The Kerala Story: The Issue is Not with Opposing Actual Extremism, But with Reverse Extremism and Fueling Divisiveness

With the Modi-led BJP first endorsing and then jumping to the defence of the film The Kerala Story even before its release and with the PM now, after its release, praising it, even going to the extent of saying that all those opposing it are supporters of terrorism (he is indeed often given to making such fascist binaries, for which his party even once half-apologised for, in the context of his having calling a former prime minister an enemy agent), a stand echoed by culture minister Anurag Thakur (who earlier even subtly spoke genocidal language against Muslim fellow citizens) and women and child development minister as also ironically, minorities affairs minister Smriti Irani (who had claimed a certificate of attendance at a workshop to be a degree certificate from Yale!), other than the governments of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh giving the film tax exemption, what was indeed obvious to so many of us has now become evident - this film is a part of the BJP ecosystem’s project to whip up paranoia about Muslim fellow citizens for its divisive agenda, distracting from real public policy issues and portraying itself as the saviour of the Hindus, though jihadist terrorism, which has continued with Modi as PM, as this article seeks to explain, needs a nuanced response ideologically and logistically, but not by way of generalised Muslim-bashing (which is very importantly counterproductive other than being unfair), nor does, as we shall see subsequently in this article, the BJP want to sincerely fast resolve genuine Hindu grievances and give Hindus a sense of closure but seeks to milk grievances endlessly for vote-bank politics. Indeed, the article may make some readers somewhat or very uncomfortable, challenging many of their entrenched worldviews, but I humbly request such readers to examine it with an open mind in the Indian national interest.

 

Whataboutism with respect to the supposed pro-minority biases of the BJP’s electoral political opponents and the cultural left-liberal literati and glitterati* aside, there are numerous statements and acts of BJP leaders and elected representatives, including the current PM after 2014 (who can’t all be dismissed as “fringe elements” within the party), pointing to a spirit of anti-Muslim intolerance, as you can see here, here, here, here, here, here, here,  here, here, here, here, here, here and here, as does the remission of Bilkis Bano’s rapists and her infant son’s murderers, the way the BJP managed the Delhi riots of 2020 and their subsequent investigation**, and the way the Gujarat riot victims even other than Bilkis Bano are being sought to be denied justice, which indeed makes nonsense of the PM’s sabka vishwas pitch and the BJP’s token outreach and tokenism in terms of handing awards to Indian Muslims from time to time, and the Muslims it props up in public life even at political and constitutional positions play the same role of undermining or trivialising anti-Muslim bigotry as some intellectually elitist non-Muslim public figures like Arunadhati Roy have indeed played in undermining Muslim extremism. I fully acknowledge genuine moderates in the RSS-BJP ecosystem, but my issue is with the current Modi-led BJP government’s approach, which is virulently communal. And yes, contrary to what some may suggest, that leaders of Muslim-majority countries deal with Modi and the vice versa for geostrategic or economic reasons doesn’t undermine our Indian Muslim fellow citizens’ concerns, nor is it the case that leaders of Muslim-majority countries have never expressed reservations about the Modi sarkar’s problematic intolerance towards Muslims manifesting from time to time (and for readers wanting to jump at this with the whataboutism-oriented argument that non-Muslims never get any fair treatment or justice in Muslim-majority countries, I would request them to not jump the gun and read along – that point of theirs too shall be rebutted in this very article). On that count, it must be noted that opposition to such films should never be insensitive to actual victims of Muslim extremism, and I may argue that I have no major objection to many other films highlighting the ghastliness of jihadist terrorism, be it Pathaan (a film I have sought to defend from attacks across the ideological spectrum here), Shikara, Uri: The Surgical Strike, Neerja, Batla House, Sooryavanshi, Holiday: A Soldier is Never Off Duty, Baby, Mumbai Meri Jan, A Wednesday, Phantom, Nam Shabana, Sarfarosh, Mission Kashmir or Faraaz or web series-es like Jaanbaz Hindustan Ke, The Family Man, Special Ops, Shoorveer or Crackdown, and Bollywood has indeed produced a lot of content opposing jihadist terrorism, contrary to what some would like us to imagine (I recall seeing an idiotic meme on Facebook declaring that Bollywood has only criticised corrupt Hindu godmen but not jihadist terrorists, an utterly nonsensical claim!), and in fact, so have the film industries of Muslim-majority countries, such as the Egyptian blockbuster Al Khaleya showcasing moderate Egyptian Muslim policemen taking on fanatics of the ISIS variety, or another Egyptian film Mawlana (viewable on Netflix for those interested) on a liberal (not even moderate) Islamic cleric dealing with co-religionist fanatics, who are, among other things, threatening Egypt’s Christian minority, or even the Bangladeshi films Dhaka Attack and Mission Extreme, much appreciated by their local, mostly Muslim, populations. There is no denying that some hundreds of Malayali Muslims, out of the millions that exist in Kerala, have joined the ISIS, which is still indeed very, very problematic (as for those denying the very existence of the phenomenon of jihadist terrorism altogether or at least seeking to posit conspiracy theories for some well-known instances, as many in-denial genuinely moderate Muslims and some intellectually elitist non-Muslims do, they would do well to see this, this, this, this and this, and if possible, interact with Syrian and Afghan refugees, including moderate Muslims who witnessed and escaped jihadist terrorism, in our country), and some Malayali Muslim women, among whom are converts to Islam as well, became brides of ISIS fighters. Indeed, there should be no objection to cinematic depiction of the same, unless Malayali Muslims in general are not portrayed in that fashion, but stereotyping them in an ugly manner is precisely what the film does (though apparently, it showcases a few moderate Muslims for tokenism), and commentaries on the film after its release, like this one, this one, this one and this one, confirm what was obvious from the trailer. Ironically, Kerala is a state with hardly any violence in the name of religion (in fact, as many have pointed out, the spirit of religious pluralism in Kerala is the real Kerala story; the story this film tells, as one Malayali commentator points out, is, at best, a Kerala story, but certainly not the Kerala story), and sure, as regards whatever little religious extremism that does exist in Kerala, those involved in the same should indeed be duly punished by law, as has indeed even happened on such occasions. Only specific perpetrators of a crime, even a hate crime, should be punished, without generalising an entire community - else, all non-Dalit Hindus would have to be stereotyped for hate crimes, often very brutal, against Dalits even today (and you are very ignorant if you think untouchability is non-existent or almost non-existent today)! Political party violence in Kerala is another matter, and RSS-BJP cadres are no less brutal towards Left adversaries in Kerala than the vice versa, as you can see here, here and here. The BJP hardly ever gets any seats in the Kerala legislature elections, nor has Kerala sent any BJP candidates to parliament, Keralites largely rejecting its divisive politics, but the BJP has, for long, since before Modi's PM-ship, held some electoral clout at the municipality level in some towns of northern Kerala. And yes, all those calling the CPI-M anti-national, anti-Hinduism, pro-Chinese state, pro-Naxalite, pro-Islamist, pro-secessionist or even always anti-entrepreneurship should see this and this, and the film also strangely seems to suggest that atheist Communists (there are religious people also subscribing to economic leftist ideas, including in India’s Communist parties) are more likely to fall for radical Islam, though logically, those who reject any form of religion are less likely to do the same. In fact, Kerala has a very syncretic culture, with Muslims and Christians actively culturally celebrating the festival of Onam associated with the Vaman avatar of Lord Vishnu, some Muslims feasting on that day even when it falls in Ramzan. Historically, Islam arrived in Kerala with traders, not with invaders, and even the local legend about Islam coming to Kerala is about a Chera king witnessing a miracle performed in the sky by Prophet Muhammad, leading him to embrace Islam, not even like the Christian legend of St. Thomas being killed by some Hindus, based on some degree of conflict, and largely, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Jews coexist very well in Kerala with minimal conflict and very little subconscious prejudice against each other for that matter. While accepting the beliefs of others or venerating their deity/deities (or even practising the religion of the family you were born into) is a choice (and you may feel your scriptures constrain you from fully embracing doctrines of other faiths), to peacefully coexist with those of other faiths in a “live and let live” fashion is a prerequisite of being humane, and consciousness of a shared cultural identity helps a great deal for social cohesion. Some Hindu rightists also invoke the Moplah riots back in the early 1920s to, in a generalised fashion, demonise Malayali Muslims and even Gandhiji, but even there, the truth was much more complex, and fake news has been circulated of youths wearing ISIS T-shirts in Kerala.

