The
piece is intended as a rebuttal to JNU research scholar Saib Bilawal's piece The stench of bigotry: Why is Ramachandra Guha turning into Chetan
Bhagat? (for
our reference, Piece 2), which in turn, is actually a rebuttal to Ramachandra
Guha's piece Not the Emergency by any stretch
of the imagination (for our
reference, Piece 1).
I write this piece not because I am a fan of Guha’s (which I indeed am), for a
public intellectual of his stature doesn’t need an ordinary individual like me
to defend him from baseless and possibly inconsequential allegations, but
because I wish to address a larger malaise that plagues our intellectual
discourse, in which centrist and close-to-centre voices are often dismissed by
ultra-leftists as right-leaning and by ultra-rightists as left-leaning.
Acknowledging the validity of an argument coming from a school of thought one
doesn’t subscribe to or acknowledging that disagreement with your position can
be genuine rather than necessarily borne out of some hidden agenda of rightist
or leftist bigotry or being sponsored by vested interests is unfortunately
becoming rarer by the day (which is indeed sad, and as Aristotle said - "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it"), and as a concerned Indian, I do wish to offer my two
cents in this regard.
On the JNU Controversy
I write this piece not because I am a fan of Guha’s (which I indeed am), for a
public intellectual of his stature doesn’t need an ordinary individual like me
to defend him from baseless and possibly inconsequential allegations, but
because I wish to address a larger malaise that plagues our intellectual
discourse, in which centrist and close-to-centre voices are often dismissed by
ultra-leftists as right-leaning and by ultra-rightists as left-leaning.
Acknowledging the validity of an argument coming from a school of thought one
doesn’t subscribe to or acknowledging that disagreement with your position can
be genuine rather than necessarily borne out of some hidden agenda of rightist
or leftist bigotry or being sponsored by vested interests is unfortunately
becoming rarer by the day (which is indeed sad, and as Aristotle said - "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it"), and as a concerned Indian, I do wish to offer my two
cents in this regard.
The way the Modi sarkar handled the controversy was unpalatable. From Rajnath
Singh citing a fake Twitter handle to allege LeT-backing, to Smriti Irani’s aide
circulating doctored videos of Kanhaiya to BJP MLA OP Sharma having the accused
beaten up in court, this was plain unacceptable.
However, the BJP may not have been able to demonstrate any of this
authoritarianism were it not for what happened at JNU and the Press Club of
India. I do
think that slogans calling for India’s ‘barbadi’ or hailing a man convicted for
terrorism as a martyr, endorsing the act he was accused of, are deeply
problematic and do amount to sedition in my view, and those who actually shouted
those slogans deserve punishment (even though I respect the view that otherwise
harmless students can be less sternly dealt with, but I don’t see why adults
entrusted with voting for India’s brighter future shouldn’t be expected to have
better sense), though I would respect the judicial verdict. Communal hate
speech is not always loaded with content of directly provoking violence, nor is
it always followed by retaliatory violence from the other side, but is
punishable nonetheless and so should this be. These anti-India slogans too were
capable of provoking a violent backlash against those raising them by that
yardstick. Also, there is some confusion about the very nature of sedition.
There are other laws specifically dealing with violence, vandalism or even
conspiring to that effect, and sedition is about expression by way of words or
other means (like paintings or gestures) to the effect of seeking to undermine
the rule of law under the constitutional setup, and does not even explicitly
necessitate advocating violence (which calling Afzal a “martyr” does, by the way, amount
to), but even advocating disorder or disturbance of law and order comes within
its ambit as per the landmark Kedar Nath judgment, and Article 19(2) of our constitution explicitly
mentions that freedom of speech and expression can actually be restricted for
the sake of the unity and integrity of India.
