Why The Ilk of Hardik Patel and Jignesh Mevani are Not the Congress Party’s Best Bet

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

The Security Threat from Rohingya Refugees: Examining the Debate in a Larger Perspective

To my mind, there have been two elections not too long ago, one in Germany and the other in Gujarat in our own country in which the supposed liberals were compelled to show some deference to the sentiments of the majority. The presumption that the sheer numbers that the majority constitutes, secures it automatically in a democracy, and that its legitimate sentiments are undoubtedly bound to get respected by a government based on electoral majority franchise, has been proved to be a myth, which is why we see majority assertions in different parts of the world, though sometimes in ways that are morally and legally untenable. But since our left-leaning friends keep telling us that without endorsing any violence, we ought to sympathetically understand the Maoists bombing election booths killing innocent voters or jihadists killing innocents in large numbers, it may not be a bad idea to pause for a moment and without riding the intellectual high horse, think as to why majority right-wing movements globally are gaining traction, without seeking to stigmatise everyone associated with them as being fascists or even bigots, which is obviously not to condone bigoted or fascist attitudes, and indeed, just as someone supporting ‘secular’ parties like the Trinamool Congress going soft on Muslim rightist goons in places like Malda, the Congress which went soft on Raza Academy goons in Azad Maidan in Mumbai or the Samajwadi Party having a hate-monger and alleged riot-provoker like Azam Khan as a senior leader can’t be presumed to be a supporter of Muslim extremism, not everyone in the Hindu rightist camp should be branded without basis as having a nefarious agenda, and some of the genuine concerns and issues that the majority community can have, have been discussed here. 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. True, when these parties have 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 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.

Barring some absolute bigots, it is nobody’s case that every Muslim is a terrorist. 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 similar critiques of scriptures of other faiths, including by their apostates), holding controversial interpretations as accurate, does not validate stereotyping in a negative fashion the people we know as Muslims or even practicing 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, and it’s known that jihadist terrorists are a microscopic minority of Muslims constituting a threat not only to those of other faiths but even fellow Muslims rejecting their worldview (and even generally, bombs and bullets in public places don’t differentiate on a religious basis). Indeed, resorting to hatred against Muslims as a whole would only help the jihadists, other than being inhuman, and indeed, it nothing short of disgusts me to see so many politicians, including ministers, from the Modi-led BJP, from time to time, making outrageous statements and even hailing the perpetrators of rioting and lynching, an affront to the rule of law.

That said, it would not be unfair to suggest that without speaking of every last Muslim (and I adore the likes of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, a practising Muslim with his own heterodox understanding of Islam, other than having several Muslim friends myself), Muslims as an aggregate whole have failed to embrace wholeheartedly modern constitutional secular democracy (how many such Muslim-majority countries do we have? - yes, there are a few like Albania and Burkina Faso, and many Muslims in countries where they are in minority like India yearn for sharia courts; indeed, most Muslim-majority countries are theocracies with human rights issues based on religion-based laws being less or more, but never non-existent, and it does matter that some problematic ideas in the Muslim-majority countries, be it Malaysia, as you can see here and here, or even the UAE, as you can see here, are often institutionalised in law, unlike in countries that aren’t Muslim-majority – the need for India to have good strategic and economic ties with many Muslim-majority countries is another matter, and not all Muslims in these countries favour the regressive legal interpretations of Islamic theology) and the sentiment of a global pan-religious fraternity is often widespread, which may not make one an outright extremist hating those of other faiths or not having any sense of affinity to one’s non-Muslim countrymen, but the slope to radicalisation becomes more slippery if one ardently believes in a yearning for theocracy of some form and upholding the exclusivist cause of one’s religious grouping globally. We are seeing this problem of Muslim radicalism taking root in regions in our own country even where the Hindu right has, for long, politically been a virtual non-entity and where there is a syncretic culture, like Kerala and West Bengal, and even in some basically very tolerant and foreign policy-wise very peaceful European countries like Sweden. True, other other religions have undergone their renaissance, and Islam has yet to, with liberals, moderates and extremist Muslims still debating for the soul of Islam, but that only means that Muslim extremism specifically is a threat that must be acknowledged as such.

