For six decades or
more, I believed that I belonged to India. Now, for this past one decade, I
have been having creeping thoughts about my national identity, my citizenship
as an Indian and, above all, my nation’s own identity.
I have been noticing
the emergence of a militant heat wave, which, backed by a particular
ideological bend, is being forced upon the citizens, as it were, at knife point.
This ideology is saturated with a narrow and sectarian notion of nationhood. It
does not believe in the existence or the need for a secular democratic nation.
The proponents of
this ideology unleash a propaganda that the boundaries of the nation have to be
redrawn on religious parameters. And that these parameters have to be dictated
by the religion of the majority community. To be more precise, by the rightwing
fascist forces of the community!
Not that this
ideology is anything new. It is almost a century old Hindu right wing ideology
propounded by its ideologues such as K. B. Hedgewar, M. S. Golwalkar,
V.D.Savarkar and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. But, ever since the Sang Parivar has
been able to capture national power through its political outfit, the Bharatiya
Janata Party, the militancy has gained an unprecedented momentum.
Those of us, who have
seen India from its independent infancy and its steady growth to maturity as a
secular democratic nation, do feel that the India we have grown with is being
dismantled, demolished and destroyed systematically. This is unforgivable. How would you feel when
you are told in your face that your identity as a citizen has to be marked by your
avowing and belonging to the religion of the majority community? Or, when the
secular India being converted into a communal Bharat?
With this communal
thrust, the advocates of this ideology announced blatantly that they were going
for a Congress-
mukt Bharat. It meant that whatever the Congress Party
had done ever since the Independence was anathema. For example, building the
nation on the foundational principles laid down by the Constitution makers into
a secular and non-communal democracy. Like
nourishing the nation into a secular democratic country, building up temples of
development, legislating laws against untouchability, honouring legal
guarantees for Dalits, Tribals and
minority religions and communities, building up base for a solid
infrastructure for technology and economy, a principle-oriented
relationship with international communities and world bodies. And more! In spite of these, the Nehruvian
model was heavily criticized and declared as an ugly outfit for a resurgent
India.
Some point out such
frontal attack with reactionary feelings and adverse propaganda were a cover up
for the Sang Parivar’s feeling dwarfed, as it were, in the face of these
mammoth developments. Pushed to the
corner for its non-performance and attempts to divide India on religious lines,
its reactionary pronouncements and actions were like kicking against the wall.
This smoke screen
onslaught was also because the Parivar could not digest the criticism that their
adored icon Savarkar, while in Andaman cellular jail, went to the extent of
begging for mercy from the colonial British regime.
But there is no
confusion as to which new nation they are talking about? It is Hindustan they
mean. The slogan is ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai.’ Anyone who does not shout this slogan
full throated is bound to be pilloried, drawn and quartered as an anti-national
alien. Every Indian is to believe and profess that
India is Hindustan and that every Indian in this land is Hindu. So said RSS
Guruji Mohan Bhagwat! He has declared it in the open. That meant consequences
like street corner reality shows.
Emboldened by the
chief’s clarion call, his followers are, with zealot urge, terrorising members
of other religions by forcing them to shout aloud ‘Vande Mataram’, ‘Bharat Mata
ki Jai’, etc. If you don’t fall in line, you are done for!
The dismantling the
edifice of the secular democratic India takes many such convulsive forms. The Lynching
foot soldiers go wild spree for torturing, killing or hanging people on
suspicion that they were carrying out anti-Hindu/anti-national activities. Even
taking a farm animal to your farm will invite the wrath of reconnoitering foot
soldiers who can go to any extent in torture operations.
Going a step further
from the Congress-
mukt Bharat, another agenda-based attempt is to target
the minority religious communities. It is going to be either a minority-
mukt
Bharat or a Bharat where minority religious groups, the Dalits and the Adivasis
have to bear ostracism, persecution, denial of human and fundamental rights,
destruction of worshipping places, etc. An innocent Dalit girl child plucking a
flower from the compound of an upper caste in Odisha caused the upper castes to
cry ‘pollution’ and to ostracize forty Dalit families. This India, Oh, my
India! Legal guarantees are buried in books and justice is like catching the
moon!
According to the
Global Peace report, 2016, India ranks as 4th worst country in the
world for religious hostilities among 198 countries. The Amnesty International
report states that, in 2018, there were 218 hate crimes out of which 142 were
against Dalits, 50 against Muslims and 8 each against Christians, Adivasis and
Transgender community.
According to World
Watch, among 50 countries, India is the 10th most dangerous country
in the world to live in for Christians. Reports point out a steady increase in
violence against Christians since 2014. In 2014 there were 147 such cases; in
2015 the number rose to 177; in 2016 there were 208 cases; in 2017 there were
240 and in 2018 the number showed 292 cases. All these happened during the
regime of the benevolent BJP government.
