India: BJP spreads its wings -Translating Hindutva into national creed

 The Tribune, July 22, 2017

by S Nihal Singh

TO no one’s surprise, Mr Ram Nath Kovind, the BJP candidate, won the presidential election. He had the numbers and the main interest was in the volume of cross-voting in the opposition ranks. Judging by the level of the latter, opposition parties have a lot of work to do to prepare themselves for the 2019 general election. The RSS strand of nationalism has now captured three of the highest offices in the land in the personalities of Prime Minister Modi, Mr Kovind and, in days to come, Mr Venkaiah Naidu (vice-presidency). Despite the public pronouncements of the latter two on forswearing party loyalties, a lifetime or near-lifetime imbibing the narrow Hindu nationalism and myths of the RSS cannot but influence their decisions in performing their constitutional duties. That the Opposition is in a bind is no secret, and the chief hurdle before any measure of effectiveness is achieved is the long dominant Congress having come to the end of the road. Mr Rahul Gandhi is the heir apparent and even after he is crowned king, with mother Sonia keeping a close watch on him, his lack of political instinct must remain a tremendous handicap. The Opposition can be divided among the two main Communist parties and others. The Communists’ main task is to act as a ginger group with India’s main Asian rival China the only remaining classical Communist regime. Indian Communists are useful in reminding the country of the ideals of secularism which are being demolished each day by the present ruling dispensation. The Congress, as suggested, is in a terrible bind. The new emperor has no clothes and a party fed on excessive doses of family rule cannot look for leadership outside the restricted circle. Mr Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United) does not have a party to speak of and has nimbly placed himself in a position to jump on the BJP bandwagon or claim a leadership role in the Opposition. He gave his support to the BJP presidential candidate even before the Opposition met to decide a joint candidate. Of the remaining regional parties, three stand out, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal in Odisha and the two DMKs in Tamil Nadu. Mr Amit Shah, BJP president, has already prioritised these states. Indeed, he has been most aggressive in Bengal by trying the medicine he administered in Uttar Pradesh, also with a significant Muslim population, by polarising the electorate along communal lines. The BJP is facing a problem in Bengal because it faces a combative chief minister, who has made mistakes over coping with a corruption scandal and in giving fillip to the Gorkha movement in Darjeeling, but will fight each inch before ceding territory.  In Odisha’s case, Mr Patnaik, a chip of the old block, is a wily politician who plays his cards carefully and thought it wise to support the BJP candidate for presidency. Tamil Nadu falls in a separate category because it has distinguished itself by the level of skulduggery the DMK parties practice. The AIADMK had Jayalalithaa reigning as a queen to be followed by the melodrama of her companion Sasikala, who landed herself in jail on money-related matters after usurping the party leadership even as her proxies continue to rule the state. In jail she has made news by allegedly enjoying special privileges for a consideration leading to the transfer of two senior police officers. The BJP must therefore pay a price high enough to attract support. Opposition ranks will be inevitably denuded over the coming weeks and months as the lure of power tempts a number of leaders and followers to join the BJP’s bandwagon. After all, tasting power is the dream of every politician and with the traditional source of power, the Congress, in the doldrums there is nowhere else to go. Opposition disunity is an old problem. There is no coherent policy its constituents share except for broad ideas such as secularism. But secularism comes in many shapes and sizes although now frontally challenged by the present ruling dispensation. The problem is that even with this new threat, many Opposition leaders are more concerned by narrower regional and caste concerns to guard their flanks.  At the intellectual and middle class levels, issues of national policy are clear cut. But these sections do not constitute a majority. Indeed, Mr Modi’s success lies in presenting the problems of the country in crisp terms understood by the proverbial common man even while carrying on the pro-poor rhetoric so successfully used by Indira Gandhi in the past. Therefore, in a sense most in the modern secular Indian society are bystanders even as the ruling party and its leaders seek to build a new Hindu India of their dream. And now they hold three senior positions to frame and influence policy. For persons of integrity more interested in the direction the country is taking, rather than the gains and losses of individuals and parties, from this point of view, the picture looks bleak. Politics, as we have learned by trial and error, is the game of the possible and the phase the country is passing through, much as the US is experiencing under the Trump presidency, is a transient phenomenon. However, unlike in the US, the BJP is set on changing the very basis on which the idea of India is founded. The leaders of the Indian independence movement achieved the rare distinction of shepherding the country into following a modern set of ideas ultimately enshrined in a constitution that promises equality irrespective of caste or religious affiliations. Although the practice of Indian democracy leaves much to be desired, the goal has been clear. The BJP-RSS leadership is now suggesting that the ideal of a secular India is wrong. In essence, it argues that we live in a Hindu India and all minorities must pay obeisance to the Hindutva cause and practices. If only the Opposition leaders kept this central theme in mind, they would render service to the country.