 

Indeed, the last time the Modi-led BJP went on an overdrive to defend a film, it was The Kashmir Files (also praised by the PM), which, other than falsely suggesting that Farooq Abdullah was the CM of J&K when the Kashmiri Pandit exodus occurred***, but for a very passing reference to moderate Kashmiri Muslims being killed by terrorists, portrayed Kashmiri Muslims in general as being bloodthirsty extremists (imagine a film that portrayed all Sikh characters in that fashion owing to Khalistani terrorists’ mass murders of Hindus, which even led many Hindus at the time to flee from Punjab - wouldn’t that be unacceptable?), thus fanning anti-Muslim bigotry by even visibly provoking anti-Muslim hate sloganeering, for which the film was criticised by many Kashmiri Pandits themselves (even some known to me personally), as you can see here and here. After the alleged rigging of elections in J&K in 1987 (not the first time it was felt that democracy was being subverted there by the central government) and brutal suppression of peaceful protests against the same by what was seen by many Kashmiri Muslims as the "Hindu" Indian state, the innocent Kashmiri Pandits undoubtedly and undeservedly suffered a colossal tragedy in 1990 (when we had a BJP-supported coalition government at the centre) as they were specifically targeted by jihadist terrorists and their over-ground supporters for their religious identity and driven out of their homeland (those offering conspiracy theories of denial or economic class rationalisations as regards the same are requested to see this), and indeed, many Hindu temples have also been destroyed or damaged in Kashmir over the decades (none of which should be trivialised and the perpetrators must be legally punished, though some in the BJP have grossly exaggerated figures to fuel divisiveness), but even in those dark days of 1989-1990, many Kashmiri Muslims, including some with separatist views, helped protect their Kashmiri Pandit neighbours and colleagues and helped them escape safely, just as some Muslims helped protect my Sindhi Hindu relatives from the paternal side and Punjabi Hindu relatives from the maternal side during the partition riots, and indeed, there are reports of Hindus and Muslims protecting each other in almost every riot that has taken place in our country. Some Kashmiri Pandits never left the valley in or after 1989-1990 (I have actually even interacted with one such gentleman still residing in the valley alongside his Muslim friends) and some returned for their Muslim neighbours made them feel secure (which is not to deny the genuine insecurity generated by terrorists and their over-ground supporters in most parts of the valley), and in many cases, their neighbours indeed lived up to their assurances (as you can see here, here, here and here). Four Kashmiri Muslim policemen were even martyred protecting Kashmiri Pandits in Shopian in 2018 and indeed, over the decades, several tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslim civilians have also been killed by terrorists, often brutally, for a variety of reasons, including opposing separatism (as you can see here and here), a phenomenon that was ongoing even when Kashmiri Pandits were being targeted en masse in 1989-1990. Some Kashmiri Muslims, including possibly those with separatist views, have helped protect and preserve Hindu temples (as you can see here and here). Equally, many Kashmiri Pandits, even among those displaced, to their credit, have not been lacking in humanitarian empathy for regular Kashmiri Muslims either (as you can see here, here and here). Some Kashmiri Muslims have helped protect (sometimes even at the cost of their lives) and assist not only Kashmiri Pandits but even non-Kashmiri Indians across religious lines, including Amarnath pilgrims, as you can see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. In fact, a lot of regular Kashmiri Muslims helped the local Kashmiri Muslim policemen in nailing down those terrorists who targeted innocent Amarnath pilgrims in 2017. Equally, many non-Kashmiri Indian Hindus helped cash-starved Kashmiri Muslim students studying outside the valley in other parts of India with money during the communication blackout in the valley, as you can see, for example, here and here, and also helped Kashmiri Muslims outside the valley with accommodation when they were feeling insecure in the wake of the ridiculous attacks on innocent Kashmiri Muslims after the tragic Pulwama attack, as you can see, for example, here and here. A Kashmiri Pandit lady won the election to become the sarpanch (village chieftain) of a Muslim-majority village in Kashmir beating her Muslim rival in 2011, and yet another Kashmiri Pandit, Ajay Pandita, was elected sarpanch in a Muslim-majority village in Kashmir in 2020 (though he was unfortunately killed in cold blood by separatist terrorists, like many Kashmiri Muslims also are for voting and contesting under the Indian constitutional setup – see, for example, news of Wasim Ahmad Khanday, a Kashmiri Muslim sarpanch, killed after Ajay Pandita; in fact, over half a score of sarpanches in Kashmir, mostly Muslims, have been killed by terrorists since 2011), as have several others, just as Muslims have also been elected sarpanch in some Hindu-majority villages in other parts of India, even in recent years, as you can see here and here, something also seen in municipal elections, as you can see here. Even elsewhere in the Islamic world, in Iraq, Ammar Francis Boutros, a Christian, won a parliamentary seat representing the Muslim-majority province of Wasit (Al-Kut) southeast of Baghdad where the number of Christian families can be counted on one's fingertips, and the Iraqi judiciary has awarded the death penalty to an ISIS terrorist for having raped a woman from Iraq’s non-Muslim Yazidi minority. There are also several Muslim-majority constitutional secular democracies like Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Burkina Faso - this is worth noting for those wrongly suggesting that a Muslim majority inevitably means a hardline theocracy, as the trailer of the next hateful film promoted by the BJP, The Diary of West Bengal, explicitly claims, even further suggesting, as Hitler claimed, that democracy is not good enough to deal with ‘anti-national’ minorities (so, should we have fascism in India?), and this false claim of Muslim-majority regions always being governed by hardline theocratic frameworks itself, other than the gross exaggerations in the trailer, in my opinion, justifies a ban on this coming film, even if I don’t support one on The Kerala Story or even The Kashmir Files. In Senegal, one such Muslim-majority (Senegal is over 95% Muslim) constitutional secular democracy, their first ever elected president was Leopold Sedar Senghor, a Christian. Janet Michael, a Palestinian Christian lady, was elected mayor of Ramallah, Palestine, and Alees Thomas, also an Arab Christian lady, chaired Bahrain's upper house of parliament. Non-Muslim Chinese-origin people like Henk Ngangtung and Basuki Tjahaja have been elected governors of Jakarta in Indonesia. These facts are also worth noting for those unduly bashing Londoners for having elected a Muslim mayor (wrongly saying that non-Muslims can never get elected from Muslim-majority constituencies), though that mayor, in fact,  demonstrated no extremist tendencies but their very opposite, but some people have quoted him out of context to wrongly impute otherwise. There are indeed many Hindus who reside with security of life and property in Muslim-majority countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Malaysia. In most Arab countries (though not including Saudi Arabia), Indian expatriates have legally set up Hindu and Sikh temples, as you can see, for example, here, here, here, here and here (and no, the Hindu temple inaugurated by Narendra Modi in Abu Dhabi and which is under construction is NOT the first ever Hindu temple even in the UAE, as you can see here, here and here, and the late Sultan Qaboos of Oman, an Indophile who had pursued college in India and who deepened strategic ties between Oman and India, personally took keen interest in the upkeep of Hindu temples in his country) while they have indeed rightly disallowed even their local Muslims to pray on the roadside (even in India, both Hindus and Muslims have rightly been punished from time to time for prayer congregations while obstructing public passage, and if some law-enforcers in India have gone soft on such people, whatever their religious identity, as has happened often for whatever reason, that is indeed wrong), and Middle Eastern and North African governments have indeed often promptly taken action in cases of religious vandalism or bigoted speech by Muslim extremists, as you can see, for example, here, here and here, with moderate Egyptian Muslims having died protecting their Christian fellow citizens from Muslim extremists being conferred a ‘martyr’ status by the government, for example. In fact, a column in the Jerusalem Post, an Israeli newspaper seen widely as a Jewish right-leaning, acknowledges that Jews are now safer in much of the Arab world (the column specifically mentions Jews being a very well-integrated minority in Tunisia) than many parts of the West, where Christian extremists and some Nazism-influenced white locals continue to commit terrorist attacks and other hate crimes against Jews (of which you can see some examples here, here, here, here, here and here, and such elements have targeted Indian-origin Hindus too, as you can see here, here, here, here and here). In Muslim-majority Malaysia, the state has come down very hard on forced conversions of Hindu children to Islam, arrested Muslims engaging in anti-Hindu hate speech and barred notorious preacher Zakir Naik from addressing public gatherings when he made bigoted utterances there. Malaysian Hindus have legally created a pilgrimage shrine at the Batu Caves primarily dedicated to Lord Murugan, and the government of Malaysia has, on bearing burial costs, buried deceased Muslims and non-Muslim Bateks still following the indigenous faith based on their respective customs. In Muslim-majority Bangladesh, whenever the Awami League, seen as a relatively secular political party in that country (it has been proactive in taking action in instances of violence or threats to liberal Muslims and religious minorities, including Hindus, as you can see, for example, here, here, here, here and here, with the Hindu population there recently growing, something accepted even by the BJP, and Awami League leaders have even been on jihadist terrorists’ hit-lists), has been in power, it has worked with India at checking jihadist terrorism as also secessionist insurgencies in Northeast India. Not to deny that Muslim-majority countries, including Bangladesh and Malaysia, do have Muslim politicians taking to ugly religion-based politics and pandering to extremists, and some Muslim-majority countries too have locals subjecting those of other religions to communal slurs and even Muslims of other ethnicities to racial slurs, but the picture is not entirely as negative as portrayed by some, and India also does unfortunately see hate crimes against Dalits, intra-gotra couples and so on, other than those from religious and racial minorities (such as from Northeast India) facing sporadic slurs, and even Western countries do see hate crimes on grounds of ethnicity and other factors, be it Canada (as you can see here and here), Sweden or even New Zealand or Iceland; so, it would not be appropriate to only look at Muslim-majority countries or regions from the angle of extremism or to negatively stereotype all or most Muslims (as much as much reform is certainly required in the Islamic world), and many Muslim-majority countries like the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Malaysia have been much more peaceful and stable than several Christian-majority countries in Africa and Latin America, or even a Buddhist-majority country like Myanmar. Groups like Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the ISIS, not elected by Muslims and dictatorially seeking to impose their writ, are, no doubt, barbaric but it may be noted that they have killed more liberal and moderate Muslims than non-Muslims, as you can see here, here, here and here, and those in Muslim-majority countries fighting them on the ground risking their lives, even protecting non-Muslims from them, have predominantly been moderate Muslims! In fact, some of the true-life female characters shown in The Kerala Story were actually locked up in jail by the moderate, democratic regime in Afghanistan.