In Germany, Angela Merkel from a Christian right-of-centre party went out of her way to accommodate Syrian refugees, many of whom indeed, as Shias, practitioners of Sufi Islam (Shias and practitioners of Sufi Islam have been targets of the ISIS and are largely not involved in jihadist terrorism, as much as many of them too are yet to fully embrace modern human rights values like gender equality) or even more puritan versions of Sunni Islam, did not share, at least to the same extent, the ISIS worldview of intolerance of other faiths, women’s rights, music and cinema, and were largely escaping their war-torn country for their own safety. That said, the fear was expressed that terrorists could find their way to sneak in among the refugees, and that some of the refugees may not, in an open-minded fashion, integrate into the German society, such warnings being raised even by liberal Muslims already settled in Germany, but the left-liberal chorus sought to outshout them, telling them their fears were misplaced. The result, however, was that other than the mass sexual assaults in Cologne (in which the police operating under Merkel tried to conceal that the perpetrators were refugees), there were repeated terrorist attacks by those who had sneaked in among the refugees, or worse still, by refugees who got radicalised finding it difficult to integrate in a different environment. (Even a constitutionally secular Muslim-majority country like Burkina Faso, on accommodating Muslim refugees from neighbouring Mali, has been facing a serious crisis of jihadist terrorism, unknown to that country earlier, and while Turkey’s secular and democratic credentials are becoming worse by the day under Erdogan, the purchase of oil from the ISIS to strengthen them against the Kurds has backfired with ISIS bombings in Istanbul, a city that has been housing many Syrian refugees.) Sure, most refugees may not be jihadists and even vice versa, but taking the risk has proved to be problematic.

In this context, Merkel became unpopular with her own people for having given asylum to so many Muslims, some of whom posed a threat to Germany. But she beat the anti-incumbency sentiment to return to power by coming up with stern steps to convey to her people that she was willing to take Islamism (right-wing political Islam) head on. She acknowledged jihadist terrorism to be the greatest security threat to Germany, called for banning full-face veils in Germany (which can indeed very well be a security hazard, other than being regressive) and demanded of Turks living in Germany to be loyal to Germany.

Likewise, in India, the Congress party, which has a long history of appeasing communal and regressive Muslims (since Rajiv Gandhi’s times) by 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), subtly opposing the progressive Supreme Court verdict in the Shah Bano case and having had a prime minister (Manmohan Singh) claiming that Muslims had the first claim over India’s resources, has now been struggling to portray itself as a party that openly respects Hindu religious sentiments, with Rahul Gandhi making a temple run in Gujarat and even flaunting his sacred thread.

In this context, the issue of refugees in India also becomes pertinent. Many have been very critical of the way the BJP has sought to open its arms to Hindu refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and on the other hand, labelled Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar as a potential threat. Kapil Sibal from the Congress party has been pleading the Rohingyas’ case in the Supreme Court, and Shashi Tharoor tweeted in solidarity with them too, and this issue came up in the Gujarat elections with Amit Shah asking the Congress as a party to clarify its stand on the Rohingya refugee issue, while himself offering to help Rohingyas in Myanmar. Likewise, while the  Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, introduced by the BJP, makes Hindu, Sikh, Christian and Buddhist migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh eligible for Indian citizenship (not only Hindu migrants), the Congress opposed it as having a communal bias.

But are the concerns about some of the Rohingya refugees potentially being terrorists completely misplaced? Should India’s hospitality to refugees come at the cost of the possibility of a threat to the physical safety of its own citizens? These are legitimate questions that deserve to be explored, especially in the light of the experience Germany, France and even secular Muslim-majority Burkina Faso have had with the influx of Muslim refugees. Also, while examining the issue of non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh and granting them Indian citizenship, does it amount to communal bias?

While there is something seriously wrong with the moral compass of anyone who gloats over the plight of the Rohingya refugees, as some anti-Muslim bigots in our own country have (who fail to realise that the same Myanmarese establishment expelled many Indian-origin Hindus too from that country, and there are Rohingya Hindus too facing persecution at military hands in and even fleeing from Myanmar, like other ethnic minorities like Chin Christians) and  no side is completely blameless in this conflict (as discussed here and here), the fundamental question vis-a-vis Rohingya Muslims for us as Indians remains whether they pose a potential threat to our national security. On this front, let me simply mention a few facts for the readers-



- Many Rohingyas have participated in jihadist action in Kashmir, as recently as in 2015.