While it may well be intellectually fashionable to talk about humanism without
nationalism (for nation-states are, after all, man-made constructs), till such
time as nation-states are real, they need nationalist cohesion for progress and
security, and just as loving your family over other humans is not inhuman, nor
is identification with one’s country. All those Muslim rightists pleased by
strong denunciations of nationalism in general should indeed realise that those
critiques would even apply to global pan-Muslim (Muslim ummah) nationalism, with territorial
nationalism based on a shared political and economic destiny being much more
rational, and global pan-Muslim nationalism is anachronistic, even going by the Muslim
scriptures, as I have discussed here (I know that some Muslims would question whether
I, as not being a Muslim, can give my own interpretation of Islam, but if
non-Muslims are not expected to study and analyze Islam, how do Muslims expect
non-Muslims to not have prejudiced views about their faith and why are
non-Muslims praising Islam assumed to be authoritative on it?).
Country-oriented nationalism does not have to be and shouldn’t be the type
presupposing the morality of your government in the realms of foreign policy
and engagement with secessionist forces to be axiomatic, only complaining about
its naiveté or passivity, and one should be open to hearing out
counter-narratives, but counter-narratives cannot entail supporting attacking
the parliament, and seeking the ‘barbadi’ of a nation, which is a section of
humanity, isn’t humanistic either. And yes, if statist nationalism of any
kind is supposedly always a bad thing, then so is the Kashmiri separatist
movement that strives to create a nation-state or has affinity to the Pakistani
state. And their brand of nationalism, on the whole, isn’t secular (SAS Geelani
has openly condemned separation of religion and state) and is not in favour of
modern freedoms and gender equality, despite some pretensions to the contrary
and some genuine exceptions. From girls’ rock bands shutting down to
molestations of girls participating in a marathon alongside boys to no cinema
halls functioning in the valley owing to militants’ diktats to most of the
Hindus being displaced from the valley, that actually represents the true face
of Kashmiri ‘freedom’ but what Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz has called the
“regressive left” just simply fails to see it, and many other well-intentioned
people are often ignorant of the facts and form an opinion seeing only a part
of the picture. (I would urge those with leanings in favour of Kashmiri
separatism to read this
other article by me,
in which I discuss its legal and moral invalidity.) Even if you declare the
Indian state (and not the nation in general) established under the constitution
to be your enemy, which is different from criticizing a specific political
leader or party, that is an abuse of freedom of speech when you claim it under
the same constitution. And though I do not use whataboutism as a line of
argument, by the way, I would also mention that we didn’t see the free speech
fundamentalists routing for those shouting those slogans routing for the likes
of Kamlesh Tiwari arrested for outraging Muslim religious sentiments.
For all those questioning the judicial verdict pertaining to Afzal, the Supreme
Court did not declare that they were awarding the death penalty to Afzal only
on the basis of “collective conscience” and without evidence. There was a
reference to “collective conscience” to justify awarding him the death penalty
rather than a life term, and that had no relevance to establishing his guilt,
which was based on evidence admissible under the Indian Evidence Act.
Whether one thinks the judgment was good in law or not is another debate which
someone can initiate only after having read the entire judgment (and not just
by listening to what Guru’s lawyers who lost the case or activists for
Kashmir’s ‘freedom’ have to say), but it would be totally wrong to cast aspersions
on the Indian judiciary as a whole, thanks to which many innocent civilians –
Muslims, Adivasis and others – falsely framed as terrorists, have been
exonerated, including two people even in connection with the 26/11 Mumbai
attacks, and even Kashmiri Muslims were acquitted in connection with a
terrorist attack in Lajpat Nagar in Delhi in 1984. It is the judiciary which
has convicted hundreds of rioters in connection with the anti-Muslim
riots in Gujarat in 2002 (in cases relating to massacres such as in the
Best Bakery, Ode, Sardarpura and Naroda Patiya), hundreds in connection with the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 (though some prominent
politicians in connection with the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 are indeed yet to be
convicted) and the anti-Christian riots in the Kandhamal district of Odisha in
2008 (in which MLAs like Manoj Pradhan were convicted), and recently, it upheld the
right of the Greenpeace activist to travel abroad and even struck down Section
66A of the Information Technology Act, a UPA legacy the Modi sarkar was
shamelessly seeking to retain, as unconstitutional.