 

Also, very importantly, the BJP has done dispense little to actually help the Kashmiri Pandits, on which the Congress actually has a better track record, for settling the issue would prevent the BJP from milking it endlessly for its divisive agenda, and the BJP’s approach has largely been similar for other Hindu victims of communal violence, like the Bru/Reang Hindus displaced by Mizo Christian extremists, or the Delhi-based family of Ankit Saxena honour-killed by his Muslim girl-friend’s communal relatives (there have been instances of the vice versa too, as also of honour killings among Hindus themselves over caste and gotra) or even for a long time with respect to the vandalism of a Hindu temple in Old Delhi over a parking dispute by some Muslim miscreants - so, it must be emphasised that the BJP doesn’t really care for Hindu victims either, a point conceded even by BJP-supporting social media celebrity Sham Sharma (watch this from 57:00 to 59:50). In fact, in this context, it would be highly pertinent to mention that Kerala chief minister Pinnari Vijayan, who has been very critical of this film, has never, even in the past, been tight-lipped about Muslim radicalism even among Malayalis and had, for long, demanded of the central government headed by PM Modi to ban the Popular Front of India (PFI), a Muslim-extremist organisation, which the Modi sarkar took indefinitely long to do, most likely so that the PFI could fuel polarisation for longer, which would help the BJP. Also, Congress MP from Kerala, Shashi Tharoor, while being critical of the film, has also not earlier been tight-lipped about opposing some Malayali Muslims taking to radicalism, nor have former CMs of Kerala who have called out Muslim radicalism, though their statements have been quoted with spins to falsely validate the overall narrative of the film (as you can see from 2:10 to 5:24 in this video, which also points out that we actually know of only one, yes, only one, Hindu woman who converted to Islam and joined the ISIS!). In fact, the BJP in power even in a Hindu-majority state is no necessary safeguard for Hindus, as we have seen with hundreds of Meitei Hindus of Manipur taking refuge in Myanmar when under attack from Kuki Christian mobs over ethnic divides (of course, this does not mean we should negatively stereotype all Kuki Christians for the same, and by the way, innocent Kukis have also suffered at the hands of Meitei mobs). Speaking of Hindu matters, on the Sabrimala issue, the BJP's dirty tricks of telling the CPI-M government of Kerala to act against protesters, and then the BJP hypocritically claiming it's in solidarity with the protesters, also merit attention!

 

The BJP has also floated lies to keep Hindus in a perennial victimhood syndrome. Its leaders and members keep ranting against “the system” being biased against Hindus when it’s itself in power and can and should correct any supposed anomaly (often fictitious) it complains about! It has also exploited Hindu religious sentiments vis-a-vis cleaning the Ganga, a river regarded as sacred by Hindus, but done very little on that front (here too, the Congress had a better track record), as you can see here and here, and the BJP has engaged in corruption over Gita Jayanti celebrations and the Ujjain Simhasth Mela, showing how serious it actually is about Hindu sensibilities.

 