India - Jammu Kashmir: RSS pushes minority status for Hindus living in Jammu and Kashmir

The Tribune

RSS demand for minority panel puts BJP in fix

Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Jammu, July 23

The BJP is in a quandary after the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) favoured minority status for Hindus living in Jammu and Kashmir. The coalition government, in which the BJP is an equal partner, had opposed the creation of a minority commission in J&K which is the only Muslim majority state in the country. “It is a welcome step. Ultimately, the RSS leadership has come forward to restore constitutional and fundamental rights to the minority community in J&K,” said Ankur Sharma, a Jammu-based advocate who has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court for setting up the minority panel. He, however, regretted that the state BJP, which is one of the constituents of the Sangh Parivar, has opposed constitutional rights to Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities. “The RSS leadership must direct the state BJP not to deprive Hindus and Sikhs of the state of their constitutional rights,” he had said. On Thursday, All India Prachar Pramukh of the RSS Manmohan Vaidya had favoured minority rights for the Hindus living in J&K. He said the government should take note of the demand for setting up a minority commission in J&K. Since Vaidya’s statement, no BJP leader is ready to come on record on the issue because neither the party can oppose its political mentor’s stand nor it can contradict its own government’s affidavit in the Supreme Court. Responding to the writ petition, J&K had filed an affidavit in the apex court in February to oppose a minority commission. “The petition for setting up a state minority commission in Jammu and Kashmir through a proper legislation, including time-bound identification and notification of religious and linguistic minorities by the state, is legally not maintainable,” the PDP-BJP government had told the apex court. Similarly on the floor of the Legislative Council, Social Welfare Minister Sajjad Lone on June 24, 2016, had outrightly rejected the demand for setting up a minority commission. On March 27 this year, the Supreme Court had asked the Centre and J&K Government to sit together and take a decision on setting up a minority commission in the state.

Into the world of the Kanwariyas Reportage by Snigdha Poonam (Hindustan Times)

Hindustan Times

Shiva’s band of men: Into the world of the Kanwariyas

Who is a Kanwariya and what does he want from life? HT travels with a group of pilgrims, who are getting younger, wilder and more male every year, to understand why they take the journey

long reads Updated: Jul 22, 2017 22:45 IST

Snigdha Poonam
Hindustan Times

1/8

A monsoon ritual once known only in pockets of the Gangetic plains, the Kanwar Yatra is today India’s biggest annual pilgrimage. Where only a few thousands made the journey until the 1980s, around 20 million carried the kanwar between Haridwar and Delhi in 2016. Clad in saffron robes and balancing urns of Gangajal along hundreds of kilometres, here’s a look at the journey and motivations that draw these men to the pilgrimage in larger numbers each year. (Vipin Kumar / HT Photo)

