Kashmir Times
29 March 2009
Editorial
VOTARIES OF HATRED AND COMMUNAL VIOLENCE
When people like Varun Gandhi make hate speeches, it is obvious that they are baring their fanatic streak and pervert communal politics that sow the seeds of divisions. At a certain level, their act of exposing themselves as votaries of hatred and fundamentalism, comes as no surprise. It is much on expected lines. But what alarms is the response of a section of an audience which not only accepts and justifies such hate rhetoric, it even finds a reason to take great pride in it. Equally shocking is the reaction of a spineless state in acting against such doses of venom being liberally sprinkled in the country to vitiate the atmosphere. Varun Gandhi's hate discourse is not the first of its kind. The country abounds with people like Narendra Modi, Lal Kishen Advani, Sadhvi Rithambara, Praveen Togadia, Bal Thackeray and Raj Thackeray who have burnt midnight oil to spread venom and poison the society with their lethal recipe of communal and xenophobic speeches. None of them has ever been taken to task, not even strongly condemned. They make no secret of their Muslim bashing and manage to do it with the impunity they enjoy.
Worse still, they manage to garner enough public support to find their way into the parliament, state legislatures or seats of power which is a telling comment on how much communalised the mindset of society in this secular country is becoming. Narendra Modi's crime of resorting to hate rhetoric, propaganda and engineering, encouraging and perpetrating mass violence against Muslims in Gujarat has been forgotten and he has eventually been turned into a hero, remembered only for turning Gujarat into an economic might and his contribution to the social and development sector in his state. As if his efforts for development can atone for his sins of brutal mass genocide that took place just seven years ago. His repeated outburst against Muslims and his equally parochial economic development that seeks to benefit only a certain section of society is overlooked. Instead, people like Mukesh Ambani and Rattan Tata certify him as pure nationalist. Support from men who head the leading business houses of the country and play a crucial role in Indian politics has long term repercussions and is indicative of the growing perverse mindset in this country where icons like Gandhi are being fast replaced by fanatics like Modi. Their encouragement by influential people further speeds up this process, creating a situation where hatred and stereotypes forbid masses to be guided by any sense of reason. Rather public willingly begins to take great pride in 'hatred' and communal violence but they deem it as collective assertion of a majority community, mistakenly defined as a nation.
Pakistan and Muslims do not only become arch enemies, they become synonymous to each other and to terrorism. This kind of narrow parochial and partisan mindset forbids anyone to make a distinction between a Muslim and a terrorist. They are both rolled into one single distorted logic, perpetuated by manufactured consent glorifying divisive politics, making them appear like mirror images. While the public, especially the majority upper caste Hindus, gladly accept the hate soaked rhetoric of demonising Muslims, their appearance and even their names, as something unobjectionable, stories of Hindutava terror don't register in their sub-conscious. Gujarat is a forgotten story. So is Babri mosque demolition, an event that spiraled up the graph of divisive politics in India and also the entire South Asian region. No different is the case of Mumbai riots, though bomb blasts are deeply etched in the memory and consciousness of the majority community of the country. Malegaon is still something that everyone is in absolute denial of. Amir Kasab is the country's most hated person but Sadhvi Pragya and Col. Purohit arrested and charged with the same crime are not. In fact, the latter may in due course of time be recalled as heroes. While entire Muslims are branded terrorists for a crime perpetrated by one person of that community, the Hindu involved in a similar crime is instead rewarded and praised for what eventually is deemed as valour-not terror.
This is not to deny presence of elements within the minorities including Muslims who too conveniently find such divisive politics fodder to further their own narrow-minded and fanatic interests. Indeed, they do exist but as Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, had rightly warned against this majoritarian communalism that we are witnessing today, rising fanaticism within the majority community is of potential threat to country's secularism. But in a land where Mahatma Gandhi and his ideology has been appropriated by the Gandhigiri of Varun Gandhi, how can one find space for the logic and wisdom of statesmen like Nehru?
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