Modi may not have personally enriched himself using his public office (though the supposed fakir did decide to buy new VVIP jets during the first wave of the pandemic when hospitals were running out of beds and migrant workers were walking miles hungry and thirsty), but nor did perhaps Manmohan Singh (PMs get a lot of perks anyway even after they are out of office). That said, that the Modi-led BJP has no real commitment to fighting corruption is evident from its weakening transparency laws like the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Whistleblowers Protection Act, the FCRA to help political parties, the Lokpal Act, the Lokayukta Act in Goa again quite shamelessly after the lokayukta exposed scams (as discussed here, here, here and here) and provisions of the CrPC in Maharashtra when the BJP was in power there to favour the financially corrupt, and Modi himself campaigns for the BJP in state elections; so, he can't wash his hands off from what BJP state governments do! The Modi-led BJP has also taken steps like introducing secret electoral bonds for political parties (such that big scandals of cronyism by the BJP can seldom be detected), discontinuing the anti-corruption helpline introduced by the AAP government in Delhi after the LG took over the Anti-Corruption Bureau (the helpline had been a great success and led to several corrupt officers being punished), having zero accountability for the PM-CARES Fund without any logical explanation (as discussed here, here and here) and giving a contract to a company that has never made ventilators to make them (did that company give money to the BJP via an electoral bond?!). Inducting scam-convicted Sukh Ram and Daler Mehndi, the latter convicted for human trafficking, in the BJP also does not suggest any commitment to clean politics. And yes, despite Vasundhara Raje shamelessly passing a gag ordinance against reportage of corruption and Shivraj Singh Chouhan doing little to check the Vyapam scam or protect witnesses and whistleblowers associated with the same, not only did the BJP appoint them as CM-candidates again in 2018 with Modi himself campaigning for them (rather than expelling them from the party supposedly meant to fight corruption) but they were, in fact, made national vice presidents of the so-called party with a difference after being rejected by their own people at the polls. That the Jio Institute, which existed only on paper, had to be given the 'Institute of Eminence' tag and grant, that too with documented pressure from the PMO, and with someone who left the HRD Ministry and working for Reliance laying out the roadmap days after the “institutes of eminence” policy was conceived, is as blatant a case of cronyism as can be, and while they may have fancy layouts, there are other such private universities already functioning in India too, expected to rise in the global rankings sooner, and why at the expense of well-known excellent institutes? The application files of some institutes also mysteriously disappeared from the HRD Ministry office! Also, that more than 30 economic offenders managed to leave the country (have any aviation officers been sacked?) with Modi as PM does raise serious questions. From all of this making it clear that there is no genuine intent to fight corruption on the part of the Modi-led BJP, it also becomes clear that demonetisation, which hardly eliminated black money with over 99% of the currency notes coming back to the RBI and which led to deaths in cues (that the Modi sarkar was initially seeking to deny, the denial of uncomfortable truths indeed often being the name of its game), was actually just to cash-starve the opposition ahead of the then elections in UP! Drastic reforms in election funding and our law-and-order machinery are needed, which largely no government has thus far show the inclination for, except some state governments to a very limited extent, and that is another tale but to certify the BJP as some paragon of honesty or Modi as being inclined to promote clean politics, when his party under his strong leadership has amended laws to the very opposite end, is what deserves scrutiny.          

 

Modi keeps invoking Ram - the character of Ram, as the Ramayan goes, was such that to be seen as above-board in the eyes of the people he governed, he could even wrong his own wife he dearly loved; here, we have blatant displays of brazen nepotism, and the PM failing to come clean on the PM-CARES Fund! Also, while the Gujarat judiciary has sought to silence the Central Information Commission and Arvind Kejriwal, Modi’s refusal to explain his typed degree in 1978 in a font apparently not existent then, in Entire Political Science, is also not in the tradition of being above board before the people. The issue is actually not so much his having or not having a degree, but his lying, even on affidavit, about the same.

Unlike some other critics of the Hindu far-right, I do think it is counterproductive to shy away from publicly acknowledging, as Fareed Zakaria, a Muslim himself, has admitted,  that “the reactionaries in the world of Islam are more numerous and extreme” than those in other religious groupings, and since the 1980s, global jihadist terror indeed has emerged as a huge problem (those offering conspiracy theories denying the same are requested to see this), which cannot be conveniently explained away only as a reaction to some oppression, for it is itself oppressive of tiny, harmless non-Muslim communities like the Yazidis of Iraq, as also of girls like Malala wanting to pursue an education or even Muslim women who seek to not sport veils or headscarves or even Muslims who do not believe that music should be prohibited. Having said that, harbouring generalised hatred for Muslims to support indiscriminate hate speech, mob violence or institutionalised discrimination against them, other than being grossly unfair and inhuman, will only help jihadist recruiters, of which there are indeed numerous examples, and those arguing that retributive hatred was completely absent among the Japanese in the wake of nuclear bombings in 1945, Kashmiri Pandits in the wake of their exodus in 1989-1990 or Jews who faced the Holocaust should see this. To my mind, there is no doubt that Islamism (right-wing political Islam) is the biggest ideological threat of our times to human rights values globally the way Nazism was once, but just as genocidal hatred of Germans did not lead to Nazism’s defeat, but in fact, the support of anti-Nazism Germans did, liberal and moderate Muslims valuing humanity (see, for example, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this, nor is it the case that such Muslims are necessarily either apostates of Islam or highly ignorant of their scriptures, them doing their own contextual interpretation of the Islamic scriptures, as discussed here), who need not be seen as exotic exceptions, should not be alienated, and one should not become the monster one wishes to defeat. Other than taking due legal action against specific Muslim extremists violating the law (something I wholeheartedly support), neither genocidal hatred nor generalised repression of Muslims (which will boost Muslim extremism, nor are, as mentioned earlier, Muslims alone in some of them getting radicalised in the wake of being subjected to genocidal hatred) nor denigration of the Islamic scriptures (which will lead to moderate practising Muslims**** insisting that the problematic aspects in the Muslim extremists’ version of Islam are misinterpretations, and if this criticism comes not from atheists or agnostics but from active practitioners of other faiths, Muslims will cite the seemingly controversial aspects from the scriptures of those other faiths, leading to more of often ugly theological debates and less of any resolution of any actual problem on the ground) nor offering bordering-on-support sympathy to Muslim extremism, portraying only Muslims as perennial victims in a melodramatic fashion (as I have discussed here, here, here, here and here), can solve the problem of Muslim extremism - only promoting reform among Muslims with an appeal to humanistic rationality and a liberal interpretation of the Islamic scriptures, while standing with Muslims for their genuine human rights concerns, can. If it is argued that reform is impossible in Muslim societies, it may be noted that Muslim women in South Asia have moved from being largely confined to the household in the 19^th century to now Katrina Kaifs, Sheikh Hasinas and Hina Rabbani Khars. About how reform is possible in Muslim societies, examples can be cited of Kasim Hafeez, who initially wanted to become a terrorist seeking to blow up Jewish civilians but later changed his standpoint to standing for Jews’ human rights and the Israeli state’s right to exist, after visiting Israel (though still squarely not exactly becoming an uncritical admirer of all Israeli state policies), while still remaining a practising Muslim, and also Majid Nawaz, who, from being a terrorist earlier, has now turned into a Muslim reformer facing death-threats from Muslim extremists. Psychological deradicalisation techniques that successfully worked on Nazis have even worked with jihadists on several occasions, as you can see here, here, here and here. Morocco has banned the veil (while I support anyone’s right to don a headscarf out of support for personal liberty, I disagree with the same for veiling, for not only is it regressive in the extreme but is also a security hazard, with even men donning veils to commit crimes like theft, but being almost unrecognisable even in CCTV footage, full-body veils making you much more unrecognisable than face-masks, and indeed, a cultural Muslim like Javed Akhtar has also supported banning the veil!), Tunisia and the UAE have come to recognise marriages between a non-Muslim man and a Muslim woman (as you can see here and here), Sudan has banned female genital mutilation and unilateral and arbitrary triple talaq was indeed abolished in most Muslim-majority countries (including Pakistan) before India. Thus, it would be incorrect to say that Muslim societies cannot reform. Indeed, there are already full-fledged Muslim-majority secular democracies like Albania [that has been tolerant to Jews (as you can see here and here) and legalised homosexuality (something all Muslim legislators in Germany also voted in favour of) and euthanasia] and as mentioned earlier, Senegal, which can be held up as role models.

