Aamir Khan isn’t alone: I too am a little afraid of living in India

The actor was right. There is a sense of despondency in the country and Narendra Modi has done nothing to dispel it.

Rahul Pandita  · Today · 07:13 pm

We know that militant Islam does not get criticised in India as much as militant Hindutva. We know it is outright silly to compare the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with the Islamic State. We know a certain section of the intelligentsia will always display cantankerousness towards Narendra Modi. We know Mani Shankar Aiyar should have long retired from public life. We must also know that we cannot offer to send Aamir Khan to Pakistan for speaking his mind.

I have been in the United States for the last few months and I too have felt alarmed at the developments in India that Aamir Khan spoke about. I am told on social media that one can feel safe in India today only if one were an upper-caste Hindu male. I am all of this and yet, truth be told, I am a little scared of returning.

I am currently at Yale – an oasis of opportunity and exclusivity in the middle of a city where 30% of the adults cannot read and where many live in poverty and squalor. The crime rate is high, and every other day the university police chief writes to us about an assault or robbery that has occurred on a street that we may have walked minutes before the crime. But the city works; the system seems to be working. It feels like we have someone watching over us. We just have to press a red button on the street and someone wearing state insignia will turn up in a minute.

At Yale, I live close to a frat house where an apparent act of racism recently triggered massive protests across the university. But it never felt as if the issue was not being addressed at the highest level. The dean of Yale College spent hours amidst a belligerent crowd of black students and patiently heard their grievances. Every institute within Yale organised its own meetings to enable students to speak freely about their experiences. No-one said the protesters should be sent to Africa.

Sense of despondency

That does not mean racism has been dealt with in America, or that tomorrow a black man will not be needlessly pinned down by a white cop on a New York street. But it is okay to speak out, it is okay to write a pamphlet. Nobody who has a selfie with President Barack Obama as his DP will abuse you on Twitter, or throw ink at you, or come to your office and beat you up. In a way, governance here is akin to psychotherapy – the therapy may or may not work, but the patient should feel that he is in the care of a therapist. That the therapist is telling him, “I hear you.” It is the patient on the couch, not the therapist. But in India it feels as if the state is on the couch with its back turned towards its people.

What did Aamir Khan say that caused such outrage and prompted a reaction from the government? He said that for Indians to feel secure there must be a sense of justice; that when there is insecurity, people look to the head of the state to make reassuring statements. He said there was a sense of despondency, an atmosphere where people felt depressed or low.

One doesn’t have to be from the minority community to feel what he said. Where is a sense of justice in India today, in Dadri or beyond? On which topic – minority protection or otherwise – did we hear a word of reassurance from Modi? Did he tell his chief minister in Haryana to stop talking about cows and instead focus on removing pigs wallowing in muck outside the Cyber City in Gurgaon? Did his party offer a word of solace to the family of the poor Kashmiri trucker killed by goons on the Jammu national highway? Did he speak to his government in Rajasthan and ask why it felt the need to remove a Safdar Hashmi poem from a textbook?

The fact is that many in India do feel a sense of despondency today and it runs beyond the minority community. One doesn’t have to be a Muslim to see how Modi’s silence has emboldened hoodlums who see it as his tacit approval and, as a result, are leaving their internet troll avatars behind to come out on the streets.

Fear in the minority community

And then beyond this, there is something that only a minority can feel. No matter how empathetic members of a majority community are, they cannot fear certain patterns that members of a minority community do. A friend in the US tells me the story of her grandmother who lives in Mumbai and had to seek refuge in a neighbour’s house during the 1992 riots. After Dadri, she says, she has been checking several times whether the door that she used to slip into her neighbour’s house over two decades ago is opening properly. She has not returned any award or asked her son about resettling anywhere else. But she is scared. And that fear, whether it is justified or not, is genuine.

The bhakts are already blackening Aamir Khan’s face on film posters. Somebody will invariably ask him why he didn’t feel the same after the Babri Masjid demolition. Maybe he did, but we didn’t ask him. Maybe he did not then, but feels it now. Maybe he thought things will get better, that acche din will come. Maybe he saw the beaming face of the woman standing next to Maya Kodnani in a selfie that has recently surfaced on the Facebook and that scared him.