“Where are the hockey sticks?” Omi Saini shouts into the air as his open-top truck first hits traffic 25 km into the drive from Hardwar. His fellow travellers first look at him in puzzlement and then at each other in accusation. They are six in all, but except for the one at the wheel, the rest of them are sitting in the back of the truck on a deck erected on bamboo poles and stacked up with mattresses. Actually, not all five of them are together on the deck at any point in the 300-km drive between Hardwar and Firozepur Jhirka, their destination. Two of them are always on the road, running behind the truck with a bag carrying two bottles of water. The positions change every 100 metres but without the truck ever coming to a full stop. As the vehicle slows down, two men climb a wooden ladder to the deck dripping sweat and two slither down a large plastic drum dripping water they have just poured over themselves. All that passes between the two set of sodden men across the truck in this split second is water: two bottles of Ganga jal from one of its holiest sources in Hindu mythology – the ghats of Hardwar where the river is believed to descend from lord Shiva’s topknot. The men are dressed like a team: orange T-shirts inscribed with the name of their town, orange shorts, travel pouches across their chest, compression sleeves around their calves, rescue whistles around their necks, and ghunghroos around their ankles. The look – a mix of hiker, football player and Kathak dancer – is only strange until you notice that the highway is crammed with all-male teams dressed the same way.
The whole exercise is planned around the holy water. One is only a true Kanwariya if his Ganga jal remains in motion over the two-day Kanwar route between Hardwar and his home, where he will offer the water to the nearest Shivalinga. It’s up to him to decide how he wants to cover the 200-odd kilometers without spilling a single drop: walking, running, crawling, or participating in a relay race involving a moving vehicle. Hordes of pilgrims have covered the route carrying the Kanwar – a wooden pole with an urn of Ganga jal tied to each end – since the 19th century. Little about the pilgrimage remains the same, however. What used to be a monsoon ritual undertaken in pockets of the Gangetic plains is today India’s biggest annual pilgrimage. Only a few thousand made the journey until the 1980s; around 20 million carried the Kanwar between Hardwar and Delhi in 2016.

A Kanwariya wearing a T-shirt with Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s photograph on it. (Vipin Kumar/HT PHOTO)

What has also changed is the scale and the style of the pilgrimage. The Kanwar itself is no longer two aluminium pots hanging from a wooden pole, but two multi-storied temples fashioned from every decorative item available in the local markets – tinsel, streamers, lace, Styrofoam – and attached to either side of a glittering rod. But only the pilgrims travelling on foot carry a Kanwar these days. The cooler set carry the water in bottles and switch between running like an Olympic racer and winding down on a motorbike or a truck. Nothing is cooler than a trailer – the bigger, the better. The trucks come equipped with a sound system and a DJ who can play the Kanwariya version of every hit Bollywood song. However, if you’ve got a trailer, you can pack it tight with speakers – floor to ceiling, side to side – turn up the bass, and blast the latest House beats from L.A. If you are more into sight than sound, you can hire a company of Kanwariya artists to dress up as Shiva and Parvati and enact domestic squabbles or swipe their faces with ash and roll their eyes into their heads.
“Bhole Has Called Me”
No change in the world of Kanwar Yatra is as visible as the composition of the Kanwariyas, who get younger, more male, and more out of control with every year. Until only a decade ago, the Kanwariya season meant a procession of saffron-clad men and women wobbling along the roads between Hardwar and Delhi. Now, it’s 200 kilometers of free-ranging masculinity: thousands of young men taking over every inch of public space to do what they think is their right – walking, running, driving, dancing, dressing, undressing, bathing, sleeping, getting high, and making all kinds of trouble.

Read more

• 

  Noida: Non-veg food ‘disappears’ from Kanwar Yatra route
• 

  Kanwar yatra: Devotees set bike on fire after it hits procession in Sohna

Year after year, Kanwariyas make headlines for coming in the way of law and order. This season alone, Kanwariyas have been in the news for falling off trains, being electrocuted on a street, being hit by a bus, vandalising buses, blocking highways, blowing up a police vehicle and later a police station. Few things disrupt life in north India as extensively as the annual passage of the Kanwariyas. If in Hardwar their arrival means special battalions of police, in Delhi it means a shutdown of schools. Along the rest of the route, it means willing or enforced surrender, from the usual lockdown of shops and restaurants to the recent ban on selling meat and eggs in Greater Noida during the season. But who are these young men taking over the streets in much of north India and why is everyone afraid of them? For one, they are armed with hockey sticks.