 

It is also highly pertinent to mention that the makers of The Kerala Story mentioning a figure of 32,000 for the ISIS brides from Kerala is entirely baseless (as was the claim that former chief minister of Kerala, Oomen Chandy, from the Congress, had cited such a figure), also testified by the fact that when the matter went to the High Court of Kerala, the makers of the film have themselves backtracked on that figure, reducing it to just 3 in the official description! Also, as you can see from 4:30 to 6:30 in this video, the actual few brainwashed Malayali women still do not regret supporting the ISIS ideology and do not see themselves as victims, nor were they seeking to escape from the ISIS, as the film falsely portrays. But the psychological projection the film is engaging in is indeed bound to have that impact on many of its viewers, though the point is that extremism can only be fought by people across different religious identities coming together, not by fueling divisiveness, and films like Firaq, Parzania and Kai Po Che on the Gujarat riots of 2002 and 31 October on the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 rightly did not showcase Hindu characters in general as evil. At the same time, I echo Shashi Tharoor in not seeking a ban on the film, I support the Supreme Court in dismissing petitions seeking a ban and I totally disagree with Samajwadi Party politician Abu Azmi’s demanding the arrest of the makers of this film (and The Kashmir Files), not to mention the even more absurd demand for the hanging of the producer of The Kerala Story by minority-appeasing Hindu NCP leader Jitendra Awhad, and I obviously strongly condemn any violence over the film in India (as you can see here and here) or overseas. While The Kerala Story and even The Kashmir Files may seem like subtle hate speech (with some token references to “good” people from the Muslim community), they don’t directly glorify anti-Muslim discrimination or violence to qualify for a legal ban, and it’s not for courts to decide how many positive and negative characters from a community should be portrayed in a film. As someone who values democracy and who has opposed stifling of the freedom of expression sought to be done with films like Udta Punjab, Bheed and others by the censor board under the Modi sarkar, and who opposes what the Modi sarkar is seeking to do to make appeals against film censorship more difficult, I cannot be intellectually dishonest to demand bans on what I may even vehemently dislike and disagree with (though I believe the censor board should have demanded modifications in both these films), unless it clearly violates the law, as much as I am well aware of the power of the audio-visual medium to not only bring about positive social change (as you can see here and here) but even deepen fissures in a society (which has indeed happened, as you can see here and here), and if outright bans of problematic films are not to be the way, rebutting narratives we see as problematic through videos and articles like this one and sharing them on the social media and using points from them in day-to-day conversations ought to be, as I see it. Given that I oppose a legal ban on the film, there is no question of me endorsing unlawful modes of protest against it (which we have seen some from other communities engaging in, to oppose films they dislike, as well, as you can see here, here, here, here, here and here) or even threats of the same, and unlawful violence or threats of the same ought to be unacceptable in a democracy in all scenarios. It also may be mentioned that many practising and cultural Muslims have even opposed anyone engaging in violence over supposed blasphemy, as you can see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

However, without endorsing the same, I do not find incomprehensible the greater acceptance of anti-Muslim bias, even anti-Muslim bigotry, among Indian Hindus, even among some strongly opposing it earlier, since the rise of the ISIS, this greater acceptance of anti-Muslim bias being a phenomenon not limited to Indian Hindus but which unjustifiably but understandably resonated in good measure with non-Muslims globally, contributing to making us witness the rise of leaders like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Jair Bolsonaro, all three of whom have fallen from power for their poor governance. The fact, however, is that the ISIS has never represented the average Muslim (not even the average puritan Sunni) of Iraq or Syria [as I have logically explained at length here and here, also emphasising that any criticism of Islamic scriptures, including by apostates of Islam, often called “ex-Muslims” (scriptures of other religions are also criticised by their apostates, and no one can be an undisputed judge of challenges with monetary offers to prove someone’s good qualities or flaws) does not validate stereotyping Muslims or even practising Muslims as people], let alone elsewhere globally, least of all in India, where the ISIS recruits have been miniscule, given the size of our Muslim population.

 

Anyway, as for those ringing alarm-bells about Muslim demographics in India, it may be noted that overall, the Muslim population growth rate has been declining in India with greater access to education, something acknowledged for Indians across religious lines even by India’s current foreign minister S. Jaishankar from the BJP, and there is much regional disparity, with the population growth rate of say, Muslims in Kerala being less than that of Hindus in Uttar Pradesh owing to the former, as an aggregate whole, being more educated, and the Muslim-majority Union Territories of J&K and Lakshadweep have among the lowest fertility rates among Indian states and Union Territories. And yes, even otherwise, if someone sees Muslims potentially outnumbering Hindus in India as a real problem, they should appeal to the Indian government to legally impose a two-child norm for all Indian citizens, irrespective of religion (private member bills by BJP members aside, the Modi government has not yet endorsed the idea of such a legislative proposal), which will make it completely impossible for Muslims to outnumber Hindus***** and is, in any case, much-needed given the strain on resources (our overpopulation is something that was also pointed out by Congress leader Manish Tiwari in the wake of the shortage of hospital beds during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, and Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi too prepared such a private member bill), and there is no naivete or purblind sentimentalism in pointing out that randomly rioting against or lynching some average Muslims, which can indeed even provoke a counter-reaction, is neither a fair nor a sensible way of dealing with the supposed demographic threat!

 