-Using Bangladesh as a base, some of them have a history of having tied up with Indian jihadists, and Rohingya terrorists have been acknowledged as a threat by the secular political forces in Bangladesh (if anyone wants to know more about Muslim extremism in India with a Bangladeshi connect, that has been discussed subsequently in this very article).

-In Myanmar itself, Rohingya Hindus have faced persecution at the hands of Rohingya Muslim extremists (other than the Myanmarese military), something accepted even by Amnesty International (which is indeed not in the least biased against Muslims), and Rohingya Hindu refugees have been attempted to be forcibly converted by some Rohingya Muslim refugees in the camps in Bangladesh.

-Jihadist terrorists from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan have found a place in the Rohingya militant ranks, with the jihadists having leaders in Saudi Arabia, again showing that this movement is about Islamism rather than a pure ethnic liberation struggle, which is also signified by the name of their militant movement being Harakah al-Yaqin, which has a clear religious connotation, and is not even inclusive of Rohingya Hindus. Indeed, whether it is Kashmir,  Chechnya, Palestine or Rakhine, once a political movement has gained an overt Muslim religious flavour, it does become theofascist.

-An Al Qaeda operative has been arrested, who was seeking to recruit Rohingya Muslims on Indian soil.

Given these facts (without even bringing recent intelligence reports about Rohingya refugees in India into the equation), should we allow our sense of humanitarian compassion to overtake our own sense of national security? Sure, till such time as Rohingya refugees are there in India, they should not be unnecessarily subjected to any slurring or violence (which may end up radicalising even the moderates among them), but it does make sense to restrict their movements (something the BJP has rightly advocated, while distributing aid to the Rohingya regugees in Bangladesh and Rohingyas in Myanmar), and if you find that overly harsh, look at how much worse is how Muslim-majority Indonesia has treated Afghan Muslim refugees. Perhaps, a vast majority of the Rohingya refugees in India aren’t radicalised, but can we risk the minority of radicals, especially when they are not even Indian citizens, the way some Marxist, Sikh, Muslim and northeast Indian radicals, or even the upper caste Hindu extremists maltreating Dalits, are? I do believe that we should place our national interest first. This becomes all the more pertinent, given where a large number of Rohingya refugee settlements are situated - in the regions of Jammu and Ladakh in J&K, but not the Kashmir valley. Given that Jammu and Ladakh are very far away from the Indo-Myanmarese border, how some Rohingya Muslims landed up there in the first place (something over which the Modi government has failed to furnish an explanation for to eminent Hindu right-leaning journalist and Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta in parliament) and how some of them settled there managed to obtain Aadhaar cards (even in Hyderabad, a Rohingya Muslim has been caught with Aadhar cards, PAN cards and even Voter ID cards), with the refugees in Jammu also holding Permanent Residency Certificates enabling them to buy property, which non-J&Kite Indians are also not entitled to, is a mystery worth exploring, when Jammu has seen very inhuman, brutal attempts at ISI-backed ethnic cleansing of Hindus in the Kishtwar and Doda districts (as you can see here), eloquently discussed by Maj. Gen. GD Bakshi (Retd.) in his brilliant book The Kishtwar Cauldron: The Struggle Against the ISI's Ethnic Cleansing (the problems some people may have over some of his political views and manner of presenting them on TV debates is another matter altogether).

Lt Gen Ata Hasnain (Retd) of the Indian Army, a Muslim gentleman, has also warned of security a risk from the Rohingya influx, citing the experience of Europe, and even illegal Bangladeshi migration in India. Indeed, while most of the Bangladeshi Muslims illegally settling down in India may well be economic migrants, that some of them have indeed posed a terror threat is beyond debate, as you can see here, and many of them too have illegally procured documents meant for Indian citizens. Besides, there is also the increase in burden on the economy of a developing country like India failing to meet the needs of its own population, and illegal migrants (including Rohingya refugees) even adding to the crime rate (which is obviously not to label all of them as criminals).