“I definitely remember we loaded them in,” says Raju, reaching under a mattress in search of the hockey sticks. He goes by one name, like most members of the Kanwariya gang: Naresh, Naveen, Ajay… The oldest of them is 36 and the youngest 20, but currently their place in the hierarchy is decided by their Kanwar cred. So it’s 28-year-old Naresh with four yatras under his belt who took charge of the preparations a month and a half in advance. “There is so much to arrange for. Clothes, trucks, DJ, videographer, cook, diesel, generator, food, water,” he says, as the truck whips round a bend, flinging us to opposite sides of a deck only separated from open air by a rope. The “craze for Kanwar” only took off in his village seven years ago. Since then, larger numbers of young men set off every year on a week-long pilgrimage their parents hadn’t even heard of. The men from Firozepur Jhirka know each other like brothers. All of these men were born in the same village, belong to the same caste – Mali (OBC) – and most continue to live and work there. “Some of us work as cooks, some of us as vegetable vendors, some of us as construction labourers,” Naresh says, now holding on to the bamboo pole tied across the middle of the deck. He is a small man with dark skin, high cheekbones and sunken eyes. He and his friends make up the first generation of men in their families to work outside the fields; only one of them has gone to high school. Naresh himself dropped out in fifth grade to support his family. A vegetable vendor, Naresh makes Rs 15,000 a month and saves at least Rs 7,000 through the year to put in the Kanwar kitty. It’s what everyone must contribute towards a basic fund of Rs 1,25,000.
“Why spend the saving on Kanwar?” I ask him. “What to do – Bhole (lord Shiva) keeps calling me,” he says, sliding to the edge of the deck to prepare for the plunge.

Read more

• 

  Kanwar fair ends, ex-CM Harish Rawat trolled for comments on pilgrims

Ask any of the tens of thousands of men streaming in and out of Hardwar on any day of the Sravan and you will hear the same thing: Bhole has called me. A vast majority of Kanwariyas are young men from low-income families in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan who are themselves hanging on to the edges of the informal economy as drivers, labourers and security guards. The four words – Bhole has called me – are uttered less in devotion and more as a code for escape from the uncertainties of their daily lives, from chances of earning fixed wages to chances of finding a good wife. The Kanwar Yatra is their one chance to prove their talents – physical strength, resourcefulness, wit – without being faced with market realities. Like an annual company offsite, the challenges of a Kanwar yatra prepare them to go back to their lives wiser and stronger.
That Special Feeling
Apparently, only a man can understand what a Kanwar yatra means to another man. Married for four years, Naresh has never brought his wife along on a Kanwar trip. “It’s not for the ladies. I have visited Hardwar with my wife otherwise but not like this. Some ladies from our village do the yatra but they prefer to walk back and forth, like the older people.” No matter what his wife thinks of his annual adventure, Naresh will keep returning to Hardwar with his gang. ““I like so many things about the journey.” It’s the only time in a year when, irrespective of his caste or class, the world treats Naresh like he thinks it should: families offer him meals, shopkeepers reserve a discount, complete strangers press his feet, and a policeperson accompanies his team from when their truck enters Delhi to when it recedes from the capital.
It’s the most conflict-prone leg of the Kanwariya’s journey: this is when Naresh and his friends come face to face with an urban middle class they only provide their services to otherwise. As Kanwariyas, though, their only loyalty is to each other and to “Bholenath” so the rest of the world can go to hell. The roads can remain jammed, the schools shut, and loudspeaker limits extended.