It looks as if the
minority communities are treated like chattel. Their members are told to get
lost in Pakistan or ship out. Religious fanatics and even elected
representatives have been casting aspersions on religious minorities with
venomous and unparliamentary words with parliamentary impunity.
Even the rather
recent incidence of targeting the Muslim community with the wild and malicious
accusation that the Tablighi Jamaat had unleashed ‘Corona Jihad’ in India is
something to take note of. The Bombay High Court’s order in this case is a
strong condemnation of the state, the police, the print and electronic media, and
the minority baiters whose aim was to spread malice against the minority
community. It lambasted the state police for acting under ‘political
compulsion.’ It went on to say, “The record of this matter and the submission
made show that action in any form and for anything can be taken against
Muslims...A political government tries to find the scapegoat when there is
pandemic or calamity that these foreigners (Tablighis who had come from abroad)
were responsible for spreading Covid 19 virus in India...Thus there is smell of
malice to the action taken against these foreigners and the Muslims for their
alleged activities.”
As against this, the
government turned a blind eye against the crowds that gathered for the ‘Namaste
Trump’ festival in Gujarat, and the provocateurs of violence through hate
speeches.
The targeting of
intellectuals and critics as anti-national is becoming another ugly trend to
make India logic-
mukt and reason-
mukt. Those who air their
opinion and critical views on the plight of the poor masses are silenced or
condemned as terrorists, Maoists or
desh-drohis. Those who critically
analyse the government’s policies and point out loopholes or non-workability are
considered enemies of the government and even of the nation.
National figures like
Narendra Dabolkar, social activist and rationalist (20 August 2013), M. M.
Kalburgi, Kannada university Vice-Chancellor and National Sahitya Akademy award
Winner (30 Aug. 2015), Govind Pansare, leftist (16 Feb. 2016), and Gauri
Lankesh, journalist (5 Sep. 2017) were
eliminated in broad day light by gun-wielding assailants. Such hard-core
eliminations were meant to broadcast the message that, in the right-wing
dispensation, there is no room for dissenting opinion or critical observations or
rational thinking. The propaganda of stuffing school and college
textbooks with ancient religious stories and sidelining history or
science-based matter was another attempt to murder reasoning, derecognize logical
thinking, and to erase historical evidences and rational research.
The economy’s dark
phase is another example of the changing face of India. Everyone is aware that the
nation’s economy has been spiralling down the drain affecting the lives and
profession of the common people. The have-nots are going up in numbers and the
purchasing power of even the middle class has plummeted. The situation points
to the ruling party’s pathetic failure in fostering a robust economy.
When there was slight
increase in gas or petrol prices during the UPA rule, the BJP party stalwarts,
ministers and their volunteers were out on the road banging empty cylinders and
tin drums to the tune of their band group. But, when the prices of gas, oil,
and even consumer goods skyrocketed during their NDA regime, the very same
chorus groups are like those three monkeys who don’t hear, don’t see, and don’t
talk.
The BJP government
has let the Bank defaulters, with their loot of millions, billions and trillions,
hasten to safe havens to cool their heels while India’s starving millions
remain jobless, cashless and hopeless.
Even as the nation’s
economy is in doldrums, due to mismanagement of national resources and
infrastructure, our leaders have opened their hard and software market to sell
India’s public enterprises and resource development mechanism for a farthing.
They are in a rush to demolish any trace of a socialist economy by handing over
India to private enterprises. Such ‘Big Bang Economic Reforms’ are flaunted as
a ‘game changer’ for boosting the nation’s economy in the process of
making a socialist economy-
mukt
Bharat.
The clarion call of
Mohan Bhagwat and his group for the Adivasis to ‘get back to the Hindu fold’ (
Ghar
Wapsi) is another attempt to make India Adivasi-
mukt Bharat. The
Adivasi leaders are astounded by the Sang Parivar’s propaganda that they are
Hindus. They say that, once they are sucked into the Hindu fold, their identity
as the indigenous will be erased and, with Hindu laws covering them, their land
and resources will become saleable commodities. The hawk’s eyes are on the
resource-rich mineral areas where Adivasis are dwelling. The agenda is, for the
so-called development of India, even at the cost of displacement and evacuation;
these areas have to be handed over to business tycoons and multinationals to
build temples of capitalist enterprises.
But, today, people
refuse to be fed with the fodder of false promises and devious arguments as they
see through the game of a cunning politico-religious chess game. Only time will
tell whether the suppressed murmurings and resistance of the masses against the
fascist grave diggers of India will usher in a dawn of hope!
