Resources for all concerned with culture of authoritarianism in society, banalisation of communalism, (also chauvinism, parochialism and identity politics) rise of the far right in India (and with occasional information on other countries of South Asia and beyond)
Newly-elected
BJP MP from Bhopal, Pragya Singh Thakur, after her win in the Lok Sabha
elections at BJP's state headquarters in Bhopal, on May 24, 2019. She
has been charged with masterminding the Malegaon bombings of 2006, which
claimed 40 lives. (PTI)
Perhaps
the most telling public message Pragya Thakur sent out after
establishing dominion over Bhopal was a visual she tweeted. It had
photographs of Giriraj Singh, Sakshi Maharaj and herself. It had their
Lok Sabha victory margins superimposed: 4.19 lakh, 3.65 lakh and 4.01
lakh, respectively. It also had a caption emblazoned in saffron that
read: “Yeh aankde bahut kuchh kehte hain... (these numbers tell a
lot)”. Indeed they do. So too Pragya’s chosen trio — Giriraj Singh,
Sakshi Maharaj and herself, all outspoken Hindu majoritarians who have
made political careers taunting, bullying and baiting minorities; Pragya
stands accused of worse, of having masterminded the Malegaon blasts of
2006 which claimed 40 lives. But here she was, rich and righteous in
proclamation, underlining to whoever cared to listen the meaning of the
landslide margins for the three — it was the unabashed, unapologetic Hindutva arrowheads that had won big in 2019, get the message from the mandate if you haven’t yet: jo Hindu hit ki baat karega, wohi desh par raj karega.
And
guess who tip-toed to the centre stage from behind such chilling chorus
just days later? Pratap Chandra Sarangi, newly elected MP from Balasore
in Odisha, called out on the Rashtrapati Bhavan forecourt to take oath
as minister of state in Narendra Modi’s second government. Sarangi of
the bedraggled mane and beard has come introduced to the uninitiated as a
devoted, austere, even saintly figure whose lifetime’s leitmotif has
been simple living. There is another way Sarangi must be introduced. He
was chief of the Odisha chapter of the Bajrang Dal when the Christian
missionary, Graham Staines, and his two boys were burnt to death in
1999. Later, in 2002, Sarangi was charged with rioting, arson, assault
and damaging government property. The government property in question
happened to be the Odisha state assembly, which a violent VHP-Bajrang
Dal mob had attacked. Sarangi too is to the hardened Hindutva
manner born, a recruit marked out for services rendered and patted into
the Lok Sabha and public office from the same stables as Pragya and
other such notables.
The
Hindi text, from left to right, says, "4.19 lakh - Giriraj Singh. 3.65
lakh - Sakshi Maharaj, 4.01 lakh - Sadhvi Pragya. These figures say a
lot." (Image sourced from Twitter) If
Pragya was a dagger brazenly wielded in the face of the conscionable
and the correct — how could one accused of terror plots, one who
hero-worshipped the assassin of Gandhi, be endorsed for the Lok Sabha by
India’s ruling party? Sarangi was a dare, revealed on the honours list
at Rashtrapati Bhavan. They were both tools, as it were, of pushing the
boundaries of public discourse; it’s done to award a Lok Sabha ticket to
a terror-accused, it’s done to honour a belligerent sectarian with a
ministerial berth. That’s the direction to head in. But this is neither
about Pragya Thakur nor Pratap Sarangi. This is about their enablers and
promoters, namely Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, and his
effective Number Two and home minister, Amit Shah. This is about the
project that they have been systematically, and successfully, pursuing a
good while now. This is about the euphemism they call New India. Do not
be confused about it, New India is nothing like the New India Indians
adopted and swore themselves to on January 26, 1950. This New India is a
work in progress; it has consumed two general elections and the spaces
in between. It will consume more, not slowly and steadily but speedily
and sweepingly.
Violent street oppression, even lynching, barely
makes news or gets notice, it has been pushed to brief mentions in the
inside pages, if that. You can be beaten up, even killed, for what you
wear because in doing so you have publicly identified yourself as the
Other. Nobody cares. You can be harangued and threatened into forsaking
your faith, if only temporarily, and paying obeisance to another. Nobody
cares.
Godse worship has leapt out of closets and now occupies
more than just one seat in the Lok Sabha; many more than one, if only
the Pragya example would encourage others to come out. Marginalization
of the minorities is a badge proudly worn by the ruling party; it’s
almost a manifesto resolve of theirs, we don’t want their votes, strong
majority governments can be achieved without them. In fact, they can all
go to Pakistan, so can those who espouse their constitutional rights.
All of this has swiftly become the new normal over the last five years.
But
more is to come, inevitably. For what Modi began in 2013 is only
understood in part if it is understood as a quest for power. It was a
quest for empire. We have seen two general elections in that period, but
what we may be missing out on is the referendum that was simultaneously
triggered and has not come to the end of its course yet. It is a
referendum that seeks to establish a majoritarian India. It is the quest
for an empire that predates the many empires that ruled these parts
over the last eight hundred years or so, empires fashioned by those that
came from land, and empires fashioned by those that arrived via
the seas. The little problem with those that arrived from land is that
they stayed; they became part, and even when they parted, more chose to
stay than go away. That problem needs solutions.
And so what has
rolled out between the general elections of 2014 and 2019 is an
undeclared open-ended referendum on what the arrival of Narendra Modi in
power should really come to mean. These were no ordinary elections.
Their meaning needs to be understood beyond the numbers in the Lok Sabha
and the arrangements of executive governments. The time that passed
between the arrival of the first Modi government and the installation of
the second also needs to be carefully grasped. This was no ordinary
time. And the time to come may be even less ordinary. For if there is
one thing the last two general elections have done, it is this: validate
the values Modi and his worldview embody and vacate the values of
several, or all, of his prviaedecessors. Majoritarian India has never
been so audaciously enthroned. The majoritarian ethic has never appeared
so unflinching in its determination to impose itself. It has promised
not to stop doing so, and is in a daily dare to those who will come in
the way. The proliferating use of the ‘Jai Shri Ram’ cry as a heckler
hoot is merely the street symptom of it. There’s more in the works where
that came from. There is the promise to dismantle Article 35A of the
Constitution which enshrines special guarantees to Jammu and Kashmir;
there is the promised push for a Uniform Civil Code; there is the issue
of space for the ‘Mandir’, of course, forever on the board; there is too
the foregrounded pledge to effect a National Register of Citizens,
herald of an indigenous lebensraum. It’s part of the playbook of the
powers, now better than ever abled with 303.
Those who cannot see
the fracture between Modi bowing before the Indian Constitution in the
Central Hall of Parliament and the Modi that prodded the likes of Pragya
and Sarangi into our top legislative House are deluding themselves. Or
perhaps, and unfortunately, they see it and like what they see. Pragya
Thakur was probably right to put out the image of that trio of which she
is part; it proclaims not the victory of the BJP but of those in the
ranks who won bigger than most... yeh aankde bahut kuchh kehte hain.