As for those advancing the now in-any-case irrelevant contention that all Muslims should have been expelled from India at the time of the partition (for which Muslims born in India after 1947 still cannot in the least be blamed even by this bigoted line of argumentation), it is essential to understand that that would have involved ceding Pakistan more territory and resources, resulting in even more Hindu displacement, and basing the very idea of nationhood on exclusionary lines has never worked well for any country. It may also be noted that even in the 1940s, there were secular Muslims subscribing to the idea of a united India (not just some theocratic-minded clerics seeking large-scale religious conversion and an orthodox Islamic agenda for the whole of undivided India but even genuinely liberal Muslims defying them******), some of whom like Allah Baksh, Maqbool Sherwani and Shoebullah Khan were martyred opposing Jinnah’s two-nation theory (and they were indeed right, given that Muslims killing each other in sectarian, linguistic and extreme theocracy-moderate theocracy-secularism clashes in Pakistan enjoy lesser security of life and property and given its completely sham democracy, lesser civil liberties and even worse economic prospects than Muslims in India). The Congress of the freedom struggle all along opposed the idea of partition on the ground that India would be for all Indians, who would be given equal rights, irrespective of religion. Therefore, to do a sudden U-turn on the part of the Congress and change its standpoint of India being for Indians of all religious groupings on the eve of the partition would have validated the Muslim League's rather nonsensical allegations before the world. More importantly, an India that denies itself to some Indian citizens may go down the slippery slope to be denied to all Indian citizens with puritans trying to define “Indian-ness”. We've seen how countries like Germany, Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, which chose the path of exclusion, lost their democratic character with thekedars of the majority community certifying who a “true” citizen is, even from within the majority community, to snuff out all dissent on any matter at all (and how important retaining democracy is, is explained by the authoritarian Chinese state’s suppressing news of the coronavirus pandemic showed how Chinese citizens and the rest of humanity had to pay a price for lack of democratic accountability there) and/or got embroiled in civil war. Since independence, many Indian Muslims have indeed served Indian national interests well as diplomats as also in the security forces and the intelligence agencies, even in foiling the Pakistani deep state’s nefarious designs, and even otherwise contributing to nation-building by way of social and ecological service, and there is no rational basis to categorise Muslim citizens of India with a clear sense of loyalty to the country as being completely exotic exceptions within their religious grouping in India [if someone is more comfortable with 'Jai Hind' rather than 'Vande Mataram' for he/she can respect, but not bow before or worship anyone other than God Almighty, be it his/her own parents or the motherland, based on his/her religious convictions, so be it, if he/she is otherwise a law-abiding citizen (bowing before graves of Sufi saints is also seen by many law-abiding, moderate Muslims as un-Islamic) and a green flag with a crescent is a flag of Islam, like a saffron flag is a flag of Hinduism or a blue flag with a discus is a flag of Ambedkarite Buddhism; a green flag with a crescent is NOT a flag of Pakistan, unless accompanied by a white strip to the left], as though Indian Muslims are guilty of being anti-national until proven innocent. As much as just like many Indian Tamils wanting the Indian state to harbour complete antipathy to the Sri Lankan state and many Indian Gorkhas wanting unconditional friendship with the Nepalese state even as it makes absurd claims on Indian territory, many Indian Muslims do have a strong affinity to non-Indians from their community, like the Palestinian Muslims, and therefore, want the Indian state to harbour complete antipathy to the Israeli state, unfortunately complicating Indian strategic and economic interests owing to vote-bank considerations, and some Indian Jews born and raised in India prefer to serve in the Israeli military rather than the Indian military, something such people from all these communities (who still can't be called overall anti-India) must ponder over when they want the rest of the Indian nation to care very much for them as fellow citizens, and it may also be mentioned that there are Indian-origin far-right Hindus living and working in Muslim-majority and Christian-majority countries, sometimes even acquiring their citizenship (while Arab countries don’t usually confer citizenship to expats, even if Muslims, many Indian-origin Hindus have become citizens of Muslim-majority countries like Malaysia and Indonesia), but with hatred of Muslims and Christians, wanting their own security as minorities but shamefully not for Muslim and Christian minorities in India, but in any case, whatever one’s peacefully held views, however problematic, no one ought to be subjected to unlawful violence, any tolerance of which only paves the way for a breakdown of the rule of law. While national patriotism is often the last refuge of many a scoundrel, as some would argue is the case with Gautam Adani, trying to portray foreign research on his alleged wrongdoings as an attack on India, healthy national patriotism is necessary till national borders remain a reality, and just as we care for the security and prosperity of our household (which is not to say that we are inhuman towards those in other households), our nation-states remain our larger homes, and if we want the state framework to deliver for us, we too should be invested in the same, especially with a democratic framework. While the dynamics of a conflict zone like Kashmir are different and there have also indeed been some non-Kashmiri Indian Muslims who have cheered for Pakistan over India in cricket and hockey matches based on religious affiliation, overall, there is no evidence to suggest that they represent the Indian Muslim sentiment at large. In fact, a Hindu acquaintance of mine, who studied at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU)*******, told me that while those cheering for Pakistan in cricket were quite a vocal lot there, the vast majority of Muslims did cheer for India, and this was in a Muslim-majority setting where the apparently pro-India majority did not have to conceal its true feelings, and another friend of mine, who is an Assamese Hindu from Guwahati and who is very resentful of the illegal Bangladeshi Muslim influx in his state, told me that on a train journey, he overheard a conversation between two Muslims from AMU bashing the students who cheer for Pakistan. Also, another friend of mine, whose father is an Indian Army officer, once told me that he loves the Muslim community (though I don’t support any stereotyping, positive or negative!), for once, his father was fired at by militants in Kashmir and his father’s driver, a Muslim, rushed to bear the bullet to save his father’s life! He also narrated another anecdote of how a Muslim officer once donated blood to save his father’s life and my friend asserted that he was not in the least ashamed of the fact that “Muslim blood” (whatever that is supposed to mean!) runs through his veins! Just to be clear, I do not particularly advocate looking at national heroes and heroines through the prism of their religious identity, nor do I necessarily attribute such heroism to the religion such heroes/heroines were/are born into or chose/choose to subscribe to (to take an example, the great freedom fighter Obaidullah Sindhi, who opposed the politics of the Muslim League, was a convert to Islam from Sikhism, and late RSS-BJP leader KR Malkani, in his book The Sindh Story, has acknowledged Obidullah’s secular outlook), but only to clarify that people of no religious identity should be negatively stereotyped, and it must be mentioned that there is actually room for interpretation of Islamic scriptures in conformity with humanism and secular national patriotism, even holding interests of fellow countrymen of other faiths over foreign co-religionists, to which many devout Muslims subscribe. Also, like with other communities, there are Muslims who may be rational on some issue from our standpoint and irrational or biased on another, but so long as they are not committing any heinous crime, they ought not to be dehumanised.

 
It is essential to distinguish between a Yasin Bhatkal and an APJ Abdul Kalam, a Mumtaz Qadri and a Salman Taseer, an Aurangzeb and a Dara Shikoh, a Burhan Wani and a Maqbool Sherwani, a Jinnah and an Ashfaqullah Khan. Otherwise, should all Sikhs and Tamils be hated for the actions of Khalistanis and LTTE respectively? It is evident how unfair and counterproductive Hindu extremism is to fighting Muslim extremism, which is only pushing more and more moderate Muslims to radicalism, other than taking the country as a whole in a fascist direction by interfering with people's civil liberties.

 

Moreover, to stereotype every love affair between a Muslim man and a Hindu woman to be a case of “love jihad” is bizarre and baseless (yes, there have been some real cases of attempts at forced religious conversion of Hindu women to Islam by their Muslim husbands after marriage, sometimes with the husband initially having concealed his Muslim identity altogether and pretended to have been Hindu or even otherwise, and such extremists should indeed be punished as per the law but this should not be misused to wrongly generalise Muslims), especially when the woman has often not even changed her faith and is living happily with her partner, with the progeny often taught to respect and appreciate both the religions. Would one allege love jihad for the fiery, gun-wielding freedom fighter Aruna who married another secular freedom fighter Asaf Ali, a Muslim gentleman? Very many Muslim women have also indeed married Hindu men, like Neelima Azeem (Shahid Kapur's mother), Soha Ali Khan, Katrina Kaif, Nargis, Bollywood scriptwriter Shama Zaidi, freedom fighter Asghari Begum, fabric heritage conservationist Suriya Hasan (niece of INA veteran Abid Hasan, whose husband was Aurobindo Bose, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s nephew!), Mumbai cyclist Firoza and indeed many more, in some cases even converting to Hinduism after marriage, like famous sitarist Annapurna Devi (formerly Roshanara Khan), fashion model Nalini Patel (formerly Nayyara Mirza), Maharashtra politician Asha Gawli (formerly Zubeida Mujawar), South Indian actress Khushboo Sundar (formerly Nakhat Khan) and Bollywood actress Zubeida (it may be noted that while many hardline Muslims believe that apostasy from Islam should be punishable by death, there is no dearth of practising Muslims rejecting that interpretation of the Islamic scriptures too). Nor is there any rationality in suggesting that a genetically and culturally diverse people as Muslims can be generalised as intrinsically cruel, slimy, backstabbing or aggressive (of course, there are Muslims of these attributes too, as there are in all communities – the issue is with the stereotyping!) based on the peddling of some puerile lines of reasoning, like falsely suggesting family feuds (especially royal family feuds historically), heavily non-vegetarian cuisines or practices like animal sacrifices or even bodily self-harm (the last one mentioned is limited to some, not all, people from the minority Shia sect within Muslims on one day in a year, that sect having a very low track record of terrorism against non-Muslims) to be a Muslim monopoly, and I have rebutted each of these lines of reasoning here. The spine-chilling murder of Shraddha by her live-in partner Aftab has been misused by elements in the BJP, like a sitting chief minister (who has even otherwise had quite an irresponsible track record), to stoke generalised antipathy to Muslims, but there have been instances of Hindu husbands murdering their legally wedded wives (not live-in partners) in an equally brutal fashion even before that, as you can see here and here, and even Puranic lore (dating to centuries before Jesus and Muhammad) records crimes against women such as the rape of Araja by Danda, Draupadi’s sexual harassment by Kichak and her disrobing by Dushasan, which, even if taken as fiction literature, demonstrates that such things were not unheard of in the then Hindu society.********

 

