behest of the United States, there are other
raging topics that will be conveniently not discussed. One of them
relates to the Maoist revolt in India’s heartland states.
The special police in Andhra Pradesh recently killed a top Maoist who
was indirectly communicating with the government on various proposals
for a ceasefire. Swami Agnivesh, a well-known social worker was in
touch with Cherikuri Rajkumar Azad, the slain Maoist, and Home
Minister P. Chidambaram. When Agnivesh called a press conference to
share the letters written by Chidambaram and Azad (a few days before
he was killed) it was mysteriously cancelled. Agnivesh reportedly
believes his communication with Azad could have been used by
government agencies to track him.
The media is replete with different angles on Sohrabuddin’s encounter
killing allegedly on the orders of Shah but it has fought shy of
investigating the circumstances of Azad’s death. This is curious since
Azad was leading a group that is described by the government as
India’s gravest internal security threat. Chidambaram is widely seen
as pushing a militarist line against the Maoist, a move supported by
the BJP but which has evoked misgivings among his senior Congress
colleagues. While the Headlines Today expressed concern over the
attack on its offices and described it as an attempt by vigilante
groups to muzzle the media, it has taken scant interest in the home
ministry’s attempt to stifle criticism of its militarist line against
leftwing extremists. Nor is there a matching critique of the
government’s illegal use of vigilante groups to terrorise and murder
tribespeople who are seen as being sympathetic to Maoists.
Meanwhile, it is left to the civil society and occasionally to the
Supreme Court to critique the deep-rooted malaise that enables groups
such as the Maoists to use the resultant popular disaffection to their
advantage. In a strong critique of official apathy towards the poorest
of the poor and their continued exploitation in the name of
development the Supreme Court last week made a memorable observation.
Terming the government’s developmental policies as “blinkered”, the
apex court observed that promised rights and benefits never reached
the marginalised citizens fuelling extreme discontent and giving birth
to Maoism and militancy. It was this that threatened the sovereignty
of the country.
“To millions of Indians, development is a dreadful and hateful word
that is aimed at denying them even the source of their sustenance,” a
bench comprising Justices Aftab Alam and B. S. Chauhan said last
Monday.
“It is cynically said that on the path of ‘maldevelopment’ almost
every step that we take seems to give rise to insurgency and political
extremism which along with terrorism are supposed to be the three
gravest threats to India’s integrity and sovereignty.”
According to a Times of India report, the anguish of the court brimmed
over when it dealt with a case relating to acquisition of tribal land
by Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd in Sundergarh district of Orissa, which is
a Maoist stronghold, and found that those who lost their land were not
paid compensation for 23 years.
This extreme example of governmental apathy shook the conscience of
the court forcing it to ask a series of questions — “Why is the
state’s perception and vision of development at such great odds with
the people it purports to develop? And why are their rights so
dispensable? Why do India’s GDP and human development index (which is
based broadly using measures of life expectancy, adult literacy and
standard of living) present such vastly different pictures?”
It said: “With the GDP of $1.16 trillion (of 2008) Indian economy is
12th largest in US dollar terms and it is the second fastest growing
economy in the world. But according to the Human Development Report
2009 (published by UNDP), the HDI for India is 0.612 which puts it at
134th place among 182 countries.”
The court said the counter argument was that very often the process of
development most starkly confirms the fears expressed by Dalit
ideologue Bhimrao Ambedkar, who had said though politically one man
had one vote of equal value, in social life one continues to deny one
man one value. Some would say the state of affairs is symptomatic of
incipient fascism, not as Hitler and Mussolini practised it in Europe,
but as something uniquely Indian. The Sohrabuddin case seems like a
red herring.
