Election Season and Return of Lord Ram

Like most of the political phenomenon, even the practice of Nationalism is not a static one. It changes with the changing political equations of the political forces and assumes the expressions which are very diverse. As such the phenomenon of Nationalism has a long journey and various state policies in particular have used it for purposes which relate more to the power of the state ‘vis a vis’ its people, power of the state ‘vis a vis’ the neighboring countries among others.

In India there has been a certain change in the practices of the state which have transformed the meaning of Nationalism during last few years. Particularly with BJP, the Hindu Nationalist outfit gaining simple majority, it has unfolded the policies where one can discern the drastic change in the meaning and application of Nationalism in regard to its citizens, particularly those belonging to minority community, with regard to those who are liberal, and with those who stand with the concept of Human rights.

Our former Prime Minister of Dr. Manmohan Singh hit the nail on the head when he said that “Nationalism and the "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" slogan are being misused to construct a "militant and purely emotional" idea of India that excludes millions of residents and citizens. Former Prime Minister recently stated this in an apparent attack on the BJP.” The occasion was the release of a book, ‘Who is Bharat Mata’, edited by Purushottam Agarwal and Radhakrishna. This is a compilation of significant extracts from writings of Nehru, and important assessments of and contributions of Nehru by prominent personalities.

Dr. Singh went on to add "With an inimitable style…Nehru laid the foundation of the universities, academies and cultural institutions of Modern India. But for Nehru's leadership, independent India would not have become what it is today," This statement of Dr. Singh has great importance in contemporary times, as Nehru is being denigrated by Hindu nationalists for all the problems which India is facing today and attempts are on to undermine his role and glorifying Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel. This is also significant as it gives us the glimpses of what Nationalism meant for Nehru.

As Singh’s statement captures the present nationalism being practiced by BJP and company, the Hindu nationalists, immediately shot back saying that Dr. Singh is supporting the anti India activities at JNU and Jamia and his party is supporting the anti India nationalists. They asked whether Singh likes the nationalism of the likes of Shashi Tharoor or Manishankar Ayer who are provoking the Shaheen Bagh protest rather than making the protestors quiet. Whether he likes the anti national protests which go on at JNU or Jamia? As per them there is no Nationalism in Congress. One more example being cited is the private visit of Shatrughan Sinha who talked to Pakistani President during his visit there recently!

Most of the arguments being used to oppose Dr. Singh are very superficial. What is being referred to; is not opposition to Indian nationalism and its central values which were the core of anti colonial struggles. While ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ may not be acceptable to a section of population, even the book he was releasing has the title ‘Who is Bharat Mata’. What is being stated by Singh is the twist which slogan ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ has been used by Hindu nationalists to frighten the religious minorities.

Indian nation came into being on the values, which later were the foundation of Indian Constitution. Indian Constitution carefully picked up the terminology which was away from the concepts of Hindu or Muslim nationalism. That’s how the country came to be called as ‘India that is Bharat’. The freedom of expression which was the hallmark of freedom movement and it was given a pride of place in our Constitution. It respected the diversity and formulated rules where the nation was not based on particular culture, as Hindu nationalists will like us to believe, but cultural diversity was centrally recognized in the Constitution. In addition promoting good relations with neighbors and other countries of the World was also part of our principles.

JNU, Jamia and AMU are being demonized as most institutions so far regard the freedom of expression as a core part of Indian democracy. These institutions have been thriving on discussions and debates which have base in liberalism. Deliberately some slogans have been constructed to defame these institutions. While Constitution mandates good relations with neighbors, creation of ‘Anti Pakistan hysteria’ is the prime motive of many a channels and sections of other media, which are servile to the ideology of ruling Government. They also violate most of the norms of ethical journalism, where the criticism of the ruling party is an important factor to keep the ruling dispensation in toes.

A stifling atmosphere has been created during last six years. In this the Prime Minster can take a detour, land in Pakistan to have a cup of tea with Pakistan PM, but a Congress leader talking to Pakistani President is a sign of being anti National. Students taking out a march while reading the preamble of Indian Constitution are labeled as anti-national; and are stopped while those openly wielding guns near Jamia or Shaheen Bagh roam freely.

Nationalism should promote amity and love of the people; it should pave the way for growth and development. Currently the nationalism which is dominant and stalking the streets has weakened the very fraternity, which is one of the pillars of our democracy. Nehru did explain that Bharat Mata is not just our mountains, rivers and land but primarily the people who inhabit the land. Which nationalism to follow was settled during the freedom movement when Muslim nationalism and Hindu nationalism were rejected by the majority of people of India in favor of the Nationalism of Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Maulana Azad, where minorities are equal citizens, deserving affirmative action. In today’s scenario the Hindu nationalists cannot accept any criticism of their policies.