Besides, a letter supposedly written by Afzal Guru acknowledging
his crime has been verified as being written by him by his own brother, and there are indeed several other such letters too. He even gave interviews
acknowledging his guilt, as you can see here and here. Chidambaram’s recent statement suggesting Afzal’s
possible innocence was most likely politically motivated, given that Rahul
Gandhi was being attacked for associating with the pro-Afzal folks, and though
the Congress party as a whole disassociated from Chidambaram’s statement, which
it had to for Afzal was hanged in their tenure, the Congress often likes to
speak in multiple voices to please all kinds of people, as does the BJP.
On Guha’s Supposed “Unnatural Turn”
Guha has been among the few gems in our intellectual
circles who cannot be affiliated to any political party, him having criticized
without any inhibitions the Congress, the BJP, the Left and the many regional
parties. However, since the focus here is on him having never earlier
criticized the Congress, it would indeed be useful to have a look at these
articles and videos of Guha’s.
On Guha’s Observations in Piece 1 and Bilaval’s
Rebuttals in Piece 2
(a) One has seen street protests against and
intellectual criticism of the Modi sarkar, even on the JNU issue, in Delhi and
in BJP-ruled states, without any clampdown, showing that our constitution
stands, unlike the Emergency or the fascist rule in Germany under Hitler where all dissent was undemocratically sought to
be silenced.
(b) The BJP is not in power in many states and UTs and
has no control over governments of states it does not govern, unlike the
Congress being in power in most states during the Emergency.
(c) Comparing the RSS with the Nazi Party is absurd
for the RSS is not planning territorial expansion, as much as it may fancy
Akhand Bharat, and while it is deeply suspicious of Indian Muslims and Indian
Christians, it’s not planning their wholesale extermination, the way the Nazis
massacred Jews, gypsies and homosexuals, often in concentration camps.
As for the first two points mentioned by Guha, no further elaboration is
required. The last point may be seen as a bit contentious, for our media and
even academicians have often obfuscated genuine differences between
right-of-centre and extreme right in the Hindu context (though often
emphasizing the same in the Muslim context), which I have discussed in
considerable detail here.
On the other hand, Bilaval, in trying to rebut Guha’s
argument, advances sentimental rhetoric, which completely fails to repudiate
what Guha said.
Bilaval argues that the current government has employed goons and the police to
do their bidding, as the Congress did during the Emergency. However, even other
than during the Emergency, almost all major political parties have had goons
targeting dissidents, be it the CPI-M (remember Nandigram?), the BJP, the Shiv
Sena, the MNS, the SP, the DMK and even the Congress, given its goons attacking
the restaurant Aditi Pure Veg in Pune for making fun of UPA corruption in its
menu or even killing leftist theatre artist Safdar Hashmi back in 1989, but
none of this is similar to Nazism or the Emergency wherein all opponents from
the civil society or the political class were locked up in jail or even killed.
Further, Bilaval contends that the RSS wishes to do
away with our democratic constitutional framework altogether and seeks to
establish a full-fledged theocratic dictatorship, but offers no evidence to substantiate his
claim, as much as this insinuation may be “common sense” for those who have
been exposed only to some left-leaning perceptions of the RSS largely propagated by
its opponents and implicitly endorsed by a large section of the English
language media. Bilaval has also equated the RSS/BJP stand on homosexuality and
their attitude towards Adivasis with the Nazi attitude towards homosexuals and
gypsies, and on this too, he is completely off the mark. The RSS and BJP have
never talked of exterminating homosexuals, and a senior BJP leader like Arun
Jaitley has dissented from the party line to openly declare his support to
decriminalising homosexuality (not quite like the Nazi Party!), and the RSS, in the light of much talk of openness to homosexuality in ancient Hindu
literature, had earlier talked of possibly
revising their position on homosexuality, now having recently
declared that it ought not to be a crime, and has, I reiterate, never
advocated exterminating homosexuals Nazi-style or even Iran-style. To state
facts about the RSS and dispelling misconceptions about them doesn’t amount to
subscribing to their worldview. And while successive governments (BJP and
non-BJP) had neglected Adivasis’ concerns till UPA-I laudably introduced the
Forest Rights Act, when did the RSS or BJP advocate any genocide of Adivasis?