A group of Kanwariyas take a selfie in Hardwar - the pilgrimage is increasingly becoming a show of male bonding. (Vipin Kumar/HT PHOTO)

Halfway down the road from Hardwar, someone does finally find the hockey sticks. The one to discover them next to the stove is Vikram Majhoka, the youngest member of the team. Twenty-year-old Majhoka, a tall, muscular man with a big forehead and long hair, is also the most educated of the gang. He is currently enrolled in a professional institute in Gurgaon from where he will graduate in a year with a degree in computer applications.
He isn’t sure what he will do next. “I will sit for Haryana police exam maybe,” he says, panting. He has just covered about 25 km running with the Ganga jal. I wonder if the labour is for lord Shiva, but he doesn’t even see himself as religious. “Not really. My family does agarbatti-dhoop before the gods every Sunday. Sometimes I also stand around, that’s all.” I ask him why he is here at all. “To have a good time with friends. To have fun,” he says, sharing on Facebook a selfie he has just taken with me.
He would have got a real tattoo of Shiva on his arm for the trip if not for the fact that “some people have been rejected in the physical exam for Haryana police because of that.” He’s making do with a psychedelic tattoo sleeve. It’s his first Kanwar yatra and he tells me it’s been plenty fun so far. I ask him what he likes the most about it. He says it’s the dancing on the roof of the truck between the sprints. What about the part with the hockey sticks? “Oh that’s just to clear the traffic. If people are blocking the truck then you have to move them aside.” What if they are hurt in the process, I ask him as he swings a stick over his head. “No, no, we are not there to hurt anyone,” replies Omi Saini, who is now back on the deck after two rounds of running. “We are peaceful people.”

Lest they be called anti-national | Smita Gupta

The Hindu

Lest they be called anti-national

Smita Gupta

July 12, 2017 00:02 IST

Youth Congress activists hold placard and raise slogans during a protest to condemn the militant attack on a bus in which seven Amarnath pilgrims were killed and 19 others injured, in New Delhi on Tuesday.   | Photo Credit: PTI

Protesters have to double down on patriotism in these times of vigilantism

On July 7, the lobby of Delhi’s Constitution Club was crawling with armed policemen. Inside, in a T-shaped hall, the recently formed National Campaign Against Mob Lynching (NCAML) was due to release the draft of a proposed law, MASUKA, or the Manav Suraksha Kanoon (a law to protect human beings). Activists, journalists and concerned citizens milled around, waiting for the chief guest, Prakash Ambedkar, to arrive.

Ticking all boxes

Within minutes of Mr. Ambedkar’s arrival, the electronic screen behind him that till now was displaying the #StopMobLynching logo faded out. In its place appeared a tribute to Indian soldiers who guard the snowy heights of Siachen. Then, in the second surprise of the day, one of the organisers requested the audience to stand up for a rendering of the national anthem.
The NCAML was born in the wake of government indifference to the recent spate of mob lynchings across the country. Young people as different as Pune businessman Tehseen Poonawalla, Jawaharlal Nehru University students Kanhaiya Kumar and Shehla Rashid, Gujarat’s new Dalit youth leader Jignesh Mewani and actor Swara Bhaskar came together to confront the ugly phenomenon of mob lynching. Overcoming the diversity of their social and economic backgrounds, and differences in political outlook, they asked a team of experts to draft a new law whose passage they now hope the government will ensure in Parliament.
As I sat listening to the young voices speaking their parts fluently and convincingly, interspersed with video bites of colleagues who weren’t able to make it to the event, I kept asking myself: what’s the connection between our soldiers at Siachen, the national anthem and mob lynchings?
And then it all became clear: since any protest these days against the government, or any act that appears to be a criticism of its shortcomings, is likely to be construed as anti-national, maybe even an act of sedition, the NCAML team had decided that before it became the target of the prevailing vigilante culture, it needed to tick at least two boxes — “I love and honour our brave soldiers” and “I am patriotic, I stand up for the national anthem” — before it embarked on dealing with mob lynching.
Indeed, when the NCAML campaigners came in that day to hold their press conference, the first question posed to them by the policemen on duty was: had they come to remember Burhan Wani, the Hizbul Mujahideen commander who was killed in an encounter in the Kashmir Valley with Indian security forces a year back on July 8, 2016?
Clearly, the NCAML knows what it is doing, but that such precautions have to be taken is a tragic comment on our times.

