Hardik Patel has just
recently ended his 19-day fast without his demands being acceded to. Here was someone
who compromised the rule of law for his agitation for reservations for Patidars
(not overall a backward community by any stretch of imagination) to the extent
of even brandishing
a gun. He and his followers
had gone on a vandalism spree, burning buses, among other things (Hardik has
been sentenced
to two years of imprisonment for the violent, unlawful protests). He seemed to be a popular
leader and the Congress sought to bank on his following by having him endorse
them for the Gujarat elections. While the Congress did impressively improve its
tally in Gujarat owing to a variety of factors, not in the least being
anti-incumbency and even Rahul Gandhi being fairly impressive
in leading the campaign (even as
per BJP-leaning analyst Swapan Dasgupta) and reaching out to devout Hindus, a sizable chunk of the
Patels in Gujarat, including some of my friends, remained loyal to the BJP. There
were other Patels averse to the BJP too who voted for the Congress, but they
were not necessarily followers of Hardik’s obsessed with getting a quota. While
I don’t buy the contention that the Congress can be particularly blamed for
playing the caste card in Gujarat, given how the BJP tied up with Paswan and
Manjhi in the wake of the Bihar elections and the
Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) of Om Prakash Rajbhar and Apna Dal (AD)
of Anupriya Patel in the wake of the UP elections (as discussed here) and even how Modi started wooing OBCs, including Muslim OBCs, in the
wake of the Gujarat elections (as you can see here, here, here and here), it may be true that Hardik’s support proved beneficial for the
party and contributed to its better performance. That said, the image of the
Congress suffered a beating nationally among general category folks and even
from among the OBCs (who don’t want Patidars to compete with them), who felt
that supporting an anarchist placing unreasonable demands was not how one could
counter the BJP, which the Congress itself was criticizing, indeed with some
basis, for going soft on vandals from the Karni Sena (why this charge against
the BJP has some basis has been discussed here, here, here, here, here and here) or cow vigilantes (why this charge against the BJP has some basis
has been discussed here and here).
The truth is that while despite the OBC reservations introduced in the UPA-I
tenure (notwithstanding widespread agitation against the same), the Congress
did come back to power in 2009 owing to fairly decent management of the economy
during the global economic meltdown and the rural poor benefiting from the
NREGA where it was implemented well by panchayats, as also many people being
irked by Varun Gandhi’s alleged vitriolic anti-Muslim hate speech and the anti-Christian violence in Odisha and Karnataka in 2008 (the BJP was in power in both the states), history tells us how this very
quota plank cost VP Singh heavily by consolidating general category resentment,
and obviously, not all other voters united behind a leader either. While the BJP too plays its soft caste politics, the Congress making Hardik a star campaigner gave the impression that it is still stuck in the rut of loud quota politics (which had been opposed by large sections of the society during the ‘Youth for Equality’ movement in 2006, with its strong anti-reservationist position, which did not succeed in having a rollback of the proposed OBC reservations, but did succeed in preventing a reduction of general category seats), rather than focusing on themes like investment and job creation.
This is why Hardik’s recent fast didn’t
inspire any excitement or interest across the country, and this is also why he
was greeted with empty chairs in
Bhopal in February 2018. Strangely enough, from
taking an irrationally
extreme Hindu rightist position in 2015, he
has now become a vocal admirer of
Mamta Banerjee, whose shameless pandering of communal and
regressive sections of Muslims deserves another article altogether, and neither
of the positions would resonate with an average non-Patidar Indian Hindu voter.
Next, coming to Jignesh.