What the Modi-led BJP has succeeded in doing to a great extent is to replace economic development with paranoia about Muslims or even antipathy to them as the chief concern for a sizable section of our Hindu fellow citizens (fake news, exaggerations, spins etc. disseminated on WhatsApp have been a great factor in the same, along with slanted coverage by a large section of the mainstream media, popularly known as the godi media), though potholed roads (a problem no Indian political party, the BJP included, has thus far had an exemplary track record at having solved, and you can see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, not even in Modi’s Gujarat, as you can see here, here, here and here) and air pollution (an issue the Modi sarkar had more recently adopted a creative way to evade judicial scrutiny over) take more lives of Indian citizens than terrorist attacks, and even among terrorist attacks in India, Naxalites and separatist insurgents in Northeast India (often Hindus in Assam and Manipur) have taken more lives in our country, even of civilians, than jihadist terrorists have, as you can see here and here, and even internationally, terrorism (including directed at unarmed civilians) has been no Muslim monopoly, with the Irish Republicans, Basque separatist terrorism, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, LTTE, Catholic fanatics bombing abortion clinics and even the Olympic Games in 1996, Jewish Defense League members seeking to attack Soviet singers, the Irgun having bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, Shining Path etc., and prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 following which the American government had then promoted radical Islam to fight the same, jihadist terrorism was localised to specific places like Palestine and Egypt, just as we had Khalistani, ULFA and LTTE terrorists in some regions. And while there are indeed some Muslim extremists, there are also some inhuman Hindus engaging in human sacrifices, caste-based hate crimes and so on, and terrorism by some Hindus has included bombings by Ananda Marga sect-followers (including Western converts willing to take to violence at the instance of the cult’s Indian high command) and massacres of Dalits, including women and children, by Ranvir Sena members in retaliation to Naxalite attacks, the then Ranvir Sena chief justifying their excesses, in an Indian Express interview, mentioning Hanuman having burnt down Lanka in the Ramayan (cited in the acclaimed book Hello, Bastar: The Untold Story of India's Maoist Movement by Rahul Pandita, who is not at all anti-Indian state or anti-Hindu). Even a BJP government of Maharashtra acknowledged that Sanatan Sanstha members were planning to bomb the Sunburn Festival in Pune.

As for national security, the Modi sarkar too has lagged in modernising the military, as you can see here and here, and intrusions by the Chinese forces continue, with PM Modi having shamefully denied one altogether, as you can see here and here. Terrorism still continues in J&K, even against Kashmiri Pandits, many of whom have tragically been gunned down even after the abrogation of Article 370 on 5^th August 2019*********, as you can see here, here, here and here, as have Hindus in parts of the Jammu region. As for fewer jihadist terror attacks in Indian cities outside J&K, that is indeed a heartening trend but from 2009 onwards when P. Chidambaram, as home minister, reformed the intelligence grid, leading to several terrorist attacks being averted, and the UPA also skilfully managed our diplomacy to have terrorists like Abu Jundal extradited from Saudi Arabia, for example. That said, terrorist attacks even outside the typical conflict zones have taken place even with Modi as PM. We’ve had blasts in Burdhwan, West Bengal, in October 2014, Bangalore in December 2014, Gurdaspur in Punjab in July 2015 (the BJP-Akali coalition was ruling Punjab at the time), Pathankot in Punjab in January 2016 (the BJP-Akali coalition was ruling Punjab at the time), the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train bombing in MP in March 2017 (the BJP was in power in MP at the time) and a bomb detonating near the Israeli embassy in Delhi in January 2021 (the Delhi Police is under the BJP-led central government). I indeed supported the IAF strikes in Balakot in Pakistan in and of themselves in line with Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi’s approach (or even Nehru’s approach vis-à-vis the Portuguese in Goa, and if someone argues that Nehru initially barred non-Goan Indians from agitating there, then trying his own diplomatic channels, recall Modi on a swing with Xi, or Hindu Mahasabha leader SP Mookerjee supporting the British in suppressing the Quit India Movement), but the Modi sarkar was indeed unprepared for their fallout, with our outdated military infrastructure preventing Wing Commander Abhinandan from hearing his alert female colleague telling him to return when he accidentally crossed the LoC and he unfortunately fell to enemy hands, and in the larger diplomatic battle, Imran Khan managed to portray himself as the magnanimous one. And the UPA government too conducted surgical strikes across the LoC after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, and with more provocation, there is no reason to believe that the Congress, the party that wrested Goa from the Portuguese and split Pakistan into two, would have not ordered surgical strikes in Pakistani territory beyond POK too, the way the Modi sarkar did so after the tragic Pulwama attack.

 

Economic development was the plank on which the Modi-led BJP rose to power in 2014 and on which, transport networks and power grids aside, it overall has quite an un-exemplary track record, with much evasiveness on the point of acknowledging, let alone addressing, the challenge of unemployment (yes, overall, the Indian economy continues to grow at a reasonably high rate since liberalisation in 1991, but we have seen a huge economic slowdown in our country since before the coronavirus pandemic, reluctantly even admitted to by the Modi sarkar) - even the much-hyped Ujjwala Yojana has, for the most part, proven to be a farce, as you can see here and here, with the Congress-led UPA government having had a better track record at economic growth and poverty reduction, and the BJP has a poor track record on checking crimes against women too, and some initiatives it subtly or blatantly claims credit for having uniquely introduced, be it many of its welfare schemes including the Swachch Bharat Yojana, the Smart Cities Mission and the Ujjwala Yojana, or the Startup India initiative (and the PM MUDRA Yojana has been quite a failure, as you can see here and here, with the IDBI and SIDBI much more efficiently giving soft loans to entrepreneurs since much before Modi became PM) or even the promotion of hydrogen and ethanol-blended petrol as fuels (on the last point, please see this, scrolling upwards to see the entire Twitter thread), are actually just repackaged and somewhat further expanded versions of earlier governments’ work (which would have logically continued and expanded even in a UPA-III if it would have come to power in 2014), though admittedly advertised much better, and all current and coming state and central governments, BJP or non-BJP, should learn from the Modi sarkar to market some select schemes better, so as to have greater outreach.

 

I do not deny that the Modi sarkar has, like every other government, also made some positive contributions to the country, as had even the HD Deve Gowda government, but if anyone says that popular leaders like Modi should always be considered very great personalities, I’d say, while not necessarily equating Modi to them, think of Hitler (who was even great with infrastructure development but brought Germany to ruination), Mussolini and Jinnah who were also very popular (Jinnah was indeed a despicable figure, as discussed here), and Modi-bhakts' supposed respect of the popular mandate doesn't reflect in their attitude towards Jawaharlal Nehru or even Manmohan Singh or Arvind Kejriwal (all of whom were/have been re-elected at some point of time). In fact, the Ramayan offers another valuable lesson - Ravan donned the garb of a hermit to abduct Sita, implying that anyone posing as pious (and Modi literally gave picture-perfect poses in the Himalayas in the phase wherein he had supposedly renounced worldly desires, and even now, makes a public spectacle of performing Hindu prayers and meditation) should not be taken as such on face value, and there are many conmen exploiting religious faith.

Even if someone believes that the Modi-led BJP is the best available political alternative, fearing instability of a coalition (though whether stability of elected governments is indeed all that important is itself debatable), he/she must resist the Modi sarkar’s divisive and authoritarian tendencies, and if one believes that India’s democratic character (essential to ensure accountability; as mentioned earlier, think of how the Chinese state allowed its own citizens to suffer from the coronavirus but punished those raising their voice, and while China has made much economic progress under a dictatorship, North Korea and Myanmar have not - accountability is much needed!) is safe thanks to our civil society (though we have already had one Emergency), then one should not try to bully into silence dissenters from the civil society! We must hold the government of the day accountable, in the current scenario focusing on how female wrestlers demanding justice must get their due without a BJP strongman getting protection**********, as the Unnao rapist and then BJP MLA Kuldeep Sengar got for very long, or how the BJP government of UP so very disgracefully also tried to protect the Hathras rapist (as you can see here, here, here, here and here, and contrary to what is claimed, Adityanath has not really been all that great for law and order either, as you can see here and here), and not allow ourselves as a nation to be divided on religious lines. There is no weakness in not, in a generalised fashion, demonising fellow citizens of another faith; in fact, quite the contrary, in unity lies strength!