India: Appeasement of Minorities is a Myth | RAM PUNIYANI

RAM PUNIYANI

Sunday, July 23,2017

The turmoil in Kashmir has worsened since the encounter of Burhan Wani last year (2016). The ceaseless protests, the handling of protests leading to deaths and blinding of many is very disturbing. To cap this negative development the attack on Amaranth pilgrims has added salt to the wounds of the nation. (July 2017)

Tragedy struck when one of the buses was attacked. The bus driver, Salim, in a brave gesture, kept driving despite being wounded, and that prevented a wholesale massacre.

Amarnath yatra is among the most pious of pilgrimages undertaken by scores of Hindus. Amarnath is ice Shiva Linga located in a cave deep in the valley. This was discovered by a Muslim shepherd, way back in 1850s and since then it is a regular pilgrimage for devotees. The yatra is managed mostly by Muslims on the way and reflects the deep imprint of India’s syncretic culture.

It is also a manifestation of Kashmiriyat, the culture of Kashmir, which is a synthesis of Buddhism, Vedant and Sufi tradition. Despite the rising militancy in Kashmir, the yatra has mostly been going on, though under heavy security cover. There are instances earlier also when the Yatra was attacked in 2001, 2002 and in 2003. Incidentally those were also the years when NDA was ruling. What is the correlation between the muscular nationalism practiced by BJP led NDA and such acts is a matter of conjecture.

While there is communalization of Kashmir issue by the Pakistan inspired militants and Al Qaeda type elements who have infiltrated into the area, by and large the deep syncretism of the area has prevailed and the local Muslim population has been of great help to the tourists (Yatris) in their hours of crisis, in matters of supply of food when the yatris have got trapped due to natural calamities. Kashmir and the nation condemned the attack in one voice. The nation was pained to no end. The prime Minister who takes long time to speak or tweet when Pahlu Khan or a Juniad is mob lynched was prompt with a series of tweets in condemning, rightly, the incident of Amarnath.

The other part of this was the Hindu nationalists who have been on the job to run down and humiliate the liberal and democratic voices in the country. BJP spokesperson, GVL Narasimha Rao, carrying on with usual mocking at the democratic liberal elements, tweeted, "On Amarnath killings, is Not In My Name gang protesting or are protests only for Akhlaqs, Junaids, Pehlu Khans & Not4Lord Shiva devotees?"

This was in the aftermath of the massive turn out on Jantar Mantar after the killing of Junaid in the train. The general impression being spread is that liberal activists-thinkers protest only after the atrocities against Muslims. This started being propagated more so after the ‘Award wapasi’ (returning honors) after the mass lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq. As such if we see even the award wapasi occurred once there was a qualitative change in the persecution of minorities with the coming to power of Modi Sarkar. Akhlaq’s lynching was shocking. Similarly Junaid’s murder in a train also was an event where the basic foundations of democratic liberties got shaken.

The spontaneous mass protests after Junaid’s murder occurred in different cities of the country and did register the protest all around. As a matter of fact ‘Not In My Name’ protest picked up and on similar lines and thousands collected to grieve the death of Amarnath pilgrims. So what does the propaganda by BJP spokespersons aims to achieve?

Currently this tribe wants to spread the impression that the Hindu majority is suffering; and is being persecuted while the Muslims are being appeased-pampered in this country. Hindu nationalist politics draw strength from the propaganda first against Muslims and then partly against Christians. Currently it wants to defame all those who defend human rights of minorities. That’s the reason as protests of this kind have occurred more often and have drawn more attention. The idea behind this criticism of liberal democratic elements is to muzzle the voices of protests so that this BJP type politics constructed on intolerance for liberal values and violation of minority rights has an easy go in society. Its main plank so far has been that minorities have been appeased and now it is going to the next stage where the majority Hindu community is supposed to be suffering discrimination. This is a very shrewd move and without a shred of truth.