While Hardik is no non-Patidar Indian’s hero, Dalit politician Jignesh is
someone hailed as a hero by many left-leaning commentators in the media,
academia and NGOs, and he has actually won an election from the Vadgam
constituency in Gujarat, and so, he deserves more scrutiny. Is he someone who,
if projected as a campaigner on the national scene, can help defeat the BJP, as
he repeatedly claims is his mission? Doesn’t seem like it from the
way his Yuva Hunkar rally in the Ramlila Maidan in January 2018 attracted only
some 200-300 people! Truth be told, I was
glad that that rally was a flop-show. While Mevani is right on the point that
whatever Ambedkar said isn't some revealed scripture to be blindly adhered to,
Mevani, while appreciating leftist political forces, even in his leftist
politics, has gone astray in not supporting any mainstream constitutional
left-of-centre party but wrongly imagining that some college students chanting
anti-national slogans (only Kanhaiya Kumar's video was doctored, not Umar
Khalid's or Anirban Bhattacharya's, and Umar was a co-speaker in Jignesh’s Yuva
Hunkar rally) and hailing
theofascist jihadist terrorists or even Maoists who, with foreign funding, go about killing
innocent voters who defy their (the Maoists') anti-democracy diktats and
engaging in forced recruitments even of children, out to violently impose
dictatorial rule with no accountability, in any way, are seen by the vast
majority of Dalits as their emancipators. Most Dalits do believe in the idea of
Indian nationalism (read patriotism) and remedying their genuine grievances
through the Indian constitution (drafted by Babasaheb Ambedkar), so long as
national borders exist in the world, not seeing Muslim-rightist Kashmiri
separatist nationalism as helping their cause in any way. While some examples
of dictatorial regimes in the world may be impressive to some extent, such as
in Singapore and the UAE, we also have examples like North Korea. At least, the
Indian state under this constitution, in theory, is secular and democratic; so,
if it deviates in practice, we can try to correct it by employing the
constitution, but with those who believe in totalitarian ideologies that are
often even identity-exclusive, there is no hope. We ought to be fanatically
committed to constitutional secular democracy, supporting lawful means of
agitation, employing the RTI Act and judicial recourse, as well as engaging in
social work for the economically deprived, to fight social injustice, rather
than giving the poor guns to fight and die in the name of Mao for an
undemocratic/dictatorial political dispensation, which could prove to be like
that of North Korea. The very introduction of the RTI Act, the many progressive
judgments from the judiciary (including punishing,
even with death, those who have wronged Dalits, and punishing communal rioters like Babu
Bajrangi and Ashok Mochi, and terrorists like Ajmal Kasab), our setting up some
excellent educational institutions like the IITs praised even by Bill Gates,
and our fast-growing economy with many rags-to-riches stories (we’ve all seen
some people going up the economic ladder), are signs of how India has moved
forward with this democratic model, which offers means to correct its own flaws
through constitutional amendments, for example.
I have met in person and
read about many Dalits who feel very concerned, even paranoid, about Muslim
extremism in India and globally (of which Dalits too have indeed even been victims,
as you can see here and here), and who, as non-Muslims, would rather make
common cause with the VHP (which,
despite its, in the context of Muslims and Christians, hate-filled, and, moral
policing-wise, regressive, worldview, is committed to "Hindu unity" in
that it does not believe in caste barriers, as discussed here) than with communal Muslims. Indeed, the Sangh
Parivar, drawing people seeking to uphold “Hindu values” (very open to
interpretation) may and does have casteists and closet casteists in its fold
(as do indeed even other political organisations and parties), but it
basically hasn’t ever been anti-Dalit, despite attempts to paint it as such,
and the BJP has recently not only given India a Dalit president (and had allied
with the BSP to support Mayawati as the CM once), but has, in a bid to appease
Dalits, sought to promote caste-based quotas in promotions and even overturn a very fair Supreme Court verdict rightly aimed at preventing
misuse of the anti-Dalit atrocities law. Even Savarkar, in his post-Andamans,
Hindu Mahasabha days, fought strongly for temple access for Dalits. Most of the
Hindus in the Sangh Parivar (which, on the whole, even vis-a-vis Muslims and Christians, has its moderate strands too,
as discussed here, here, here and here) are irked by left-liberals supposedly doing
injustice to India’s Hindu heritage, and the extremist, proselytizing and
extra-territorial tendencies among sections of Indian Muslims and even
Christians, but are not particularly anti-Dalit. In fact, former RSS sarsanghchalak Balasaheb Deoras had said that if untouchability is not a sin, then nothing is a sin, and RSS-BJP leader Tarun Vijay boldly took Dalits with him inside a temple in Uttarakhand for which he was physically assaulted, and Congress leader Harish Rawat visited him in hospital extending solidarity with his anti-untouchability cause.
