Portends of May 2014

After Muzaffarnagar and Pune in Maharahstra, Rajendra nagar police station area under Cyberabad Commission rate in Kishanbaugh area of old city of Hyderabad saw what was planted polarization. Next was Saharanpur in UP. They had the atmosphere that sustains and worsens communalism, the hallmark of Amit Shah-Narendra Modi ascent in the national politics. The method and selection of place was deliberately chosen to plant communalism that was obviously alien to the place. On Wednesday May 14, 2014 there was burning incident of the Sikh flag which led to communal violence that was first of its kind in the region of Hyderabad. The Sikhs went armed and entered in the houses of Muslim who were sleeping and started slashing them with their swords. The two communities have had no history of such rioting before. In all the above mentioned places there was no report of previous such attacks. This was purposely started to divide communities. The Muslims bore the brunt. Three of them were killed in Hyderabad and 17 injured. [1] The governor ESL Narsimhan ordered inquiry into the incident and also issued order to pay six lakh rupees to the family of each killed and 50,000 to the injured. The reaction of the government was prompt and showed that they were surprised by the swift change in the otherwise peaceful life and determined to prevent it. The polarization in Hyderabad comes within a week of pogroms in Assam and the proximity to election may not be obvious but the issue is related to the purpose of the Sangh ideology. It also shares the efforts of Pravin Togadia’s attempt to turn Hyderabad into a communal cauldron. Modi and Togadia are two sides of the same coin which can use any non Muslim community against the Muslims but not vice versa. [Pogroms in Assam: the Modi effect]. Since then Modi is stepping up the incidence of communalism of the far right. Two days before the Independence Day August 15, 2014 he visited Ladakh and donned the apparel of the people of Ladakh and sent symbolic note that he is the same old self who would wear the traditional headwear of every religion but Islam. In substance he also let it be known that his impromptu speech on the Independence Day would include highlighting Savarkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Subhas Bose, Jagannath Azad and Bhagat Singh. [2]The deliberate leaving out the name of Maulana Azad speaks volumes. It was the Maulana who had opposed the partition of the country and was highly critical of Gandhi, Nehru and Patel accepting the partition of the country. It is pertinent to quote what the tactics of the Hindutva is: “Sanghis are masters of lies and deception, the “Gujarat Experiment” has sharpened these skills even more. They use sectarian violence as a means to polarise the atmosphere, misguide innocent voters and grab power. Once in power anti-Muslim pogroms are replaced by oppression of minorities and Hinduization of schools and offices. Gujarat and other states where they have ruled in the past are glaring examples of it.”[3] The election 2014 will one day reveal what went wrong with the polity because it also keeps what a perceptive writer called “the worst kept secret of India” that is the slaughter of Muslims in Muzaffarnagar like what transpired at the Modi official residence in the night of February 27, 2002.[4] The prognostics have come home to roost. There are issues that would come haunting us even beyond the election. The Jats had affinity with Muslims until Amit Shah and Modi put the seed of hatred in the sugar bowl of western UP. Jats and Muslims had relations. They worked together as masters and servants, or as service providers to the Jats. There were also interreligious marriages. Against the backdrop of “love jihad” there was no acrimony in that part of India where code of honour had terrible hold on the populace. In one such incident Jats had gone to the house of a boy and killed him for self gotra marriage around the time Sachin and Gaurav had killed Shanawaz. The extremists under Amit Shah and Modi had formed Narendra Modi Army and chose the pretext of Muslims teasing Jat girls and hence reaction dividing the people on religion based politics. When Narendra Modi addressed a rally in Agra on November 21, 2013 after the pogroms Kalyan Singh of the notoriety of Babri mosque demolition also spoke and reminded this: "There is a reaction to every action. Only dead bodies don't react.. If Azam Khan had not shielded murderers, this would not have happened.” [1]Modi also had justified the pogroms of 2002 as based on the Newtonian 3rd law of gravitation. Modi also shielded Babu Bajrangi and yet the fad of clean chits had eclipsed it, though Bajrangi is sentenced to life imprisonment and Modi who housed him in Gujatat guest house at Mr Abu was left untouched. The action and reaction works selectively and choosers are the well organized and armed VHP, BD, RSS and now Narendra Modi Army. The Economist has officially kept itself at a distance and not joined the mad race of the corporate and mainstream papers toeing the line of those singing hosanna of Modi. The paper described Indian politics as feckless and venal. The futile attempt of getting justice for victims of the pogroms, like the widow Jakia who approached Director General of Police of Gujarat Chakravarty. He refused to accept her