If anything, they have actually been trying hard (with some success) to
incorporate Adivasis in their fold.
Next, our friend Bilaval claims that the movement
against the authoritarianism of the Congress during the Emergency premised
itself on Indian nationalist sentiments, as did the agitation led by Anna
Hazare, but the scenario now is different, with the JNU folks and other
anti-BJP folks being branded as anti-national elements, which makes the current
scenario more dangerous, but even then, he fails to explain how there is an
Emergency-like clampdown of civil liberties today when he could himself write
Piece 2 without facing any arrest. I concede that the Hindu right has managed
to gather more space by portraying itself as more nationalist, but in this, our
so-called liberals are more to blame. Rather than continuing to rightly espouse
secularism as a means of national cohesion and integral to Indian nationalism,
they have taken their talk of internationalism and humanism to abstract levels,
without politely deconstructing it for but with their hypocrisy evident to the common man of India, who does very
rightly feel surprised when many of those claiming to represent the “idea of
India” are apparently more disturbed by the cancellation of a Ghulam Ali
concert in Mumbai than Indians dying in a militant strike in Pathankot or how
these 'liberals' seem to be more outraged at the hanging of Yakoob Memon than the terror
strikes in Gurdaspur, preaching how it’s not a good idea to be friends with
Israel but how it should be ‘aman ki asha’ with Pakistan (which has occupied
Balochistan, which was a sovereign state like Nepal and Bhutan in March 1948,
and oppressed the Baloch, even subjecting them to aerial bombings) at all
costs. This is not the secularism Nehru or Shastri stood for, but supposedly
very left-leaning folks like Arunadhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra, without any
clarity of ideological framework, almost dismiss the entire constitutional
setup and romanticize (though without endorsing) terrorism and militancy
without offering any concrete solutions to any problem, as Pakistani-American
writer Omar Ali has discussed here and
Ramachandra Guha has discussed here, and
the Roys and Mishras seem to have hijacked the mantle of secularism for some
time now, which does make the Hindu right appear much more nationalist (and
yes, even I would say that sections of the Left did commit a grave error in
explicitly siding with the Chinese during the war in 1962 when they could have
instead chosen to stay neutral, for taking such a stance would only invite
suspicion about how they could not be trusted, and the Sino-Indian border
dispute is a complex one, with neither side black or white, and there was
absolutely no reason for any Indian Communist to blow the Chinese trumpet in a sensitive, war-like situation). But
the only solution to this is to lay threadbare the BJP not only vis-à-vis
communalism, but other aspects of their governance, to expose them as the
opportunistic and corrupt politicians they indeed largely are, on one hand and
to deconstruct and expose all the fallacies and contradictions of their
ideological framework on the other. However, none of Bilaval’s discussion on an
attempt at appropriating nationalism by the Hindu right, in the least, has
anything whatsoever to do with rebutting what Guha said.
Bilaval has quite curiously also accused Sardar Patel
of having territorially expansionist ambitions for India, a rather
unsubstantiated claim. While I am not an uncritical admirer of Sardar Patel,
and am aware of his Hindu-rightist and racist leanings that I have discussed in
some detail here,
Patel, far from being expansionist, was reluctant to incorporate in India
Muslim-majority J&K bordering Pakistan, something MJ Akbar, much before
joining the BJP, had described in some detail in his classic book Kashmir – Behind
the Vale.
On How Centrists and Nehruvian Liberals Are Not
Exactly Relevant As Per Bilaval
So, Bilaval believes that being a centrist or a Nehruvian liberal subscribing
to our constitutional values isn’t good enough. What is needed of us is to
brand almost all Hindus who happen to be born in a non-SC/ST family as casteist
and communal, and sympathise with violent extremism against them, possibly for
setting up totalitarian regimes. The modern democratic institutions should be
derided and the only analysis of intellectual worth is of the likes that
Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra produce.
Also, Bilaval has suggested that the likes of Amartya
Sen and Ramachandra Guha are not “real, tangible individuals” (I last thought
they existed in flesh and blood), and instead, the students of the prestigious JNU
and Jadavpur University ought to be taken more seriously. While this statement
is not backed with any reasoning, would Bilaval, who feels so much for minority
rights, assert that the non-ultra-leftist minorities at these universities, who
would even concur with Guha and whose
voices are often stifled, ought to also be taken as seriously?