And while Tarun Vijay is a moderate not bigoted towards Muslims or Christians (as you can see here and here), we saw Dalits
participating in reprehensible killings of Muslims during the Gujarat riots of
2002 (the media face of the Gujarat riot perpetrators, Ashok Mochi, is a
Dalit who, by the way, has expressed
regret for his actions after
having served his term in jail), even to seek more validity within the Hindu
majority (which a lot of Dalits desire, which demonstrates the inherent flaws
in the discourse about Dalit-Muslim unity, as discussed here). And yes, when a Dalit leader JN Mandal did
ally with communal Muslims in the 1940s, he had to pay a very heavy price for
it, as you can see here, and
most Dalits can indeed see through the facade of those particular folks from
the Muslim community who, while wanting Indian Hindus to care for Indian Muslims'
concerns as fellow Indians, themselves overlook the concerns of non-Muslims
except paying some lip service to the cause of those non-Muslims who fit into
the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" syndrome (like Christian
victims of Hindu extremism or victims of human rights violations in the northeast
or Adivasi areas in mainland India rather than only Muslim-majority Kashmir) or
the "I can use their victimhood to paint that community in a certain
fashion" idea (like in the case of Dalits to promote Hinduphobia, just as
many anti-Muslim bigots cite issues like burqas and triple talaq not because
they care for Muslim women but to portray Muslims as regressive people), but
not caring for Hindu victims of riots and terrorism like the Kashmiri Pandits
or Jat victims of the Muzaffarnagar riots as fellow Indians, but being very
loud in their activism over, say, the Palestinians.
I adore APJ Abdul Kalam (who was indeed a practising Muslim in his own way),
Dara Shikoh, Maqbool Sherwani, Ashfaqullah Khan, the bus driver Saleem who,
instead of ducking, bore bullets to protect Amarnath yatris etc., and there are
Muslim friends of mine who are vocal for the cause of humanistic impartiality.
And yes, apostates of Islam ("ex-Muslims") and even other critics of
the Islamic scriptures have also contended that their critique of the Islamic
scriptures (there are indeed similar critiques of scriptures of other faiths as
well, including by their apostates), holding controversial interpretations as
accurate, doesn’t validate stereotyping in a negative fashion the people we
know as Muslims or even practising Muslims, nor is terrorism or even
theologically inspired terrorism a Muslim monopoly, as discussed here, and I’ve discussed the ideological roadmap to fight Muslim
extremism here. Indeed, violence
against law-abiding civilians is not only inhuman but also only invites further
violent backlashes; it doesn't "put in place" an entire community –
the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 did not end Khalistani terrorism but boosted it,
and it was in its prime till way into the 1990s, and the anti-Muslim riots in
Gujarat in 2002 were followed by the terrorist attacks in the Akshardham temple
in Gandhinagar and the rise of the Indian Mujahidin. And yes, for all those
offering conspiracy theories denying the existence of jihadist terrorism, have
a look at this
article, this
one, this
one and this
one, and even Noam
Chomsky does not endorse such conspiracy theories.
But when Jignesh Mevani
talks of "Dalit-Muslim unity" without emphasising whether he supports
an alliance only with Muslims openly committed to fighting within their
community for reform on issues like gender equality, blasphemy, apostasy,
music, cinema etc. and who, while accepting the truth of jihadist terrorism,
vehemently reject it as completely unacceptable without ifs and buts, or
whether he is fine with communal Muslims just using the Dalit issue for an
anti-Hindu agenda, most Dalits don’t
identify with what he stands for. I was quite uncomfortable when slogans
against the Hindu veneration of the cow were chanted in the Una protests, and in these very
protests, Muslim
participation was encouraged, when we all know what the reaction of very sizable sections of
Muslims to any attack on their religious sensibilities is, and a little more recently,
we had Muslims
waving Islamic flags asserting their religious identity in the Bhima Koregaon
protests - imagine how saffron
flags would be construed by left-liberal folks in a rally against triple talaq!
