RSS’s cultural nationalism in DG Vanzara’s Patriotism (?)

For almost a decade since Narendra Modi assumed office as chief minister of Gujarat the name of Vanzara started figuring in the news surrounding violent deaths. The deaths of Muslims in the genocide and fake encounters assumed a new dimension that the Muslims were anti national and hence the justification to exterminate them. The duo made it out that the Muslims were in league with Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence and Lashkar-e-Toiba. Vanzara was a senior police officer in charge of the crime branch located in Gaikwad Haveli in Ahmadabad. He hosted sumptuous dinner to fanatic Hindus who had killed more than 800 Muslims of Naroda Patia. He opened the larders of the officers’ guesthouse. Subsequently the chief minister told his police to set them free.
Thereafter Vanzara conducted fake encounters and killed Muslims and called it deshbhakti, patriotism. Of course it would be platitude to say that he was his master’s voice. The only difference now is that the master is out and bragging about the development he has brought to his state and the cop is behind the bars of the Sabarmati jail since April 2007. There is no change in him as there is no change in the state as far as the Muslims are concerned, a long term effect of stagnation of justice where fair is foul and foul is fair. He is still carrying on as if he has not committed any crimes against humanity and so hasn’t his master who reigns supreme. This is a continuation of the ideology of the saffron groups, particularly the parent body Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The often repeated stance of the groups is to pay no heed to the deaths of the Muslims and deny any involvement. Thus RSS boss Mohan Bhagwat was in Nasik on February 20, 2012. He held forth on internal threat to the country’s security as if the deaths of the minority people in Malegaon, Gujarat and Kadhamal or elsewhere is not a matter of concern. Still Bhagwat and his aides de camp want more and more Central Hindu Military Education Society’s schools like the Bhonsla Military School in Nasik and Nagpur opened in Gujarat, Madhya Pardesh and elsewhere in India. He spoke as if the role of Bhonsla Military School in terrorism is a matter of the rights of the Hindus in the country and Muslim deaths do not matter. As recently as 2008 and 2009 it was established by Hemant Karkare’s finding that BMS was used for training terrorists in the use of bomb making by Lt Col Shrikant Purohit and the former military officers now as office holders of the BMS were involved in it.
However, the recent election results of February 2012 belie the narrow chauvinistic vision as ‘the other’ and hence renewed relevance of what nationalism really should be. Is hatred the cementing power of nationalism?
Some observers have pointed out that what happened in Gujarat was the fault of education and particularly rote learning. Martha Nussbaum in her book The Clash Within says: “Rote learning is a problem in most of public education in India; nowhere is critical thinking given the robust development that early Indian progressive educators such as Rabindranath Tagore rightly urged. But it is clear that the Gujarat system relies even more than others on rote repetition—its textbooks have been notorious for their failure to encourage critical thinking—while a focus on technical training promotes the state’s pro business agenda. (Gujarat has outstanding schools of management and rural management.)” This has convincingly been proved to be in the case of Vanzara and the former Prime Minister of India AB Vajpayee. In the case of the latter he blamed the Muslims who do not live with their neighbours in peace. This came from him in the midst of the massive killings of Muslims in Gujarat 2002 genocide. The Hindu fanatics carried out a well orchestrated genocide in letter and spirit to the hilt and yet Vajpayee blamed the Muslims! If not turning truth on its head, what else is it?
Vanzara hails from Illol. This native of Illol village was fortunate that the Muslims of the village contributed money to support him for higher education. Thinking him not different from them they generously donated money to Vanzara to complete his education. He never learnt that those who educated him were Indian (incidentally, Muslims). Even so without exercising critical thinking he toed the line of Hindutva in carrying out the genocide. After having killed Sohrabuddin he and his men killed Kauserbi. Such was his condition of mind that he took her dead body all the way to his village and cremated it. Even the heavy rains in which his car got stranded did not deter him from such a step or gave him a chance to use critical thinking. He summoned the army crane to haul the car out of the mud. He even ordered wood from Ahmadabad for his heinous crime. After cremating the body he paved it with concrete slab in his well. How strange does lack of critical thinking lead humans to err!
On March 10, 2012 two volumes of Vanzara’s poems were released in a function held in the Sabarmati prison. The titles of his volumes are significant. Sinh Garjana or Roar of the Lion and Ran Tankar or Battle Cry. The theme of patriotism is a copy cat of the patriotism that he showed in murdering innocent Muslims and calling it patriotism. One of the poems is translated: “Kill the children of the Wahabis mercilessly and crush the jihadis; Jinnah is a jihadi, don’t sing his songs; crush the antisocial element and send them across the Sindhu.” The man who presided over the function of the release of the books was Shabbir Khandawawala the first Muslim Director General of Police of the state. Modi had mixed motives to have him in such a post. There was a persistent hue and cry against the role of the police in conducting the pogroms against the minority and the subsequent subversion of the judicial process. Modi made a belated effort to change the situation which only enhances the view of anti minority regime that he had inducted in and has continued to rule through it in open defiance of the world opinion. The presiding officer and even the Director General of Police for Prison present there violated the Indian Penal Code on abetment to murder and discrimination against a group on the basis of religion. When the past and present government officers graced the occasion of the release of the books and let him sit with them despite the stricture of the Central Bureau of Investigation. Who could bell the cat?
There is an amazing kind of rhapsody in Vanzara’s poetry. It shows even in his poetry (!) how there was corroboration of the fact that the pogroms and fake encounters were state sponsored. It further confirms the worst fears of many including non Muslims that the Muslims like any other under privileged minority is according to the perception of Modi and his Hindutva groups to be redundant for productive life of the Vibrant Gujarat and indeed India. The release of Vanzara’s books with the kind of fanfare in the prison smacks of the same brouhaha over the Vibrant Gujart. It implies that the genocide was an aberration and not long term policy matter! Therefore it should be left behind in oblivion.