India has tragically witnessed the phenomenon of lynching becoming dominant during last few years. It was particularly around the issue of Holy Cow-Beef, that lynchings became more prevalent and two communities had to face the brunt of it, Muslims and dalits. The IndiaSpend data showed the rise of the incidents from 2014 and that close to 90% of victims were Muslims or dalits. Some notorious cases of lynchings were the one of Akhlaq, Junaid, Alimuddin Ansari, the beatings of dalits in Una. At another level it is during this period that the noted social worker Swami Agnivesh was also subjected to humiliating beating in the public. The communal color in India by now is so strong that many events, even before the details are known, are looked at from the communal color and false social noises start even before real facts are known.

Nothing can exemplify this more than the tragic lynching of two sadhus and their driver in Gadchinal village, near Palghar, a city nearly 110 Kilomenters from Mumbai. As the news of this tragedy spread the BJP leaders immediately started blaming Muslim minority for the crime. Nalin Kohli in an Interview to a German Channel said so. Not to be left behind Sambit Patra, the BJP spokesperson launched a tirade  against the liberals-seculars for their silence on the issue. As the matter stands the truth comes out that those sadhus were travelling to Surat from Kandivli area of Mumbai. It is a period of lockdown and they did not have the permission so they were avoiding the highway travel and going through interior routes. On this route was a village Gadchinale, an Adivasi dominated village where this tragedy took place.

During the lockdown period due to Corona virus the economic and social deprivation of poor people is extreme. Many rumors are floating there. In this village the rumor doing rounds was that a gang of chid lifters is roaming in different guises. Thats what these Sadhus were taken to be. Since the victims were Hindus and culprits are deliberately presumed to be from the other community. One recalls that to trigger the Mumbai violence in 1992-93 the incidence of murder of two Mathadi workers (HIndus) and burning of Bane family (Hindu) in Jogeshwari area of Mumbai, both these were false, these incidents were used as the pretext for the attack on the minorities.

In this case not only BJP leaders, the RSS itself also  jumped into fray along with Sadhu Samaj. A vicious atmosphere started building up. 

As the incident took place, Palghar case dominated the usual media channels and large sections of social media. The Government of Maharashtra (Shiv Sena+NCP+Congress) stood on the solid ground of truthfulness and arrested nearly 100 culprits, none of them being a Muslim. Interestingly the local body of the village is controlled by BJP and the chief of this body Chitra Chowdhari is a BJP leader. While the Maharashtra Government is standing on the solid ground of the facts of the case, it has also given the warning that those spreading falsehoods will not be spared.

The cruelty of those taking law into their hands is shocking. During the last few years taking law into the hands of the mobs is becoming close to normal. The real reasons are many. One of this being the lack of proper punishment to those who indulge in such dastardly acts. Not only that many of them are in the good books of the ruling establishment and many of them are honored despite their despicable role in such incidents. One recalls that in case of Mohammad Ikhlaq lynching, one of the accused died in the police custoy due to incidentlal disease. Then Union Central Minister Mahesh Sharma landed up to drape his body in tricolor. In another such case of Alimuddin Ansari, when eight of the accused got bail, the Union Minister Jayant Sinha garlanded them. What message it sends down the line?

The other factors contributing to the rise in intensity of violence is the overall social frustration due to life generally becoming more difficult. The rule of BJP has also encouraged intolerance, where people with differing opinions are looked down upon and called anti- Hindu, Anti National etc. Swami Agnivesh who criticised the blind faith, the statements like ‘plastic surgery in ancient India, or divine nature of Barfani Baba in Amarnath was humiliated in public.

The core issue is the dominance of sectarian mindset promoted by the ruling party and its parent organization the RSS. They are waiting to jump at any event which can be given communal color or where the minorities can be demonized. Few news channels, who are playing the role of loud speakers of divisive politics are adding salt to the wounds. The degree of Hate spread in the society has further taken the aid of innumerable social media networks to spread the false hoods down to all the sections of society.

The need for law against lynching needs to be brought in. All those participating in such dastardly violence need to be punished. Before that the whole atmosphere of Hate mongering and feeling that those talking law into their hands can get away with it, needs to be countered strongly. While a prompt police action against such incidents is the need of the hour, those who have made spreading hate as their business need to realize that no country can progress without the feeling of fraternity. Demonizing weaker sections may give them higher TRP, but it is also undermining our path of peace and progress.

Respect for Indian Constitution and rule of law needs to be restored. The fact check mechanisms like AltNews need to be activated much more. And lastly one must applaud the steps taken by the Government of Maharashtra to ensure that justice is done and Hate spreading is  checked right in its tracks.