complaint. Then she approached the courts they also did not heed her petition. Finally the Supreme Court ordered Gujarat High Court to take her appeal and make inquiry into the murder of her husband and nearly sixty others who had sought refuge in her house. In the meantime the Home Minister of India LK Advani continued giving clean chits to Modi. This is why the Economist calls it fecklessness of Indian politics. The paper gives an illustration of venality of Modi and his government: “One reason why the inquiries into the riots were inconclusive is that a great deal of evidence was lost or willfully destroyed.” Modi openly accepted that he had Soharbuddin killed and dared Sonia Gandh’s government at centre to hang him! Praveen Togadia justified the pogroms of Muzaffarnagar by saying that this is what would happen if Muslims demand another Pakistan. In the first place Muslims did not want any Pakistan and had no thought of the neighboring country. The Jats were organized and armed to teeth and started their revenge. When Amit Shah visited Muzaffarnagar a couple of days before election on April 10 he still talked of taking revenge. Will the revenge stop anywhere in near future? But a much more serious indictment of Modi according to the Economist is “Mr Modi might start well in Delhi but sooner or later he will have to cope with a sectarian slaughter or a crisis with Pakistan—and nobody, least of all the modernisers praising him now, knows what he will do nor how Muslims, in turn, will react to such a divisive man. “If Mr Modi were to explain his role in the violence and show genuine remorse, we would consider backing him, but he never has; it would be wrong for a man who has thrived on division to become prime minister of a country as fissile as India. We do not find the prospect of a government led by Congress under Mr Gandhi an inspiring one. But we have to recommend it to Indians as the less disturbing option.” “And if they still choose Mr Modi? We would wish him well, and we would be delighted for him to prove us wrong by governing India in a modern, honest and fair way. But for now he should be judged on his record—which is that of a man who is still associated with sectarian hatred. There is nothing modern, honest or fair about that. India deserves better.”[5] Since then Modi has risen higher and higher in power and as PM he unfurled the tricolor and in his impromptu speech he forgot what the papers said would be highlights of the Independence Speech. But he spoke of how he was awakened to the warfare that was the standard practice between departments of government in the Delhi durbar of new Modi Sarkar. Now his legacy from Gujarat has churned up such warfare between Intelligence Bureau and Central Bureau of Investigation. On Thursday August 21, 2014 IB appealed to the Supreme Court to intervene in CBI filing a charge sheet against 4 of IB officers Rajendra Kumar, P Mittal, M K Sinha and Rajeev Wankhede)

who were behind fake encounter of Ishrat Jahan and three others. This if we have to believe GL Singhal who participated in shooting the four was carried out by the order of Chief Minister Modi. Another legacy of Modi is of recent vintage. His lieutenant Amit Shah was behind the pogroms in Muzaffarnagar. They have so worsened the communal atmosphere that a Muslim trader from West Bengal was thrown out of the running train on Friday August 22, 2014. Sheikh Rahmatulla died of his wounds. What is their in the make of Modi that cannot let him change is his being determined by RSS ethos. Ashish Nandy diagnosed it so long ago: “It left me in no doubt that here was a classic, clinical case of a fascist. I never use the term ‘fascist’ as a term of abuse; to me it is a diagnostic category comprising not only one’s ideological posture but also the personality traits and motivational patterns contextualising the ideology. “Modi, it gives me no pleasure to tell the readers, met virtually all the criteria that psychiatrists, psycho-analysts and psychologists had set up after years of empirical work on the authoritarian personality. He had the same mix of puritanical rigidity, narrowing of emotional life, massive use of the ego defence of projection, denial and fear of his own passions combined with fantasies of violence—all set within the matrix of clear paranoid and obsessive personality traits. I still remember the cool, measured tone in which he elaborated a theory of cosmic conspiracy against India that painted every Muslim as a suspected traitor and a potential terrorist”. [7] Instead of proving us wrong Modi has proved us right. [1]http://www.niticentral.com/2014/05/14/communal-clash-in-hyderabad-claims-3-lives-223327.html http://www.niticentral.com/2014/05/15/communal-clash-curfew-continues-in-trouble-hit-areas-223601.html [2] Asian Age August 12, 2014. [3] http://caravandaily.com/portal/waiting-for-the-apocalypse/ [4]“the worst kept secret of India” http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/32386477.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst [5] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21600106-he-will-probably-become-indias-next-prime-minister-does-not-mean-he-should-be-can-anyone?zid=309&ah=80dcf288b8561b012f603b9fd9577f0e [6] http://news.oneindia.in/india/muzaffarnagar-trader-thrown-out-of-train-dies-1507123.html [7] Seminar 2002 August 23, 2014