Modi government is nearing its two year rule and hardly anyone, except the Modi bhakts, feels much change except that the government is making enemies of citizens and communities throughout the country. Ever since BJP came to power in May 2014 with Modi’s slogan of ‘development to all’ what the nation has been witnessing predominantly is a divisive identity politics in the name of ‘nationalism’ and discourse on belonging. Such an overt divisive language was shunned by European democracies for what it did to people who were minorities (or different) in the 20th century in the name of ethnic nationalism. Even those who claim to be patriots, and whose actions are nothing but patriotic, are being branded ‘anti-national’ under the banal slogans such as ‘Vande Mataram’ and ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’. This witch-hunting of those who dissent, those who profess a different religion or those who refuse to be cowed down, has taken a new mode which is vividly described recently by Benjamin Zachariah in dailyo.in (on 26th April 2016). After discussing about what is going on in Turkey today and drawing a parallel with the megalomania, narcissism and brutality of Turkish President Erdogan against those who differ or oppose him, Zachariah has the following view about Modi’s India:
“The Indian version attempts to muzzle all forms of organisation and dissent that do not involve the newly-promoted shorts-to-trousers paramilitary brigades; and to create low-level harassment and selective violence so that ordinary people without protection are afraid to express themselves. It was not two days ago that a BJP functionary from Assam tried to strangle Kanhaiya Kumar on a flight.
Don’t stick your neck out or we’ll wring it, seems to be the message.”
These are warnings to people who dissent and refuse to be cowed down. How this low-level harassment and selective violence is operationalised is not so difficult to see. With the nationwide presence, spread and embeddedness within Indian society and institutions of Hindutva activists, and they, acting as bhakts, informers, instigators, planners and executors of Sangh or BJP objectives along with the BJP government employing the state apparatus (such as the police, executive and security agencies) to identify and muzzle citizens who dissent, India, like Erdogan’s Turkey, is appearing to look more and more like a “caricature of democracy.” The onslaught on institutions, individuals, communities, castes and everything that is ‘not with or doesn’t agree with Hindutva’ is not so covert at all. The recent saga of the two universities (Hyderabad Central University and JNU Delhi) bear witness to the long, protracted preparation of dossiers by Sanghis within the institutions, the collusion of various Central ministries in laying the ground plan and using the state machinery to implement the plan of marking, isolating, provoking and striking the individuals and organisations is no more so opaque to miss.
An Open War
The war on dissenters is open and relentless and each “outgroup” (those not with, don’t agree with or challenge Hindutva) is victimised through various strategies. If Muslims, Christians and other non-supportive minorities are targeted under love jihad, beef eating, cow-protection, religious conversions, and disputing religious structures, Dalits are victimised for being suckers of reservations, being lazy or as radical communists or anti-nationals. If academics are hounded for being liberal, leftist or secular, vocally critical journalists are called presstitutes. If women who oppose patriarchal view of Hindutva are marked as shamelesstarts, NGO’s who fight for human rights and development of the poor are targeted as stooges of foreign governments. Finally, the farmers, the group that is a huge stumbling block for all-out neoliberal state sell-out and corporate arse-pampering, are lazy and idiotic primitives who deserve suicide as their lot as openly advised even by some government ministers. The most ruthless war is on against students. They are marked as potentially most dangerous because if their aspirations, sense of justice and passion for action is not muzzled no government can last for long, even if it is a most ruthless, autocratic, security state. They are separated on the basis of either being Sangh-affiliates and national or as seculars or communists and hence anti-nationals. So, under this present dispensation, the nation is made into a fetish, nationalism as the marker of difference, and the dissenters are marked for punishment using the colonial era laws and the colonial era discourses towards natives. As most Indians do not subscribe to upper caste, Brahminical, Aryan and Hindutva interpretation of Indian nationhood, they all need be taught to behave and fall in line.
The Strategy
The manner in which Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU Delhi), the truant child of Indian State (and others like JNU), is dealt with offers a glimpse to the strategy that will be applied. This strategy is not new but rather age-old. It goes like this: dispute, mark, isolate, strike, muzzle and/or eliminate. This is a continuous strategy applied towards various groups and is in operation at various levels depending on how strong and difficult to muzzle the marked group is. Political parties such as Congress are assaulted by using Article 356 and imposing President’s rule in congress ruled states. Corruption scams are merely used cynically as political tools rather than to convict the wrongdoers and improve governance which Modi promised during election campaign. The stranglehold on AAP government in Delhi shows up time and again through Kejriwal outbursts and the permanent noose set around corruption stricken Mamata Bannerji government.
Muslims as a whole, and Muslim communities and individuals, are subjected to violence, vandalism and murder without respite. The shibboleths under which Muslims are pilloried could range from terrorism, love jihad, religious conversion, Vande Mataram and what not. They are struck at will: like Akhlaq in UP, two others in Jharkhand or an Omar Khalid of JNU or Prof Geelani for being Muslim or simply because they bear a Muslim sounding name. Muslims are the one group that is easily drawn into disputes, marked, isolated, struck and muzzled/eliminated without much national outrage. Dalits are the newest target whose presence or movements and actions within society are marked, disputed, struck and muzzled/eliminated. The latest means are dubbing them Marxists, anti-nationals, benefit-suckers (reservations, scholarships etc.), withholding the social entitlements and thus muzzling them or exposing them to deprivation and death/suicide. Examples of Rohit Vemula, Kanhaiah Kumar and others aresome examples. As for the Dalits, subtle war against their political participation is already experimented upon in BJP ruled states such as Rajastan and Haryana where amendments (supported by Modi government) to the Panchayati Raj Bill have been successfully employed to exclude the poor, the women, Dalits and minority citizens. According to this new law, in order to contest panchayat polls, a candidate needed to have completed middle and secondary school. With this law as a tool a whopping 93 per cent women of scheduled castes/tribes and 82 per cent of women over all are disqualified from contesting. Thus there is a systematic effort to reverse many of the socially progressive laws that allowed the poor, the Dalits and women participate in local bodies.