It is not that people have not been killed before for transporting cows. Or that Dalit kids were not brutalised during Manmohan Singh’s time in power. But like Narendra Modi, he never looked us in the eye and said: “May the force be with you.” Maybe we got it wrong. Maybe Modi meant: may the hoax be with you.

Rahul Pandita is a 2015 Yale World Fellow and the author, most recently, of Our Moon has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir. He tweets at @rahulpandita.

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Source: scrollin

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Intolerance: PM Modi deliberately silent while colleagues keep issues alive, says Arun Shourie

Pointing out that Modi finds time to tweet on events such as British PM David Cameron’s birthday, Shourie alleged that his silence on crucial issues was deliberate.

By: Express News Service | New Delhi | Published:Nov 3, 2015, 2:34

 Former Union Minister Arun Shourie.

Former Union Minister Arun Shourie said on Monday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence on key issues amid growing intolerance in the country was a political decision aimed at winning the Bihar elections.

Rejecting the BJP’s defence that the Prime Minister could not be expected to speak on every issue, Shourie told Karan Thapar in an interview on India Today TV: “Prime Minister is not a section officer of the homoeopathy department. He is not head of a department. He is the Prime Minister. He has to show the country the moral path. He has to set moral standards.”

Pointing out that Modi finds time to tweet on events such as British PM David Cameron’s birthday, Shourie alleged that his silence on crucial issues was deliberate. “He kept silent on the Dadri incident and incidents like the killing of two Dalit children (in Haryana)… He is keeping silent while his party colleagues and ministers are keeping the issues alive,” he said.

Asked whether Modi’s silence was political, Shourie said: “I think so… you can’t have it both ways. You are a very strong leader but cannot control your members.”

Terming Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s statement that Modi was the victim of intolerance as “most dangerous”, Shourie said: “When a ruler believes or he is made to believe that he is a victim then in his mind he gets the fullest justification for vengeance. It is terrible. It will give him grounds to be vengeful.”

Asked about the BJP’s claim that he was no longer a party member, Shourie indicated that he had not renewed his membership so that the party could not expel him for his criticism. “I am a graduate of the Ramnath Goenka school… When a guest is coming don’t leave any knives and forks that could be used to stab you,” he said.

Referring to Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma describing former President Abdul Kalam as “a nationalist despite being a Muslim”, Shourie said that allotting the BJP leader the house in which Kalam lived was like “spitting in the face of people”. “This is really symbolic,” he said.

Shourie also agreed with suggestions that Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah were pitting one community against another in Bihar and cited a Pakistani analyst to say that while the neighbouring country was trying to get out of a pit, India was slowly going down that way.

Criticising Shah’s statement that if the BJP loses in Bihar, crackers would be burst in Pakistan, Shourie said leaders were resorting to “anything and everything” to win “a mere election irrespective of its long term consequences”.

Shourie also criticised those in the government who had described critics of Modi as “rabid” and “intolerant”, saying they themselves had “not read a single book in 20 years.”

Shourie described the writers, authors and artistes who had returned their awards in the “climate of intolerance” as “conscience-keepers” of the country and said their motives cannot be questioned. “Those who cannot write two paragraphs are sitting in judgement over writers,” said Shourie.

Although he expressed confidence that the country would survive these times, he said investors are concerned because the current climate comes on top of other “mistakes” such as somersaults on tax policies and the clash with institutions like the judiciary. “They (investors) do not want to get caught in legitimising something that is fundamentally wrong,” said Shourie.

(With PTI)

Source: indianexpress

In letter to PM, President, Admiral Ramdas alleges RSS pushing ‘Hindu Rashtra’ agenda

Ramdas, who was the chief of naval staff between 1990-93, accused the country’s leadership of playing with fire.

By: Express News Service | New Delhi | Updated: October 26, 2015 6:27 am

Ramdas, who was the chief of naval staff between 1990-93, accused the country’s leadership of playing with fire.