So, if Bangladeshi and Pakistani Muslim migrants pose a security threat to India, should India, in the name of religious neutrality, not give asylum and citizenship to non-Muslims from these countries, many of whom are genuine refugees fleeing persecution? Despite the efforts of genuine secular Muslim intellectuals in Pakistan and Bangladesh fighting for minority rights, some like Salman Taseer paying for it with their lives, and despite some pockets of religious syncretic practices and some from the non-Muslim minorities emerging as prominent public figures (to read about some positive developments in Pakistan, see this article, and this one specifically on how everything vis-a-vis non-Muslims isn’t about gloom and doom), the systematic, one-sided attacks on non-Sunni minorities with considerable impunity (in Bangladesh when the BNP is in power) in these countries have indeed continued unabated. The non-Muslims of these countries pose no security threat to India, and there is no significant history of Hindus, Buddhists or Christians from these regions having engaged in terrorism, and what is more, India actually has a locus standi for the non-Muslim minorities of Pakistan (then including Bangladesh) under the Nehru-Liaqat Agreement, and the charge of lack of religious neutrality could have been applied had India opened its doors only for Hindus and not other non-Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh, but that is not the case, something the Congress must keep in mind before opposing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, introduced by the BJP, and on a case-to-case basis, Pakistani Muslim individuals not posing any threat like lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi (who was far from being a Muslim right-winger, was a critic of orthodoxy and criticised the two-nation theory) and singer Adnan Sami have been given Indian citizenship, the latter under the BJP, who has publicly furthered India’s narrative, as you can see here and here. Instead, the Congress should focus on the Kashmiri Pandit issue as it has some legitimate subject-matter to blame the BJP for only offering lip-service to the Kashmiri Pandits, the BJP having failed them on several occasions (as you can see here) with the Congress actually having taken some steps for them (as you can see here and here), howsoever insufficient. In fact, by opposing the bill conferring citizenship to Pakistani and Bangladeshi non-Muslim migrants, the Congress worsens its own case, with its baggage of having neglected the Pakistani non-Muslim refugees in India for decades, and while its leaders are apparently going out of their way to demonstrate compassion for Rohingya Muslims, it seems they shamefully want Pakistani non-Muslim refugees, many of whom are economically backward and had nowhere to go to, except neighbouring India, to continue to languish stateless! In fact, it is to the credit of the BJP that it has actually taken some steps for Pakistani Hindu refugees (as you can see here) as well as Hindu and Sikh refugees from POK (as you can see here), though more surely needs to be done, and the delay in giving them citizenship on the part of the current BJP government, and in some cases, seeking to deport them, is indeed inexcusable.

Also, when the Congress and the Left seek to engage in virtue-signalling with respect to the Rohingya refugees, and talk of how there should be no bias against refugees based on religious identity, they would do well to dig into their own past of how they have neglected, and at times, even harmed the interests of Hindu refugees. As Maj. Gen. GD Bakshi has pointed out in the book of his referred to earlier, some Hindus go so overboard in proving to themselves and others that they are tolerant that they even neglect genuine concerns of their own community, and I would add, often go overboard in even generalising in a negative fashion their own community, without putting other communities to the same benchmark (of the mildest biases among several people being branded as hatred on the part of Hindus, overlooking the other side), thus turning off many Hindus from the idea of Hindu-Muslim harmony (if such are its spokespersons) on one hand and validating anti-Hindu confirmation biases of many Muslims on the other, thus only deepening rather than bridging any divide.

Coming to the Congress, 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, on the whole, in its engagement in domestic politics, the Congress acquired a pro-Muslim image for seeking to communalise human issues like poverty and illiteracy, while pandering to and seeking endorsements from regressive clerics. I have already referred to it having a long history of appeasing communal and regressive Muslims (since Rajiv Gandhi’s times) by 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 fortunately hasn't become a law), subtly opposing the progressive Supreme Court verdict in the Shah Bano case and having had a prime minister (Manmohan Singh) claiming that Muslims have the first claim over India’s resources. Speaking of its attitude towards refugees, while it allowed many Afghans, including Muslims, to settle in India as refugees, and even gave Indian citizens’ rights to Tibetan Muslims for their Kashmiri lineage, and it didn’t do much to check illegal infiltration by Muslims from Bangladesh, the very same Congress party turned its back on Nepalese-origin Hindu refugees from Bhutan (to know about the expulsion of Hindus from Bhutan, see this), and didn’t do much to support Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan and POK, and allowed the Chakma Buddhist refugees from the erstwhile East Pakistan to remain stateless, something the Supreme Court changed only recently (Vir Sanghvi got it completely wrong when he wrote in 2012 that Indian governments have supported only Hindu refugees, and much of our ‘liberal’ class needs to be better with fact-checks before making statements that can create unnecessary anti-Hindu resentment). Given its past, its refusing to stand with Pakistani and Bangladeshi Hindu refugees for Indian citizenship but supporting Rohingya Muslim refugees is going to do little to win the confidence of many Hindus viewing it as a pro-Muslim party, something it can ill-afford if it wants to make more electoral headway.