As for women who protest and detest Sangh favoured patriarchalism, for lack of cogent arguments, Hindutva votaries have nothing but sex-slurs as observed by Kavita Krishnan in scroll.in (on 28th April 2016) while commenting on the dossier prepared by Sangh-supporting teachers and ABVP members of JNU. Her words say it all:
“One can only pity the bunch of JNU teachers and the likes of Gyandev Ahuja or Swamy who fear “free sex” – un-free sex is, after all, nothing but rape. The Sangh is terrified of women who are “loose”, who are not tightly bound by patriarchal and caste norms that regulate whom women are allowed to love or marry. The very fact that the normal freedoms of young people appear dangerous and “seditious” to them, says a lot about the kind of India they would like to create.”
Slut shaming is an age old tactic used by priests, panchayat pradhans, fathers, brothers, husbands, failed boyfriends and patriarchy’s handmaidens such as mother-in-laws and sister-in-laws to put an independent thinking woman in her place. One should be prepared for this age-old tactic be used copiously to muzzle women in public spacesby Sanghis who are consummate believers in patriarchy. (In Haryana there is already a law passed as to how a woman should dress in public – banning mini-skirts).
(Un)official Security/Intelligence Gathering Apparatus
Given the spread and embeddedness of vigilante outfits in the name of Hindutva and the proactive manner with which they are trained to operationalise the above mentioned strategy at every sphere of Indian life, there is a creeping fear and suspicion among people against one another as in the time of Stasi East Germany of the past. No one can be sure of the presence or absence of such sleeping vigilantes having been embedded within various levels and spheres of Indian life. Even social media is full of them. The quiet manner in which a dossier was prepared about JNU activities, student’s union, hostels, individual students and teachers who ‘do not fit’ and hence, needed muzzling/eliminating, the precision with which a routine occasion was selected for targeting and tarnishing some individuals and the legal harassment meted out to them using the Delhi police, media, university administration speaks for the manner of implementing the strategy. More worrying is that in the aftermath of the those manufactured events how vigilantes are baying for the blood of these marked individuals, not to mention Subramanya Swamy and ChandanMitra types baying for the dismantling of JNU itself, shows how broad-based and covertly this strategy operates to achieve the desired outcome to manufacture a specific discoursewith clinical precision.
This strategy is evident in every such incident, beginning with the Babri Masjid mobilisations. All that the liberals, seculars, minorities, women or Dalits are doing is to react to these traps, prepared and patiently maintained until these targeted groups or individuals find themselves trapped into these schemes. Their naivete about the constitutionally elected government behaving as per law, their trust in the resilience of Indian democracy, human rights and constitutional rights, only shows how gullible liberal, secular citizens in India are. The strategists of the present government and its various vigilante wings secretly laugh at this naivete because they know how easy it is to trap innocent citizens under the archaic and colonial era criminal laws such as sedition, AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act), disruption of peace and religious harmony etc.
How the present dispensation, with the help of Hindutva affiliates and public intellectuals, acting as vigilantes and agent provocateurs, and the ubiquitous use of state apparatuses, tries to trap and consign dissenters to legal limbo is well explained by Benjamin Zachariah (mentioned above already):
“So this is how it is going to be: throw in a large dose of official-sounding rules, without explaining in what way they pertain to particular charges or episodes; and some of them might even sound plausible. If you know your history, then you will know where this is coming from.
An old colonial practice was for servants of the colonial state to huddle together and see what combination of rules and laws they could draw out of their files to prosecute or harass people they wanted to harass. First you find the person you want to accuse of wrongdoing, then you try to find a few things to accuse him of, hoping that some of them will stick.”
Ever since the Mandir movement of L. K. Advani Hindutva vigilantes have been taking law into their own hands to harass and punish Muslims and Christians even when they carry on with their day to day livelihood activities. The scope of their activity and groups targeted now include Dalits, women, farmers, intellectuals, writers, institutions, politicians and even opposition ruled states. In Karnataka, especially in the coastal districts, in the name of cow protection and love jihad, many Muslims have been subjected publicly to violence. Even college youth are beaten up and their private parties are vandalised. Such low intensity vigilante violence has become part of Indian life where minorities, Dalits and women suffer without much help from the state. The police are often part of such violence or turn a blind eye. With Modi, with his silence, at the helm, having no fear of state reprisal, violence loving Hindutva groups and genocide loving hate speech mongers such as Ramdev, Adityanath, Prachi and others appear to prepare the ground for a blood sacrifice which will be a desired rite of passage for the 2019 elections; blood of the innocents waiting to be spilt for quenching the thirst of an upstart Hindutva-promoted Bharat Mata.
About the Author: DrSamuel Sequeira is a Research Associate at the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at the Cardiff University, Wales, United Kingdom. He is currently researching on issues such as South Asian Immigrants in Wales, Immigration discourses in the UK, nationalism, Identity and conflict.