Chetan Bhagat is a commercial fiction writer who
supported Narendra Modi for PM, but should that make him an object of ridicule?
Those supporting Modi included several acclaimed public intellectuals like
Andre Beteile, Lord Meghnad Desai (soaked in the Marxist tradition), Dilip
Chakrabarti, K. Gopinath, Kapil Kapoor and the likes.
However much one may despise Modi, should their scholarship be written off on
account of their believing that Modi was a reasonably good administrator, and
was the best option for India at the time (as compared to a then thoroughly discredited Congress, an inexperienced AAP
and a potentially unstable Third Front), with one not possibly being completely
sure of his involvement in the riots in Gujarat in 2002 and given Modi’s
many efforts at demonstrating his commitment to religious pluralism? (I may
clarify that I, for one, I did not wish to see Modi as PM, and I voted for the
AAP in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.)
Moving on, has Chetan Bhagat just blindly supported Modi or the BJP on every
occasion and has he ever exhibited bigotry towards the minorities? His views on
the religious minorities can be seen in these
articles of his, which don’t exhibit the faintest trace of bigotry. Nor,
as these
articles make clear, is he a blind fan of Modi or the BJP, nor was he
even before Modi became PM.
Finally, coming to Chetan Bhagat’s credentials as a fiction writer. He is not a
very literary writer and writes commercial fiction in a sincere, though not
serious, manner that appeals to large sections of the youth, telling their
stories, and he raises legitimate issues like sexism, regionalism, communalism, income
divides and drawbacks of the education system in our country, with fairly
interesting and gripping plots, which have even done well in cinematic
adaptations. While one may not like his genre, to ridicule him as a writer is
just symptomatic of an intellectually elitist superiority complex, which
doesn’t suit left-leaning folks. This article exposing Bhagat's snobbish critics would
make a good read in this regard, as would this
one on Chetan by Aakar Patel, who is interestingly also a known Modi-basher.
On Ramachandra Guha Being Accused of Bigotry
Saib Bilaval has accused Guha of dismissing any concerns of Hindu majoritarian
nationalism by saying-
“Mr Guha says worry about the environment and public
education instead. In addition, some of us wonder why JNU was attacked in the
first place if not for objective and quite democratic critiques of the Modi
government.”
But while Guha did talk about the environment and
public education as the third and fourth worries of the state (not necessarily
in order of priority, but which serially happened to find themselves as the
last two, and they indeed are valid concerns for any right-thinking person), he
did also, in Piece 1, explicitly state as the first worry-
Calling someone a bigot just because he doesn’t agree
with you, when he hasn’t advocated any intolerance, is a sign of …… bigotry!
Well, then, who’s the bigot here?
By:
(The author would like to thank his friend Suvankur Sukul for his inputs.)
The way the Modi sarkar handled the controversy was unpalatable. From Rajnath Singh citing a fake Twitter handle to allege LeT-backing, to Smriti Irani’s aide circulating doctored videos of Kanhaiya to BJP MLA OP Sharma having the accused beaten up in court, this was plain unacceptable.
However, the BJP may not have been able to demonstrate any of this authoritarianism were it not for what happened at JNU and the Press Club of India. I do think that slogans calling for India’s ‘barbadi’ or hailing a man convicted for terrorism as a martyr, endorsing the act he was accused of, are deeply problematic and do amount to sedition in my view, and those who actually shouted those slogans deserve punishment (even though I respect the view that otherwise harmless students can be less sternly dealt with, but I don’t see why adults entrusted with voting for India’s brighter future shouldn’t be expected to have better sense), though I would respect the judicial verdict. Communal hate speech is not always loaded with content of directly provoking violence, nor is it always followed by retaliatory violence from the other side, but is punishable nonetheless and so should this be. These anti-India slogans too were capable of provoking a violent backlash against those raising them by that yardstick. Also, there is some confusion about the very nature of sedition. There are other laws specifically dealing with violence, vandalism or even conspiring to that effect, and sedition is about expression by way of words or other means (like paintings or gestures) to the effect of seeking to undermine the rule of law under the constitutional setup, and does not even explicitly necessitate advocating violence (which calling Afzal a “martyr” does, by the way, amount to), but even advocating disorder or disturbance of law and order comes within its ambit as per the landmark Kedar Nath judgment, and Article 19(2) of our constitution explicitly mentions that freedom of speech and expression can actually be restricted for the sake of the unity and integrity of India.