In an open letter to President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Navy chief Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas alleged that the “RSS and their network” were leading a “systematic and well orchestrated attempt to impose a majoritarian single-point agenda of creating a Hindu Rashtra in India”. Admiral Ramdas was also the former internal Lokpal of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

Stressing that the Hinduism he “knew” was “not filled with the kind of violence and intolerance represented by the current brand of “Hindutva” that was “fanning the flames of division and fear across the country”, he said that series of attacks on “minorities and Dalits” had forced him to hang his head in “shame”.

Ramdas, who was the chief of naval staff between 1990-93, accused the country’s leadership of playing with fire.

In his three-page letter, Ramdas wrote that it was “most shocking” to see no condemnation of such activities by those at the helm of affairs. He said that the “co-ordinated response of those in government seems to be to downplay the attacks – by terming them ‘sad’ and ‘unfortunate’.”

Later, speaking to The Indian Express, Ramdas said that he had no hope that the country’s top leadership will respond to his letter. “I have done my job by pointing out that the fabric of Indian Constitution is in danger.”

Source: indianexpress

Rising intolerance: What is at stake is the very soul of India

What most Indians who voted for the BJP don’t realise (or accept) is that they were duped by Prime Minister Modi.

Published:October 20, 2015 1:53 pm

Why people tolerate the Sangh’s divisive agenda is because constitutional principles (which define the idea of India) are not deeply embedded in the “collective consciousness” of India.

By Pushparaj Deshpande

To much public consternation, Haryana CM Manohar Khattar recently asserted that “Muslims can continue to live in India, but they will have to give up eating beef”. He contended that because cow slaughter hurts the sentiments of Hindus, Muslims and Christians must learn to live without it. In defending Khattar’s views, BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj also justified the assault on J&K legislator Sheik Abdul Rashid as a “natural reaction” to his beef party. He went so far as to advocate the death penalty for cow slaughter. In what must have caused considerable heartburn to its core constituency, Venkaiah Naidu has sought to distance the BJP from Khattar’s views arguing that “it is not correct to link eating habits to religion”, and that eating was a personal choice. Meanwhile, BJP’s chief Amit Shah summoned several BJP leaders to reprimand them for their public comments.

A vast majority of Indians voted in the BJP because it gave them hope in its promise of development and freedom from corruption. It promised to take India to soaring heights, so it could march shoulder to shoulder with the superpowers of the day. It is these very supporters who are increasingly feeling disappointed at the numerous crises that engulf India today. To some, all of it is merely circumstantial, to others the responsibility lies solely with “fringe elements”. What unites them is disbelief in their beloved Prime Minister’s complicity in any of it. To them, it’s just a Congress/pseudo-sickular/leftist/intellectual/anti-national/anti-Hindu conspiracy to undermine PM Modi and the visionary development path that he has laid down for India. Is this really the case? Does the BJP and PM Modi have nothing to these so called “fringe elements”? Are these incidents just unnecessary impediments to their development agenda for India?

In trying to understand this, one has to contextualise the BJP’s foundational roots. The BJP draws inspiration from the likes of MS Golwakar, who contentiously argued (“We: Our Nationhood Defined”) that “foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt… Hindu culture and language… must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation, and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race; or may stay in the country… claiming nothing, deserving no privileges… not even citizen’s rights”. These views were echoed by VD Savarkar who vehemently endorsed (“Essentials of Hindutva”) a “nation… united… by the bonds of a common blood”, which is the only thing that’ll makes them a “race-jati”. Their arguments are remarkably similar to Wilhelm Stuckart’s (one of the most prominent Nazi legal theorists, who co-authored the Nuremberg laws) who in “Commentary on Racial Legislation”, provided the basis for the racial discrimination, and eventually persecution of Jews.

Various BJP and RSS leaders have consequently blindly endorsed these inherently divisive ideologies, and the NDA government has purposefully spearheaded contentious policies on them. Consider the beef ban which seeks to primarily criminalise the food habits of Muslims and Scheduled Castes. The penultimate reason for this ban has been socio-religious, something Ambedkar debunked masterfully (see “Untouchability, the Dead Cow and the Brahmin”). If cow slaughter does have to be banned because it affects the sentiments of a community (which is what Khattar argued), why not extend the same logic to pork (which is anathema in Islam) or all meat, indeed all root vegetables (which are prohibited in Jainism)? Given that almost all animals are vehicles of some god or goddess in Hinduism, why does the BJP not ban meat altogether?