While some of our left-liberal folks may wish to selectively denigrate Hinduism and portray only the casteist version of Hinduism as the authentic Hinduism (an opinion they share with the Hindu reactionaries, except that the reactionaries want to uphold casteism, while left-liberals of this particular variety want to fight against Hinduism as a whole, and not just fight social evils in its name), many Dalits do not share that worldview, just like there are practising Muslim women fighting practices like triple talaq and imposition of burqas, and who don't believe that the sexist version of Islam is the true version of Islam (as much as Muslim reactionaries and Islam-bashers would advocate sexist Islam as the true Islam). And while Dalits respect Gautam Buddha and Babasaheb Ambedkar, they don't believe that Hinduism as a whole ought to be shunned and instead assert its humanistic interpretations (which have existed from Vedanta hailing low-caste butcher Raikva to Puranic references opposing caste discrimination, and the Bhakti and Lingayat movements too opposed caste discrimination, and even Sikhism, while opposing caste, held Hindu religious icons and scriptures in high esteem, considering caste discrimination a misinterpretation), even trying to emphasise their own (Dalits') historic contribution to Hindu civilisation despite the challenges, enthusiastically celebrating festivals like Valmiki Jayanti. As left-liberal, BJP-critic Harish S. Wankhede has acknowledged in an article – “Large sections of the Dalit-OBCs are still attached to the Hindu religious traditions and overwhelmingly participate in various local rituals.” Also, while there are indeed Dalits formally converting to Buddhism, the historical narrative offered by a section of left-liberals of pitting Hinduism on one side, and Buddhism and Jainism on the other, and showing only Hindu rulers as intolerant is invalid, as discussed here.
Dalits voted for the BJP
in UP, not buying the casteist spin given to the university autonomy breach
based on political connections in the Rohith Vemula episode (students were
wrongly, without due inquiry, suspended for a scuffle with ABVP members, their
Dalit identity not necessarily being relevant to this), and Vemula, in calling
for funeral prayers for terror convict Yakoob Memon and hailing the MIM, didn't
represent very many Dalits across India. I know the MIM claims to be a party of Dalits
along with Muslims, but it basically represents a very communal and regressive brand
of Muslim identity politics, defending
triple talaq and even defending
Zakir Naik (whose communal and
regressive worldview I have discussed here), other than engaging in hate speeches against
Jews as a collectivity
(labeling all of them as Muslims’ enemies from Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime
itself, thus erasing all differences between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews,
leave aside moderate and extremist Zionists, despite the
Quran very clearly stating that Jews can’t be negatively stereotyped and permitting
Muslims to intermarry with them) and even against Hindus (remember Akbaruddin Owaisi’s alleged
hate speech?), and physically assaulting Taslima Nasrin.
And if we do need unity, it is national unity and human unity. Who would Dalits and Muslims unite against? And if it's not a set of people based on birth-based identity but a regressive idea of untouchability they are meant to fight, then progressive Indians of all castes and creeds must unite against the menace. Besides, Indian Muslims themselves have a casteism (though not rooted in any interpretation of their faith but in this case a negative influence of Hindu culture on Muslim culture, like the ghoonghat is case of the vice versa) to deal with. So, talk of "Dalit-Muslim unity" against casteism, treating Muslims as a monolith, doesn't add up! Mevani's left-leaning mentor, the venerable late Mukul Sinha, a crusader for justice for the Gujarat riot victims and who rejected all identity politics, would have never approved of this.
