(Asian Age
April 14, 2007
Silence of the State
by Seema Mustafa
It is very sad and tragic for a country when it has to cope with a mainstream political party that thrives on a politics of hate and divisiveness. A party that spews venom, and when confronted, aggressively supports an ideology that would land ordinary folk in jail in any civilised part of the world. A party that seeks to divide the citizens of the country it represents on the basis of religion, through created stereotypes, false propaganda and vicious lies.
The CD that was being circulated as part of the campaign in Uttar Pradesh makes the skin crawl. It is so vulgar and ugly that any decent thinking person — and fortunately, India has a majority of those — can only turn away in disgust, and wonder at a political party that has nothing to offer but unhappy hate. The Muslims are terrible, and why? Because they eat meat, and what is worse, they eat beef. Because they produce more children than others. Because they are fanatics. Because they support Pakistan. Because they are not educated. Because they are poor. Presuming that every bit of this rubbish is true, do these people really believe that poverty, over population, illiteracy, fanaticism, meat eating are confined to any one religion? Are there not thousands and millions and billions of people out there who are starving, who have more children than they can feed, who eat not just beef but anything they can get their hands on, who turn to religion because at the end of the day that is all they have to sustain them?
And the irony here is that those who are pointing fingers at an entire community are the fanatics for whom a nation has little meaning. For if patriotism was really stirring in their veins, they would not seek to weaken the foundation of India through their politics of hate. They would not preach a divisive ideology, and pit citizen against citizen just because one was born a Hindu and the other a Muslim. They would not circulate dirty CDs and support state governments and the Ugly Indian for killing, raping innocent citizens of India, destroying entire homes and livelihood, and following a policy aimed at reducing an entire community to second class citizens. They would not see the world through the prism of communalism, and live little lives full of anger and frustration and resentment.
No, they definitely would not. But then patriotism and nationalism for them are just jingoism to beat the drums with, to whip up emotions, to incite negative passions. They are not interested in a strong, resilient India, for if they were they would work day and night to rise above religion, caste and creed to unite the people; for they would know that the way forward is to make the country strong and not weak from within. They demolished the Babri Masjid, and they did it with great fervour, which they now do not want to acknowledge because they do not want to go behind bars. But after reducing the beautiful monument to rubble, with some help from another political party and the Family, it was unable to influence the people to become communal wolves and devour the minorities.
India, fortunately, is a country of great people and despite its poverty and its inequalities, has been able to keep true to a certain thread of secularism that weaves its way through the social fabric. The people do not want to hate, sometimes they are made to hate through unchallenged propaganda that does not discriminate between the truth and the lie. The fanatics have always tried to use the election field to take their divisive politics forward, and Uttar Pradesh with its impoverished millions is a favourite with them. They are now using the ongoing Assembly elections to relive their fantasies, with Babri Masjid, demonisation of a community, projection of phobic responses, all becoming part of their hate filled pot pourri. The CD is just another manifestation of their desperation to improve their lot in UP that has rejected them over and over again in the past several years, with their leaders again arriving in Lucknow to lead their supporters in challenging the system.
This time the Election Commission is the brunt of their ire, with the chief election commissioner being singled out by those who should be made accountable, tried and punished for injecting poison into the country. Unfortunately, they usually get away with it, and have once again managed to (at least momentarily) divert attention from the vicious CD to the CEC. The effort is to polarise society, to pit the majority against the minority, and to infuse the villages and districts of UP with hate. They are brazen and shameless about this, and it is a sad fact that when they lock eyes with the political parties claiming to be secular, it is the latter that first turn away in admitted defeat.
Take a Prince from one such party who is presently touring UP. He did speak just once of secularism, but it was a reference that placed him in a hot soup. He said that if his Family had been there the Babri Masjid would not have been demolished. His party was there at the time, but a member of his Family was not the Prime Minister. He is since being reminded by all the other political parties in UP, in constituency after constituency, that his Family did contribute to the demolition for it was they who opened the locks of the Babri mosque under pressure from the fanatics, it was they who allowed shilanyas under pressure from the fanatics, and then to keep up it was they who went into elections with the call of Ram Rajya. Since then he has pushed the media away, for the fault lies in not what he said, but in those stupid, inquisitive reporters for writing what he said. He also said that he had no views on caste or religion, for he did not differentiate between Indians, they all looked the same to him. There was not a word on secularism as an ideology, social equity, justice based on ground reality. Unfortunately, public school opinions cannot defeat the fanatics who are out there using every weapon in their arsenal, and that is the second tragedy for India.
The fanatics can be so easily tackled, but those who are supposed to confront them are so weak within themselves that they are unable to formulate a strategy, and shy away from every "boo." They disappeared from the field in Gujarat leaving it to the Ugly Indian to convert it into a laboratory to ghettoise, terrorise and decimate the minorities. The Prince has not take a road show there, and except for words of praise from ministries within the government in Delhi, there has been little to counter the hate politics being played out in Gujarat. A heritage mosque of the 16th century is under threat of demolition, but there has not been a squeak from New Delhi in protest. The state government in UP did not arrest those responsible for the CD because it did not want to create chaos. The Election Commission deferred the hearing because it did not want to provoke violence. The result is that by flexing muscles, violating the law, inciting hatred, and threatening violence the fanatics have again been able to get away.
India does not become strong with this politics. It will become weak until the state finds its secular voice, its courage, and its will to act against those who are spreading vitriol and violence. A country cannot grow and join the big "shining" world when the majority of its people live in poverty, and when its women and its minorities are not treated as equals. Those seeking to discriminate are enemies of the nation, and have to be made accountable to the law, without fear or favour.
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