Speaking of the CPI and CPI-M, on the whole, again, I am not one of those who would demonise the entire parties. They are, on the whole, mainstream left-of-centre parties [with a post-independence history of patriots like Capt. Lakshmi Sahgal of the women’s regiment of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s INA (no, Netaji was not a Muslim-appeaser), and Aruna Asaf Ali, who were willing to sacrifice their lives in the struggle against British colonialism, in their ranks] that are opposed to Muslim extremism - the CPI-M has been asking the centre to have the Popular Front of India (PFI), a Muslim extremist outfit, banned, it has unambiguously denounced triple talaq before the Supreme Court verdict when most ‘secular’ parties were shying away from doing so and in Kerala, arrested a Muslim extremist hate-monger, they have, time and again, condemned Maududi and the Jamat-e-Islami, as you can see here  and here. They have also (unlike the rabid leftist fringe constituted by the Umar Khalids and Anirban Bhattacharyas, who I have exposed here and here), been, for the last many decades, firmly committed to electoral democracy and strongly opposed to Maoism, having suppressed Maoists in West Bengal, and have been opposed to any threat to the unity and integrity of India, their men even having lost their lives for not toeing the line of ISI-backed Sikh extremists in Punjab and Muslim extremists in Kashmir, and even recently, they unequivocally acknowledged and condemned the role of the ISI in backing theofascist terrorists in Kashmir when the terrorists shot at harmless Amarnath yatris, and Communists, including actor Kabir Bedi’s mother Freda Bedi, even took to arms for India against the Pakistani onslaught in 1947-48. In Tripura, the CPI-M government of Manik Sarkar (a man of impeccable financial integrity), minimized violent Christian right-wing terrorism (specifically terrorising Hindus) to the extent that perhaps not a single innocent civilan lost his life to it since 2012, and he managed to do so with minimal human rights violations by the security forces and managing to lift the AFSPA in Tripura, for which he even won Modi’s admiration. While the CPI-M is indeed opposed to the right-wing political assertion of Hindu identity, the party per se is not against Hinduism as a faith (there are practising Hindus in the CPI-M, and the current Kerala CM is an admirer of yoga). Unlike some independent left-liberals reading a Hindu fascist conspiracy in the RSS-backed anti-corruption crusade with Anna Hazare as its face, the CPI-M actually joined hands with the BJP in supporting Anna Hazare's struggle, which, I dare say, the BJP betrayed. The current CM of Kerala from the CPI-M has been exhibiting ideological flexibility, working towards ease of doing business, the Kerala startup mission supporting private startups being a step in that direction. They have also introduced good welfare measures and other positive initiatives in Kerala, like these. Yes, sections of the Communists do have a complicated history when it came to the freedom struggle and the two-nation theory (also true for the Hindu Mahasabha), and even with China, but there never was or has been complete unanimity or uniformity on these scores among them.

With serious allegations of riots, land-grabs (remember the episode in Bhatta Parsaul in UP under the BSP or the jal satyagraha in BJP-ruled MP?) and political murders (remember Safdar Hashmi’s murder by Congress workers or even the murders of CPI-M workers by RSS-BJP workers like the vice versa?) facing almost every consequential political party in India, the CPI-M, while guilty of episodes like the reprehensible bloodbath of farmers in Nandigram, is not singularly guilty of these. That said, when it comes to refugees, the CPI-M has a blemish that can’t be washed away and will haunt it, when it takes an overly sanctimonious, unsuited-to-national security stand on the Rohingya issue, and that pertains to Hindu refugees from Bangladesh being mass-murdered in Marchjhapi in 1979 by their cadres for political reasons (though to be fair, they have, in recent years, supported giving Hindu refugees from Bangladesh Indian citizenship, and even raised their voice for Tamil refugees, mostly Hindus, from Sri Lanka).