As democracy is seeping in slowly all over the world, there is an organization which is monitoring the degree of democracy in the individual countries, The Economist Intelligence Unit. As such in each country there are diverse factors which on one hand work to deepen it, while others weaken it. Overall there is a march from theoretical democracy to substantive one. The substantive democracy will herald not just the formal equality, freedom and community feeling in the country but will be founded on the substantive quality of these values. In India while the introduction of modern education, transport, communication laid the backdrop of beginning of the process, the direction towards deepening of the process begins with Mahatma Gandhi when he led the non-cooperation movement in 1920, in which average people participated. The movement of freedom for India went on to become the ‘greatest ever mass movement’ in the World.

The approval and standards for democracy were enshrined in Indian Constitution, which begins ‘We the people of India’, and was adopted on 26th January 1950. With this Constitution and the policies adopted by Nehru the process of democratization started seeping further, the dreaded Emergency in 1975, which was lifted later restored democratic freedoms in some degree. This process of democratisation is facing an opposition since the decade of 1990s after the launch of Ram Temple agitation, and has seen the further erosion with BJP led Government coming to power in 2014. The state has been proactively attacking civil liberties, pluralism and participative political culture with democracy becoming flawed in a serious way. And this is what got reflected in the slipping of India by ten places, to 51st, in 2019. On the index of democracy India slipped down from the score of 7.23 to 6.90. The impact of sectarian BJP politics is writ on the state of the nation, country.

Ironically this lowering of score has come at a time when the popular protests, the deepening of democracy has been given a boost and is picking up with the Shaheen Bagh protests. The protest which began in Shaheen Bagh, Delhi in the backdrop of this Government getting the Citizenship amendment Bill getting converted into an act and mercilessly attacking the students of Jamia Milia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University along with high handed approach in Jamia Nagar and neighbouring areas.  From 15th December 2019, the laudable protest is on.

It is interesting to note that the lead in this protest has been taken by the Muslim women, from the Burqa-Hijab clad to ‘not looking Muslim’ women and was joined by students and youth from all the communities, and later by the people from all the communities. Interestingly this time around this Muslim women initiated protest has contrast from all the protests which earlier had begun by Muslims. The protests opposing Shah Bano Judgment, the protests opposing entry of women in Haji Ali, the protests opposing the Government move to abolish triple Talaq. So far the maulanas from top were initiating the protests, with beard and skull cap dominating the marches and protests. The protests were by and large for protecting Sharia, Islam and were restricted to Muslim community participating.

This time around while Narendra Modi pronounced that ‘protesters can be identified by their clothes’, those who can be identified by their external appearance are greatly outnumbered by all those identified or not identified by their appearance.

The protests are not to save Islam or any other religion but to protect Indian Constitution. The slogans are structured around ‘Defence of democracy and Indian Constitution’. The theme slogans are not Allahu Akbar’ or Nara-E-Tadbeer’ but around preamble of Indian Constitution. The lead songs have come to be Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s ‘Hum Dekhenge’, a protest against Zia Ul Haq’s attempts to crush democracy in the name of religion. Another leading protest song is from Varun Grover, ‘Tanashah Aayenge…Hum Kagaz nahin Dikhayenge’, a call to civil disobedience against the CAA-NRC exercise and characterising the dictatorial nature of the current ruling regime.

While BJP was telling us that primary problem of Muslim women is Triple talaq, the Muslim women led movements has articulated that primary problem is the very threat to Muslim community. All other communities, cutting across religious lines, those below poverty line, those landless and shelter less people also see that if the citizenship of Muslims can be threatened because of lack of some papers, they will be not far behind in the victimization process being unleashed by this Government.

While CAA-NRC has acted as the precipitating factor, the policies of Modi regime, starting from failure to fulfil the tall promises of bringing back black money, the cruel impact of demonetisation, the rising process of commodities, the rising unemployment, the divisive policies of the ruling dispensation are the base on which these protest movements are standing. The spread of the protest movement, spontaneous but having similar message is remarkable. Shaheen Bagh is no more just a physical space; it’s a symbol of resistance against the divisive policies, against the policies which are increasing the sufferings of poor workers, the farmers and the average sections of society.

What is clear is that as identity issues, emotive issues like Ram Temple, Cow Beef, Love Jihad and Ghar Wapasi aimed to divide the society, Shaheen Bagh is uniting the society like never before. The democratisation process which faced erosion is getting a boost through people coming together around the Preamble of Indian Constitution, singing of Jan Gan Man, waving of tricolour and upholding the national icons like Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Ambedkar and Maulana Azad. One can feel the sentiments which built India; one can see the courage of people to protect what India’s freedom movement and Indian Constitution gave them.

Surely the communal forces are spreading canards and falsehood against the protests. As such these protests which is a solid foundation of our democracy. The spontaneity of the movement is a strength which needs to be channelized to uphold Indian Constitution and democratic ethos of our beloved country.