While it may well be intellectually fashionable to talk about humanism without nationalism (for nation-states are, after all, man-made constructs), till such time as nation-states are real, they need nationalist cohesion for progress and security, and just as loving your family over other humans is not inhuman, nor is identification with one’s country. All those Muslim rightists pleased by strong denunciations of nationalism in general should indeed realise that those critiques would even apply to global pan-Muslim (Muslim ummah) nationalism, with territorial nationalism based on a shared political and economic destiny being much more rational, and global pan-Muslim nationalism is anachronistic, even going by the Muslim scriptures, as I have discussed here (I know that some Muslims would question whether I, as not being a Muslim, can give my own interpretation of Islam, but if non-Muslims are not expected to study and analyze Islam, how do Muslims expect non-Muslims to not have prejudiced views about their faith and why are non-Muslims praising Islam assumed to be authoritative on it?). Country-oriented nationalism does not have to be and shouldn’t be the type presupposing the morality of your government in the realms of foreign policy and engagement with secessionist forces to be axiomatic, only complaining about its naiveté or passivity, and one should be open to hearing out counter-narratives, but counter-narratives cannot entail supporting attacking the parliament, and seeking the ‘barbadi’ of a nation, which is a section of humanity, isn’t humanistic either. And yes, if statist nationalism of any kind is supposedly always a bad thing, then so is the Kashmiri separatist movement that strives to create a nation-state or has affinity to the Pakistani state. And their brand of nationalism, on the whole, isn’t secular (SAS Geelani has openly condemned separation of religion and state) and is not in favour of modern freedoms and gender equality, despite some pretensions to the contrary and some genuine exceptions. From girls’ rock bands shutting down to molestations of girls participating in a marathon alongside boys to no cinema halls functioning in the valley owing to militants’ diktats to most of the Hindus being displaced from the valley, that actually represents the true face of Kashmiri ‘freedom’ but what Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz has called the “regressive left” just simply fails to see it, and many other well-intentioned people are often ignorant of the facts and form an opinion seeing only a part of the picture. (I would urge those with leanings in favour of Kashmiri separatism to read this other article by me, in which I discuss its legal and moral invalidity.) Even if you declare the Indian state (and not the nation in general) established under the constitution to be your enemy, which is different from criticizing a specific political leader or party, that is an abuse of freedom of speech when you claim it under the same constitution. And though I do not use whataboutism as a line of argument, by the way, I would also mention that we didn’t see the free speech fundamentalists routing for those shouting those slogans routing for the likes of Kamlesh Tiwari arrested for outraging Muslim religious sentiments.
For all those questioning the judicial verdict pertaining to Afzal, the Supreme Court did not declare that they were awarding the death penalty to Afzal only on the basis of “collective conscience” and without evidence. There was a reference to “collective conscience” to justify awarding him the death penalty rather than a life term, and that had no relevance to establishing his guilt, which was based on evidence admissible under the Indian Evidence Act.
Whether one thinks the judgment was good in law or not is another debate which someone can initiate only after having read the entire judgment (and not just by listening to what Guru’s lawyers who lost the case or activists for Kashmir’s ‘freedom’ have to say), but it would be totally wrong to cast aspersions on the Indian judiciary as a whole, thanks to which many innocent civilians – Muslims, Adivasis and others – falsely framed as terrorists, have been exonerated, including two people even in connection with the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, and even Kashmiri Muslims were acquitted in connection with a terrorist attack in Lajpat Nagar in Delhi in 1984. It is the judiciary which has convicted hundreds of rioters in connection with the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002 (in cases relating to massacres such as in the Best Bakery, Ode, Sardarpura and Naroda Patiya), hundreds in connection with the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 (though some prominent politicians in connection with the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 are indeed yet to be convicted) and the anti-Christian riots in the Kandhamal district of Odisha in 2008 (in which MLAs like Manoj Pradhan were convicted), and recently, it upheld the right of the Greenpeace activist to travel abroad and even struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, a UPA legacy the Modi sarkar was shamelessly seeking to retain, as unconstitutional.