Thus Pankaj Mishra in the Guardian of March 14, 20012 draws a similar conclusion that much like the anti minority violence in Chechnya and Thailand “Ten years later, the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom too seems to have been a necessary blood rite—anointing not just Vibrant Gujarat but also the New India.” He quotes Arjun Appadurai saying: “against worldwide Malthusian correction, which works through the idioms of minoritisation and ethnicisation but is functionally geared to preparing the world for winners of globalization, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers.” (The Gujarat massacre: New Inida’s blood rite”) This worldview of today is devoid of the moral values in which Vanzara has passed and acquired diploma of Annamalai University. In his poem he exhorts the people to massacre all the children of the wahabis and expel them to the other side of the Sindhu river. This is putting the clock back to the time when Mohammad Qasim and other adventurers came to India and made it their home. Hence this is the contamination of the races and induction of a foreign born religion. This merciless crushing of the Muslims and wiping their remains even from modern day India is as much genocidal as was what Modi and Vanzara among others let loose upon the minority in Gujarat in 2002
Vanzara’s leitmotif in his poetry is a look alike of his action. One such action is what he being the closest to the chief minister must have organized it. This is also supported by his interlude in disposing off the body of Sohrabuddin Shaikh’s wife. The description is penned by no other than the senior police officer Geetha Johari who conducted an inquiry into the fake encounter death of Sohrabuddin Shaikh: "On November 26 at 4 am, ... constable Ajay Parmar was asked to bring a Hero Honda motorcycle lying in the backyard of an ATS office here. Sohrabudin was also brought here. A sub-inspector of Rajasthan police rode the bike for a short distance and jumped off it. As it fell, Sohrabuddin was pulled out of the car and thrown on the road. Four police inspectors fired eight rounds from their service pistols. Vanzara then asked Parmar to take Sohrabuddin to the civil hospital."
Vabzara was also instrumental in making public the sex video of Modi’s arch rival in the RSS, Sanjay Joshi. Being this close to the chief minister made him a daunting figure. So when the officers in the programme asked him to sit with the audience he ignored it and went and sat next to Khandawawala. Why shouldn’t he be buoyed upon the popularity of his books? According to one report the books flew away from the shelf and readers avidly snatched the copies and the publishers had to rush through other editions and second sequels. Rote learning and the kind of radical composition that Vanzara has produced surely pales into insignificance the ardour of Mary Shelley and her husband PB Shelley over the French Revolution and the guillotine. As “the reign of terror” in France at the turn of the eighteenth century produced horror so has the genocide produced in addition foul smelling standing cesspool of injustice.
Even more worrisome and surely a warning to those who are citizens of this country that the battle is not just a riot at the centre of debate but a well planned genocide well packaged to rival and go beyond 1984. Even in the full glare of the camera and world focus will Modi and Vajpayee be allowed to pull wool over our eyes and get away? The signs are that the brisk sale of the books of Vanzara and their perusal will lead to taking in the content that is radicalizing and widening the gulf between groups of people. Lest it should turn into guerilla warfare and turn India into a fen like Ireland was the time has come to strengthen the laws and bring the country back to the rule of law. The ghettoization of the country bodes ill for the future of the people.
Vanzara built a palace for luxurious life in Illol—rivaling the palace of opulence built by Kubla Khan in Xanadu while those who languish in the ghettoes also know lebensraum because it is their need also. Almost all the Muslims victims have lost their homes and farms because they cannot even think of returning thanks to the reign of terror that Modi has sustained and stoppage of justice his rule has ushered in. What form their struggle will take to regain their land and farms cannot be a mere academic issue and will not remain so for long. It is also not sure if the world would use economic sanction to get them what is rightfully theirs. This down turn in their life is the result of a carefully planned strategy of an ideology of hate. There is also Newtonian law operating here. Against this natural action and reaction there is the artificially generated one in a poem of Vanzara. He speaks of the Bangladesh migrants roaming everywhere “From Kutch to Kohima, Bangladeshi nationals are roaming free; they commit all crimes in front of the authorities.” In another poem he speaks of liberating Rawalpindi from the hands of the Pakistanis and showing China its place vis-à-vis India. Even more menacing is his warning against the politicians within the country whom he calls snakes. It is a sinister hint ala RSS that politicians and politics do not count where ideology is supreme. This is a matter of legitimate concern for democracy. Perhaps the establishment of the Hindu Rashtra will involve the last battle that Vanzara would fight when he refers to: “Even before my arrest, I was taken for a criminal. After I was arrested, a one-sided war was started against me and the co-accused. Today, people refuse to meet me even in private, let alone in public.”
The publishers Kunal Shah and Jayesh Shah claim that the books have been sold out so fast on account of the patriotism in them: Jayesh Shah says, “These books contain poetry about patriotism. People usually like poems that touch the heart. This kind of writing gives inspiration to them. Because of this, we support Vanzara by publishing his books.” All Indians would love to be patriotic but if patriotism is viewed as the privilege reserve of the Hindutva. Won’t a large section be deprived of their right to citizenship itself as the victims of the genocide? Where will Muslim be when Vanzara calls all the politicians as traitors?
It would be sorely tested how soon the government at centre and in the state allows the “living space” that Muslims lost to the Hindu extremists. On the top of it the state government has also passed bills into legislation which forbid Muslims from getting their premises evicted if they are rented to Hindus, neither can they buy or sell them. This is a concerted effort of the Hindutva that the land belongs to Hindus and Muslims must be dispossessed of the land.