Besides, as much as
Dalits are conscious of the historical wrongs they have been - and some of them
still are - subjected to (Karna being slurred for being a "Sut-putra" and rejected by Draupadi from participating in the swayamvar on that basis in our lore shows how old this rot is), and without in the least undermining how grave some
of the hate crimes against Dalits are even today, Dalits are largely not
interested in engaging in reverse casteist stereotyping by way of labeling in a
baseless fashion anyone born to an upper caste family as necessarily being
oppressive just by virtue of his/her identity. While a large minority of upper caste Hindus in urban India, especially in the slums, may still consciously,subconsciously or unconsciously believe in caste hierarchies, very many folks
today, especially of the current generation
and the preceding generation, are completely indifferent to caste (which
is good, and the India of today isn't the same as what it was centuries or even
decades ago), and there are staunch practising Hindus like Arya Samajis
vehemently rejecting caste as a hereditary or hierarchical institution (I've
even seen non-Arya Samaji mainstream practising Hindu Brahmin friends from
small towns in UP and Rajasthan mingling with and eating from the same plate as
their Dalit friends in hostel in my college days in Gujarat), and the Hindu
right-of-centre has been instrumental in even facilitating having Dalits as priests in Hindu temples
and untouchability is fast disappearing from rural India too, with Dalit
political assertion plus genuine broadening of minds of those coming back from
the cities (for example, in my house in Delhi, the entire domestic staff used to
drink tea prepared by our low-caste Muslim cook, who worked for us until
recently, without any issues), among other factors. For all those painting a
picture of gloom and doom, here’s something to look at – inter-caste marriages
have been on the rise in India, as you can see here and here, even intermarriages
between non-Dalit Hindus and Dalits, and more and more young people are open
to the same. Surveys have even shown
Dalit students outperforming others in some rural schools. The decreasing relevance of social stigma associated with caste can also be seen from how people from many communities (including the Patidars) are clamouring for the "backward"
status to avail of the benefits in college education and government employment
it entails. It also must be noted that discrimination owing to the
resentment over well-to-do but less meritorious people being beneficiaries of reservations
cannot be equated with discrimination based on believing in casteism, a
distinction many tend to blur, though discrimination in either case is
unjustified.
Sure, caste discrimination
must be fought tooth and nail wherever it exists (each village should have a
caste commission where those engaging in discrimination, on due enquiry and
with evidence, can be punished), but it’s not like Dalits everywhere in India
are perennial victims whose political choices and aspirations are guided only
by their identity issues. Loud assertion of Dalit identity, therefore, doesn’t
always remain all that relevant, and even irks those (including not-so-economically
privileged general category folks) who, in any case, are upset with the current
reservation system favouring creamy layer Dalits. And yes, just like it’s not
alright to stereotype all Muslims as terrorists or sexist, and doing so doesn’t
help genuine victims of patriarchal practices among Muslims or even the victims
of terrorism but only serves the purpose of anti-Muslim bigots, to mindlessly
label Hindus in general as casteist doesn’t help actual Dalit victims but only
empowers anti-Hindu bigots, even those across the Indo-Pak border, like Zaid
Hamid.
After the failure of an inefficient socialist experiment, India opted for liberalisation in the 1990s, which has enabled more and more people to secure jobs on attaining some skills, and for others to create jobs by being entrepreneurial - and many Dalits too have made it big in this regard, and on the whole, Jignesh and his fellow travellers seem to offer no solutions to public policy issues that plague India as a whole, like the slugginshness of the judicial system, the need for police reforms, the potholed roads, the poor quality and quantity of government schools and hospitals, and the need to generate jobs through entrepreneurship.
Also, though the focus here in Mevani’s context is about Dalits and not Adivasis (though Mevani has occasionally spoken for Adivasis as well), given that the left-liberal folks bring up Adivasis ever so often (and indeed, genuine issues of Adivasis ought to be addressed), the denial of Adivasi rights over forest land and forest produce was based on an outmoded statist/socialist environmentalism that far predated liberalisation (it was corrected on paper only in 2006 by the then UPA government with the Forest Rights Act), as was the extensive deforestation and large scale displacement owing to power plants by PSUs - and no, this wasn't because of any casteist bias on the part of the then Congress leadership but because that's how state authoritarianism over the economy has worked everywhere (think of Mao's Great Leap Forward, which was much worse).