While their propaganda did sink into the social understanding, the truth is far from that. In our country, the economic condition of Muslims is well reflected in the Sachar committee report, how over a period of last seven decades their condition has been falling abysmally. In matters of security and being victims of violence, over 80% of violence victims are Muslims, while they constitute 14.1% in the population as per the 2011 Census. In most of the acts of terrorist violence also, it is Muslim youth who had been arrested and most of them had to be released for the lack of any evidence. Their political representation is falling continuously as reflected in the number of Muslim Lok Sabha MPs.

The perception being created about the threat to the majority community is the bedrock of the communal campagin and a clever political move to further strengthen the polarizing politics.

French comic book by William de Tamaris uses India’s war on beef to illustrate the dangers of Hindutva

scroll.in - 20 July 2017

A French comic book uses India’s war on beef to illustrate the dangers of Hindutva

‘Sacred Cow’ is re-examining stereotypes in the wake of mob lynchings and cow vigilantism.

By William de Tamaris, illustrated by George H

Noopur Tiwari

India is the land of ahimsa where the cow is considered holy by all its peace-loving people. This enduring cliché could finally be on its way out, if not from Western Europe, then at least from France.
A 30-page French comic book by journalist and author William de Tamaris tells the story of self-styled gau rakshaks, and the alarming trend of vigilante violence spreading across India. Tracing the history of beef bans across several Indian states, the comic highlights the rise of Hindu nationalism and introduces French readers to the concepts of Hindutva and the propaganda for a Hindu nation.
“We were inspired to do the story after I met Vijaykant Chauhan, who calls himself a gau rakshak,” said de Tamaris, who met Chauhan shortly after the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri, in September 2015. It was then that he decided to work on the subject along with illustrator George H.
The authors admitted that they had harboured a number of stereotypes about India for years, but that changed during the course of their research. “Here I was, supposedly, in the land of tolerance but the hate in the discourse of so-called gau rakshaks was shocking,” said de Tamaris. “In France, people still believe India is the land of Gandhi but that no longer holds true.”

By William de Tamaris, illustrated by George H.

The story took the French authors to Maharashtara, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala. They say that Chauhan was keen to talk to journalists, and told them that if he were Nathuram Godse, he would kill Gandhi all over again.
The French authors also spoke to Muslims of the Qureshi community, who have traditionally been involved in butchery, in Maharashtra. They found that the impact of the beef ban and ensuing vigilante violence by gau rakshaks was immense – many have lost their livelihoods and live in constant fear. Some are unable to send their children to school and are resigned to their fate.

By William de Tamaris, illustrated by George H.

Soon after the release of the comic book, French mainstream media began to speak of genocide and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the same breath, while referring to the 2002 Gujarat riots. Analysts in a news discussion on a leading radio channel concluded that this brand of politics and the “extreme discourse” was bringing “instability” to India.
In the month of June, Modi received a warm welcome (and a bear hug) in Paris from France’s newly elected President, Emmanuel Macron. This was Modi’s third visit to France since he was elected as prime minister in 2014.

By William de Tamaris, illustrated by George H.

Any references to Modi or his political discourse still remain sparse in the French media. The focus has been on the sales of the French Rafale fighter jets and controversial Areva nuclear reactors, both worth billions of euros. More recently, President Macron has tried to project India (referred to regularly in the French press as “one of the biggest polluters of the planet”), as a leading partner in climate diplomacy.

By William de Tamaris, illustrated by George H.

India: Diversity is a dead-end without individual freedom | Pratap Bhanu Mehta

BOOK EXCERPT

Pratap Bhanu Mehta on why the celebration of diversity is a dead-end without individual freedom

‘Diversity is not itself a freestanding moral value.’

https://scroll.in/article/844238/pratap-bhanu-mehta-on-why-the-celebration-of-diversity-is-a-dead-end-without-individual-freedom