Finally, I would like to end this article by addressing my Muslim countrymen. While fully acknowledging that not all of them think alike, and I have already acknowledged that Lt Gen Ata Hasnain (Retd) of the Indian Army, for one, is not very welcoming of the Rohingya influx, there are those of them rallying for the Rohingyas on religious grounds, and even the violent Raza Academy protest in Mumbai in 2011 was for Muslim lives lost in Bodo-Muslim clashes that had taken place then (but Bodo Hindu lives did not seem to matter to the Raza Academy) and for Rohingyas, even though the then Congress government had already announced aid for Rohingyas (as pointed out by a rational Indian Muslim friend of mine back then, as you can see here). Empathy for non-Indian Muslims as co-religionists, as exhibited by some Indian Muslims (I believe that we can and should empathise with people across the globe, but without any identity-oriented affinities as far as possible, except our country-oriented national identity being paramount) should not be allowed to come in the way of India’s national interest (indeed, more economically backward people in India would mean less resource allocation to every individual economically backward Indian, many of whom are Muslims, as this article discusses), and I advocate the same for Hindus, whose anger over the expulsion of Hindus from Bhutan or even Myanmar [most Indian Hindus, sentimentally (even if not in practice) care for India, as every Indian must, but bother very little with Hindu affairs in other countries, usually oblivious to the existence of Balinese Hindus in Indonesia or the ancient Angkor Vat temple in Cambodia, unlike some otherwise not-interested-geopolitics Indian Muslims seeking to take a keen interest in instances of Muslims being persecuted across the globe, overlooking persecution of non-Muslims by Muslims or even Muslims by other Muslims, often even conveniently choosing to believe only what suits them] or for that matter, the violence against innocent Tamil Hindus in Sri Lanka (as you can see here and here) should not translate into seeking to sever ties with these countries (as some misguided Tamil Hindus in India desire as regards Sri Lanka), ceding them to Chinese influence. Even the secular government in Bangladesh has been weary of the security threat from sections of Rohingya refugees. I would like to offer my Muslim fellow countrymen a tit-bit in terms of my own interpretation of Islamic theology shared by many Muslims (I know that some Muslims would argue that I, as a non-Muslim, am not eligible to interpret Islam, but if non-Muslims are not going to try and understand Islam, how are they expected to not harbour biased views against it?) that suggests that the idea of a global pan-Muslim fraternity is anachronistic, and while enjoying freedom of religion, the nation-state should constitute the basis of one’s socio-political identity, so long as it doesn’t entail going and violating human rights of others (surely, that is never a legitimate option), but to err on the side of caution is, sometimes, a necessity. And Muslims mustn’t blindly hold any sympathetic-to-Muslims view from any non-Muslim, sounding like music to their ears, as being “unbiased”, and should factually and logically assess them; else, they should expect Hindus to take on face value any defence of the BJP from any Muslim individual, and if they want Hindus to care for their concerns as fellow Indian citizens invoking the constitutional philosophy, they too ought to give priority to Indian national concerns, including on the security front (as many indeed even do). Also, to my Muslim countrymen, I must say that those of you (I may emphatically assert that I am not in the least generalizing all of you, as is clear from what I have been saying all along in this piece) who wish to demonstrate your “secularism” and “human rights activism” by idolizing anti-AFSPA Manipuri activist Irom Sharmila and wrongly generalizing the Indian security personnel as all being murderous, pervert rogues by pointing to their human rights violations in the northeast (and not only Muslim-majority Kashmir to showcase secularism), just like harping on the problems of Dalits and Adivasis, or Christians targeted by Hindu extremists, ought to speak up more openly against your own politicians like Azam Khan (who hasn’t even been charge-sheeted for his alleged role in the riots in Muzaffarnagar and Sahranpur, unlike Maya Kodnani and Babu Bajrangi, who were duly convicted and spent some years in jail, after which they were rightly or wrongly conferred bail, and my point is not with respect to how much evidence is available in which case for what sentence, but whether the narrative of “Hindu riot-instigating politicians always go scot-free and Muslims are only victims, not perpetrators of riots” is true, and I believe that the