Coming back to Jignesh, the
man has admitted to taking
financial support from the Popular Front of India (PFI), a radical Islamist outfit that the CPI -M government of Kerala wishes to have banned, and the members of which were involved in,
among other things, chopping off the hands of a Christian professor for
drafting a question paper that apparently hurt their religious sensibilities,
and Jignesh talks of opposing theofascism! The very same Jignesh has even advocated
throwing chairs at and disrupting rallies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while in the same breath, he talks of saving
democratic norms and values.
I, for one, am not endorsing the many bizarre and baseless conspiracy theories circulating about and even many other allegations against Nehru or his political successors from his family (like Indira Gandhi, who split Pakistan in two, being called Durga by Vajpayee). And it’s not like the Congress, even in the past, hasn’t shown any respect to Hindu religious sensibilities on any occasion (indeed, the party does celebrate Hindu festivals) or that it is hands-in-glove with jihadists or other secessionists – in fact, in Kashmir, Punjab and the northeast, it was the Congress at the centre and sometimes in the states that fought violent separatists, and it was the Congress party that broke Pakistan into two in 1971, integrated J&K in India in 1947-48 and repulsed Pakistani designs in 1965. Also, P. Chidambaram, as home minister, ended the turf wars between intelligence agencies leading to several terrorist attacks being averted (including a planned Khalistani attack in Delhi on Diwali in 2011) and oversaw the extradition of terrorists Abu Jundal and Yasin Bhatkal from the Middle East. That said, while the welfare
schemes for the religious minorities may not have always been implemented very
well everywhere like schemes for all have not been in our country, and Muslims
are still relatively more economically backward for not having to taken to
modern education in large numbers for many decades under British rule, the tag
of “minority appeasement” associated with the Congress remains valid not in
terms of genuine economic advancement of the minorities, but instead, in other
contexts (which admittedly haven’t helped regular, law-abiding Muslims), like
going soft on Raza Academy goons in Azad Maidan in Mumbai
(electorally, the ‘secular’ parties have
consolidated vote-banks based on some Hindu castes plus Muslims, whereby Muslim
extremism, if not specifically directed against those Hindu castes that are
typically a part of the vote-bank, can be overlooked), coming up with a
lopsided Communal Violence Bill that viewed a majority person killing a
minority person as a graver offence than the vice versa (which has fortunately
never become a law), opposing the progressive Supreme Court verdict in the
Shah Bano case, its senior leader Digvijay Singh attending the release of a
book with very ludicrous conspiracy theories about 26/11 (for those having any
doubts about culpability in 26/11, have a look at this
article, as well as this one from a Pakistani newspaper by a Pakistani
Muslim policeman, and even this
admission by Nawaz Sharif) and
having had a prime minister (Manmohan Singh) claiming that Muslims had the
first claim over India’s resources. True, when the Congress has felt that Hindu
sentiment at large is turning against them, they have, at times, gone soft
on Hindu extremism too, which explains the Congress apparently not doing enough
to check rioting by Hindu extremists in Gujarat in 1969 or Bhagalpur, Bihar, in
1989 or Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993 (these riots were not
one-sided, though the Muslim death toll was higher) or the massacres of Muslims
in Nelie, Assam, in 1983 and Hashimpura, Uttar Pradesh, in 1987 [which
validates Salman Khurshid’s khoon ke cheente (stains
of blood) confession vis-a-vis Muslims for the Congress], but to only see this side of the picture and
overlook the Congress and other ‘secular’ parties otherwise going soft on
Muslim extremists (its ally, the Samajwadi Party, has communal hate-monger Azam
Khan accused of fanning and shielding rioters from the Muslim side in
Muzaffarnagar and Sahranpur, as a senior leader) and seeking the patronage of
clerics like Imam Bukhari (who supported the demolition of Buddha statues by the Taliban), or starting several minority-specific welfare
schemes (implemented as badly or well as schemes for all), won’t be a correct
assessment, and clichéd as it may sound, given the tragic episodes of terrorism
and sectarian and ethno-linguistic violence among Muslims themselves in
Pakistan and many other Muslim-majority countries and the lack of democracy in
many of them, it is true that Indian Muslims are better off in many ways than
Muslims in many other countries, which is not to say that we as Indians mustn’t
do better for all our fellow citizens, irrespective of religion.