Consider also Mohan Bhagwat’s views on reimagining affirmative action (contrary to popular perception, the government is well aware that SC/STs are deliberately excluded from both the public and private sectors in India precisely because of their castes). Given the NDA sees itself as ultimately accountable to the RSS (not to the people), it is safe to assume that they’ve apprised the Sangh of this. Bhagwat’s views are made inspite of this knowledge, and are therefore reflective of the inherent casteism in the Sangh Parivar/BJP. Similarly, consider the Minister of Culture Mahesh Sharma’s comments on the freedoms of women (their movement after dark is against Indian culture), or the NDA’s efforts to ‘cleanse’ historical, and cultural institutions to bring them in sync with a Hinduised vision of India. In fact, the drastic cuts the NDA has made in welfare expenditure are also partly motivated by its ideological imperatives.

How is it that the RSS and its agents (who first effected its agenda through stealth) so brazenly scuttle the Constitution? And why is it that people are so unconcerned with the waves of injustice that threaten to engulf India? Are we as a people simply indifferent to it all? Or even more worryingly, do Indians genuinely believe that what’s happening is acceptable and legitimate?

In unravelling this, one must understand that in India, there exist two sets of laws: a law of the land, and the law in the land. The law of the land is the set of secular norms and principles enshrined in the Constitution of India, which every government in India is mandated to uphold (which the NDA has been found wanting in). Resisting and opposing this supra framework exist various associations (the most prominent example being the Sangh Parivar) who religiously adhere to the law in the land (that is diagrammatically opposed to the law of the land).

Essentially, the Sangh overtly and covertly challenges not just the sovereign position of the State, but also the Constitution of India. The Sangh Parivar and the BJP have, and are consciously undermining the rights which the Constitution of India guarantees (be it freedom of religion, of speech, of expression etc.). They first did that by infiltrating the state, and now by capturing it. What most Indians who voted for the BJP don’t realise (or accept) is that they were duped by Prime Minister Modi. The BJP instrumentally sold hope and the idea of development, and now in office, it has embarked on its real project. The reason Amit Shah and Venkaiah Naidu are scrambling to be seen to pull up the most visible of these so called “fringe elements” is because they know that this will cost them electorally (the first impending jolt being Bihar).

But this doesn’t really explain why as a people, we accept their heinous assault on India. To do that, we needn’t look any further than the father of India’s Constitution, who precisely anticipated this organised resistance. Ambedkar argued that “rights are not protected by law but by the social and moral conscience of society. If social conscience is such that it is prepared to recognises the rights which law chooses to enact rights will be safe and secure. But if the fundamental rights are opposed by the community, no Law no Parliament, no judiciary can guarantee them in the real sense of the word”. And therein lies the real problem.

Why people tolerate the Sangh’s divisive agenda is because constitutional principles (which define the idea of India) are not deeply embedded in the “collective consciousness” of India. This has in turn created fertile ground for the instrumental exploitation of communal (Muzzafarnagar, Dadri, Mainpuri etc.), casteist (Dankaur, Hamirpur, Virar etc.), regional and linguistic disunities. This is partly because the Sangh has rigorously engaged with society, hoping to embed radical Hindutva norms in India’s collective consciousness. It is because of their tireless efforts that large sections of India have been socialised to orthodox norms.

In stark contrast, the numerous conscientious individuals and groups of people who oppose the RSS’ talibanised idea of India keep pinning their hopes on the state. They hope against hope that the state will leash the madness that is the RSS. However, it is not adequately recognised that the state’s ability to influence people is very limited (simply because in the Weberian imagination, it can only impose rules and guidelines). And what they also fail to realise is that this particular government doesn’t really subscribe to the constitutional idea of India at all, and that the BJP will always allow the Sangh to run amuck. It is therefore imperative for us to pay heed to Gandhi’s insistence on a bottom up socio-economic and political revolution (which will effect an organic attitudinal transformation in the hearts and minds of people). As Edmund Burke once said that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. Let us pray that we find it in ourselves to do something, for what is at stake is the very soul of India.

– The author is an analyst with the Congress party. Views expressed by the author are personal.

Source: indianexpress