issue should be ‘powerful vs. non-powerful’, ‘vote-bank politics vs. the spirit of democracy’ etc., rather than ‘Hindu oppressors vs. Muslim oppressed’, which would actually be half-true or even false in many contexts), other instances of violence against innocent Hindus (take, for instance, the recent news of a Hindu boy in Bihar being murdered by Muslim extremists for marrying a Muslim girl, or the killings of innocent Hindus in a communal riot in Rampur over a petty issue of some Hindu farmers’ cattle having strayed into Muslim peasants’ farms or how before the Dadri incident, an innocent constable in Maharashtra was killed as a retaliation against the beef ban in that state, or how very many innocent Hindus were killed by Muslim rioters in Muzaffarnagar in 2013 and Gujarat in 2002 and not only the reverse), anti-Jewish hatred within your community, the forced displacement of the Kashmiri Hindus, also known as Kashmiri Pandits (as for rebutting the conspiracy theories and rationalizations offered about the exodus of the Kashmiri Hindus from their homeland, have a look at this piece), Shia-Sunni violence (which has occurred in India in places like Lucknow), the intolerance towards Ahmedias who are socially boycotted and occasionally violently targeted in India by Muslim extremists in India and whose right to free speech and freedom of religion is to a great extent legally denied in Pakistan, refusal to accept progressive verdicts of the Supreme Court as in the Shah Bano case, curtailment of females’ rights in Muslim communities in India in different ways, like disallowing them from playing football or acting on stage or forcing them to wear burqas in many cases, non-Muslims not being given equal rights in many Muslim-majority countries and being violently targeted in our neighbouring countries (if such Muslims can shout against injustices by the US and Israel in Iraq and Gaza respectively, they can certainly look at our immediate neighbourhood), blasphemy and apostasy laws in Muslim-majority countries and so on (and for those of you, Muslims, not genuinely caring about the rights of others, why do you expect others to care for the rights of Muslims?). I understand that many of you felt let down by Narendra Modi becoming India’s prime minister, but that was with a low vote-share (the votes of the majority of the electorate not in favour of Modi getting divided, enabling Modi to win) at a time when the anti-incumbency sentiment was at its peak, and with Modi, during the election campaign and for some time even before that, making it a point to demonstrate commitment to religious pluralism. Besides, those particular Muslims and left-leaning non-Muslims of the subcontinent 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 (also known as Kashmiri Pandits) 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 while the media has rightly consistently supported the Muslims of Atali, it has actually been biased against the Kashmiri Hindus on some occasions – so much for our national media, on the whole, being supposedly biased against Muslims) 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 “chargesheeted” in spite of sting operations suggesting his involvement, while Maya Kodnani was rightly convicted, and my point is not with respect to how much evidence is available in which case for what sentence, but whether the narrative of “Hindu riot-instigating politicians always go scot-free and Muslims are only victims, not perpetrators of riots” is true, and I believe that the issue should be ‘powerful vs. non-powerful’, ‘vote-bank politics vs. the spirit of democracy’ etc., rather than ‘Hindu oppressors vs. Muslim oppressed’, which would actually be half-true or even false in many contexts) or are willing to give him the benefit of doubt 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.


Also, for those contending the irrelevance of the entity of a nation-state, well, I heartily agree that jingoism and chauvinism should be rejected, but so long as the nation-state is the basis of governance and citizens’ rights, it remains relevant, and caring for your home doesn’t amount to hatred for others in the locality; so, loyalty to one’s country and a commitment to humanity as a whole are not exactly in contradiction, but yes, to be concerned for the safety of one’s household and to limit the movements of outsiders in your home who can be a threat to your family, is only normal. Also, countries in the Organization of Islamic Countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, as also Pakistan, should certainly offer to take the Rohingya refugees if they have issues with the restrictions the Indian government plans to impose on their movements.

The author would like to thank his friends Karan Bidani and Ameya Kelkar for their help and support for this article.


By:

Karmanye Thadani
Knowledge Council