At a time when the
Congress is seeking to furnish its not-only-pro-minority and
respect-for-Hinduism credentials and its commitment to the aspirations of the
youth, having the likes of Jignesh as its support-system (other than trying to
prevent triple talaq from being criminalized citing
logically invalid contentions) is, on the whole, going to be a liability,
for the ilk he represents won’t vote for the BJP anyway, and his narrative
won’t appeal to average centrist or culturally right-of-centre Hindu Indian
voters. And in the eyes of most Hindus, secular, democratic values in the true
sense can’t be upheld or “rescued” by those who are selective in the
application of those values. The fear of Hindu majoritarianism potentially
hypothetically taking over the country in a fascist fashion, as possibly valid
as it may be, doesn't mean that Hindus, who are not overall a particularly
extremist community (notwithstanding exaggerated
narratives offered by some - sure, like other communities, there exist among Hindus violent extremists and their supporters as also those not as extremist but somewhat biased in favour of their community and not having as much humanitarian empathy for 'others', but just like other communities, there also exist among Hindus happy, go-lucky, apolitical folks and even those passionately committed to secular humanism), must accept as great heroes those who ally
with anti-Hindu extremists. Yes, many Hindus did vote for Modi (the vote-share being only 38.5% with the majority not united on any alternative), at a time when the anti-incumbency sentiment was at its peak on legitimate grounds, and with all due respect,
those who shy away from condemning Jinnah for the Direct Action Day riots
(before which Jinnah said he wanted India divided or destroyed and after which
he said he didn’t want to discuss ethics) or are willing to give him the
benefit of doubt, those who shy away from condemning Kashmiri separatists like
Yasin Malik for killing and driving away the Kashmiri Hindus or are willing to
give them the benefit of doubt (as for the conspiracy theories and
rationalizations offered about the exodus of the Kashmiri Hindus from their
homeland, have a look at this piece, and it is noteworthy that none of the Kashmiri Muslim
perpetrators have been convicted, unlike hundreds rightly convicted in
connection with the Gujarat riots for the massacres in the Best Bakery, Ode,
Sardarpura and Naroda Patiya, and the Kashmiri Hindus haven’t even been
rehabilitated the way the Muslims driven out from the village of Atali have)
and those who shy away from condemning Azam Khan for the riots in Muzaffarnagar
and Sahranpur (it is noteworthy that he has not even been charge-sheeted in
spite of sting operations suggesting his involvement, while Maya Kodnani was
rightly convicted) or are willing to give him the benefit of doubt (and I
reiterate that I am not stereotyping all Indian Muslims – there are many of
them who condemn the likes of Jinnah, Yasin Malik and Azam Khan in unambiguous
terms) have no business to be spitefully critical of those shying away from
condemning Modi or those who give him the benefit of doubt for what happened in
2002. I am not a fan of the Modi-led BJP and would like to see it go, but the opposition strategy vis-a-vis Hindu sensibilities will have to be clear and coherent, without faux 'liberal' heroes. And if Indian Muslims genuinely want the BJP to be defeated electorally, they too should not support this brand of pseudo-intellectualism even if it panders to their confirmation bias; else, they should accept that Hindus would be equally valid in accepting the BJP as being a very secular party based on the claims of its vocal Muslim and Christian members and supporters.
The author would like to thank his friend Sudhanva Shetty for his help in writing this article.
By:
Karmanye Thadani
Knowledge Council
