Violence in times of hate
Seema Mustafa |
The Statesman, 20 March, 2015
No one has been arrested yet for the rape of a septuagenarian nun, with a missionary school looted and its chapel desecrated. The West Bengal police, clearly quite inept and out of its depth in almost all major crimes like its counterparts across India, has detained a few persons but has been unable to crack the case.
This inefficiency is amazing by all standards, and thus feeds into the larger perception that the police is deliberately not doing its job in this case. It was interesting to note that the very first statement from the police, without any verification whatsoever, was that the crime had been perpetrated by ‘dacoits’ and it was only after the missionaries made it clear that the school had been receiving threats for a while that this line was dropped.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee seems to be weighed down by her own paranoia, and a denial mode that comes into play when she is confronted with the reality of injustice and violence. When Suzette Jordan was raped - and she is now dead - the woman chief minister of the state instead of reaching out and ensuring justice, insisted that the young woman was lying.
This time she has not gone that far, but when her convoy was blocked by protesters while she was trying to visit the school, she insisted that they were all opposition (read CPI-M) supporters. Her remarks incensed people even more but Banerjee refused to concede ground, with her paranoia taking over basic common sense. She has now opted out altogether, transferring the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation and thereby conceding that she presides over a police force that is unable to do its job.
The rape has shocked not just India but the world. This comes in a climate where communalism is being preached as ‘nationalism’. And where major leaders are making statements that violate every tenet of the Constitution.
One would like to know how do statements like Mohan Bhagwat’s “India is a Hindu Rashtra” or Subramanian Swamy's insistence that god resides only in temples, and not in churches and mosques, contribute to strengthening secularism enshrined in the Preamble of the document that the country is ruled by?
And what is a government supposed to do when these tenets are violated in such a brazen manner, not just once, but repeatedly on an almost daily basis?
Christians as a small minority are absolutely terrified and traumatised. As are the Muslims who are the largest minority and yet have been facing the brunt of attacks on a continuous basis for a year now. There has been no relief at all from vitriolic statements, the targeting, the communal violence in some district or town or village. Low-intensity violence leading to large displacement, and targeted attacks such as this one on the school designed to spread terror all across seems to be the strategy to create a division amongst the people of India. And thereby take away from her secularism, and her strong foundation of democracy.
Christian MPs have now announced that they, cutting across political party lines, will meet regularly to take stock of the situation and exert pressure as a group on the government to act against the perpetrators of violence and hate crimes.
But this is really not the answer as it helps those whose purpose it is to create divisions. By this logic Muslim MPs who are of course few in number, and Dalit MPs representing another community under assault at different socio-economic levels, should all form separate groups within Parliament. And thereby formalise the divisions that are being created.
It is imperative that the larger voice of unity be raised in Parliament, and all parties work to ensure that action is taken against all indulging in hate speech and hate crime. This voice will be far stronger than community voices, and hence can and should be the only voice that is encouraged within and outside Parliament.
The propagators of hate and divisiveness can only be fought by a united people. This defeats their game, and ensures that India responds to all efforts to weaken her as a united entity. This is imperative for allowing the country to breathe, and stabilise democracy as never before. History has been witness to the contradiction between communalism and democracy, both being poison for each other.
The communalist cannot flourish in a democracy and works constantly to change the system. And democracy cannot survive without the oxygen of secularism, as the opposite based on hate and injustice chokes the arteries and suffocates it to death.
All kinds of communalism has to be challenged. And it is here that the media becomes absolutely vital, as its task to monitor, report and communicate is extremely important to counter false propaganda that really has always been the tool used by imperialists, communalists, colonialists and what have you. Indoctrinated regimes working against democracy need powerful propaganda, and unfortunately in India except for a few newspapers many have compromised their positions under the weight of corporate control.
The responses to the dastardly crime against the nun and the Christian missionary school are a telling example of all that has been written above. The inability to exercise the law feeds the impunity that then becomes the basis for encouraging such violence. And at the end, even if there are many who have blindfolded themselves against the dangers that hate poses to the social fabric of this country, it is necessary to ensure that this is not frayed further by the communal forces using a distorted version of nationalism to justify their end. Nationalism does not mean perpetrating violence in the name of religion, nationalism must bring unity in this diversity and uphold the Constitution of India and the law of the land.
The writer is Editor-in-Chief of The Citizen, a daily online newspaper.
Read more at http://www.thestatesman.com/news/opinion/violence-in-times-of-hate/53277.html
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