Besides, a letter supposedly written by Afzal Guru acknowledging his crime has been verified as being written by him by his own brother, and there are indeed several other such letters too. He even gave interviews acknowledging his guilt, as you can see here and here. Chidambaram’s recent statement suggesting Afzal’s possible innocence was most likely politically motivated, given that Rahul Gandhi was being attacked for associating with the pro-Afzal folks, and though the Congress party as a whole disassociated from Chidambaram’s statement, which it had to for Afzal was hanged in their tenure, the Congress often likes to speak in multiple voices to please all kinds of people, as does the BJP.
As for the first two points mentioned by Guha, no further elaboration is required. The last point may be seen as a bit contentious, for our media and even academicians have often obfuscated genuine differences between right-of-centre and extreme right in the Hindu context (though often emphasizing the same in the Muslim context), which I have discussed in considerable detail here.
Bilaval argues that the current government has employed goons and the police to do their bidding, as the Congress did during the Emergency. However, even other than during the Emergency, almost all major political parties have had goons targeting dissidents, be it the CPI-M (remember Nandigram?), the BJP, the Shiv Sena, the MNS, the SP, the DMK and even the Congress, given its goons attacking the restaurant Aditi Pure Veg in Pune for making fun of UPA corruption in its menu or even killing leftist theatre artist Safdar Hashmi back in 1989, but none of this is similar to Nazism or the Emergency wherein all opponents from the civil society or the political class were locked up in jail or even killed.
So, Bilaval believes that being a centrist or a Nehruvian liberal subscribing to our constitutional values isn’t good enough. What is needed of us is to brand almost all Hindus who happen to be born in a non-SC/ST family as casteist and communal, and sympathise with violent extremism against them, possibly for setting up totalitarian regimes. The modern democratic institutions should be derided and the only analysis of intellectual worth is of the likes that Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra produce.
However much one may despise Modi, should their scholarship be written off on account of their believing that Modi was a reasonably good administrator, and was the best option for India at the time (as compared to a then thoroughly discredited Congress, an inexperienced AAP and a potentially unstable Third Front), with one not possibly being completely sure of his involvement in the riots in Gujarat in 2002 and given Modi’s many efforts at demonstrating his commitment to religious pluralism? (I may clarify that I, for one, I did not wish to see Modi as PM, and I voted for the AAP in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.)
Moving on, has Chetan Bhagat just blindly supported Modi or the BJP on every occasion and has he ever exhibited bigotry towards the minorities? His views on the religious minorities can be seen in these articles of his, which don’t exhibit the faintest trace of bigotry. Nor, as these articles make clear, is he a blind fan of Modi or the BJP, nor was he even before Modi became PM.
Finally, coming to Chetan Bhagat’s credentials as a fiction writer. He is not a very literary writer and writes commercial fiction in a sincere, though not serious, manner that appeals to large sections of the youth, telling their stories, and he raises legitimate issues like sexism, regionalism, communalism, income divides and drawbacks of the education system in our country, with fairly interesting and gripping plots, which have even done well in cinematic adaptations. While one may not like his genre, to ridicule him as a writer is just symptomatic of an intellectually elitist superiority complex, which doesn’t suit left-leaning folks. This article exposing Bhagat's snobbish critics would make a good read in this regard, as would this one on Chetan by Aakar Patel, who is interestingly also a known Modi-basher.
On Ramachandra Guha Being Accused of Bigotry
Saib Bilaval has accused Guha of dismissing any concerns of Hindu majoritarian nationalism by saying-
By:
(The author would like to thank his friend Suvankur Sukul for his inputs.)