 

*It is certainly also true that political parties opposing Hindu majoritarianism weaken their case when they accommodate communal and regressive Muslims (like Abu Azmi, Azam Khan and Shafiqur Rahman in the SP, Yaqoob Qureshi in the BSP and Arbaz Khan in the NCP, among others) to play the religious card in some Muslim-majority constituencies, a tendency they should backtrack on ethically, and now, even practically given how it contributes to Hindu consolidation across caste lines in favour of the BJP, and to that end, occasional minority-appeasing statements by Hindus in these parties, like this one and this one, should also now stop for good, and I am glad the Congress suspended for six years a Hindu member who asked for the Bharat Ratna for slain Muslim gangster Atiq Ahmad, and must also expel a certain Muslim member threatening law-and-order disturbances in protest against the screening of The Kerala Story, only giving ammunition to anti-Muslim bigots, giving them a chance to say that Muslims violently want to conceal the truth the film portrays and the Congress is sold out to them against Hindu interests. However, overall, it is not as though everyone in these parties exhibits an anti-Hindu bias, nor is it the case that these parties when in power do nothing for Hindu sensibilities, and it has been elaborated to the contrary here and here. Also, while some in the Hindu right have tended to exaggerate Bollywood as, for the longest time, having been very anti-Hindu in its depictions, which is far from true, and quite the contrary, it has produced beautiful bhajans even in recent times (how beautifully the symbolism of Ganesh Chaturthi came out in the film Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge?, with the character played by Paresh Rawal sharing the story of Lord Ganesh acknowledging his parents as his world, or even the rendition of Om Jai Jagdish Hare in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai), it is indeed also true that some films, including those scripted by Hindus, have, to varying degrees, exhibited an intellectually elitist bias against Hindus and Hindu culture, which can be the subject of another article altogether. Indeed, this intellectually elitist anti-Hindu bias exists in not only cinema but also sections of the media, academia, judiciary and activist circles (which is again indeed beyond the scope of this article; I know many cultural leftist readers would dislike me saying this about their ecosystem), and needs correction, but its existence does not validate dehumanising Muslims either.

**There was rioting between Hindus and Muslims in the northeastern region of Delhi (which is, in any case, crime-infested, with many Hindus and Muslims there being armed) in February 2020, in the wake of a speech inciting unlawful violence, threatening the Delhi Police of taking the law in his hands, by BJP politician Kapil Mishra in the presence of a policeman [ironically, Mishra, in that speech, threatened the Delhi Police, coming under the central government headed by his own party to clear an illegal gathering of anti-NRC protesters in Shaheen Bagh in Delhi (protests without due police permissions, even blocking public routes, are unfortunately not a rarity in India at all, and are not restricted to Muslims in the least), failing which he threatened unlawful violence, though he could well have publicly demanded of the home minister of India from his own party, controlling the Delhi Police, to have that gathering cleared by female and male police personnel!]. Innocent people, both Hindus and Muslims, suffered in the riots and there was more loss of life and property on the side of the Muslim minority, and many of the Delhi Police personnel, coming under the central government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, did act in a partisan manner against Muslims, even denying injured Muslims access to ambulances, for which the judiciary had to step in! Modi did not issue any appeal for peace until the riots were almost over, and the pretext that that was so because he was attending to state guest Donald Trump is morally and logically invalid, also given that Modi did not speak up when even he was not by Trump’s side, like when Trump was touring the Taj Mahal with his wife, and such acts of commission and omission by Modi indeed render irrelevant all the token assurances of inclusiveness made by him to our Muslim fellow citizens. The riots in Delhi drew sharp comments from the governments of Iran, Kuwait, Malaysia and Indonesia, as much as many Hindus (even some from the BJP) and Muslims in Delhi also protected those of the other religious grouping during the riots (as you can see here, here, here, here, here, here and here) and there are many from both communities doing relief work for the victims, irrespective of religious identity (see, for example, this this instance of a Muslim youth helping Hindu riot victims), this having been the pattern in several Hindu-Muslim riots in independent India, including in Gujarat in 2002 when Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat.


In the subsequent investigations, the Delhi Police under the central government, instead of charge-sheeting the BJP members who actually, on camera, instigated violence, has been seeking to punish innocent Muslims (as you can see here, here, here and here), even some who actually protected Hindus in the riots (let that sink in!), and even Hindu critics of the government for having supposedly fanned violence against Hindus (as you can see here and here, bizarre as that is!), but without evidence, though thankfully, the judiciary has been holding the police accountable.


 

***Notwithstanding baseless conspiracy theories, Farooq Abdullah has been steadfast in his conviction that the Kashmir valley must indeed remain a part of secular, democratic India (I do believe, like many others, including several Kashmiri Muslim friends of mine, that the Kashmiri separatist project is morally and legally invalid, as discussed here and here), a stand he reiterated recently while unequivocally condemning terrorist attacks on Hindus and Sikhs (and no, he was not in power in January 1990 when the very tragic exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits picked up steam), expressing his commitment to the secular and democratic ethos of the Indian constitution, onslaughts on which are being resisted by very many Indians across regional and religious affiliations. And with the Afghan Taliban regaining control over Kabul, while he did say he wished for the Taliban to deliver good governance without injustice to women and religious minorities in Afghanistan (which was misrepresented by some to suggest support for the Taliban on his part), he minced no words in talking about the threat he felt the ISI-backed Afghan Taliban could pose to Indian democracy in Kashmir.
 

He has publicly shamed the (now no more) Islamist separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and the militaristic, theocratic Pakistani state, and was vehemently opposed to the release of terrorist Masood Azhar in the wake of the IC 814 hijacking, him never shying away from condemning terrorism even directed at BJP members. Hundreds of members of his party have been killed by separatist terrorists, attempts having been made on his life too. He is certainly not perfect or above criticism, but nor is the BJP, which has not been above fraudulent election practices (see this and this), financial corruption or pandering to extremists, even separatist-sympathisers, for votes. After making much noise over the delay in hanging Afzal Guru, the BJP commuted the death sentence of Khalistani terrorist Balwant Singh Rajoana, and even felicitated Mizo separatist rebels, who had taken Chinese support, in the presence of Chinese officials, while letting down Bru Hindus displaced by Mizo Christian extremists! Not only that, they have given blanket amnesty to Bodo separatist insurgents under PM Modi, and earlier even under PM Vajpayee, including to those with a record of killing unarmed civilians.


And contrary to false propaganda on WhatsApp claiming that Farooq Abdullah passed the Roshni Act in the name of electric connections to usurp property of Kashmiri Pandits, the Roshni Act was not for electricity connections but the government selling state-owned property to private persons, using the sale proceeds for building dams to generate electricity! It had no religious angle and applied to Jammu as well for selling state-owned property, not acquiring private property of Kashmiri Pandits, which was very often unfortunately legally sold in distress. The Roshni Act was passed when Farooq Abdullah was an alliance-partner of the then Vajpayee-led BJP, and it was repealed recently NOT by the Modi-led BJP (as the WhatsApp forwards claim) but judges of the J&K High Court because of the corruption involved, including under Modi sarkar-appointed Lieutenant Governors, and the BJP, in fact, wants this legislation back, as you can see here and here, and the Supreme Court, while acknowledging a scam, has returned land to genuine beneficiaries of the Act. Nor has, as the WhatsApp forwards falsely state, reportage on the Roshni Act been blanked out by the mainstream media, given it has been covered by media outlets ranging from India Today to the Indian Express to The Hindu.

Farooq's son Omar Abdullah, a senior leader in the same party, the J&K National Conference, has never shied away from condemning inappropriate remarks by communal and regressive Muslim politicians either, as you can see here and here.

****See examples of practising Muslims stopping fellow Muslims from taking the law in their hands even against violent anti-Muslim extremists threatening their own lives, soon after an attack or attempted attack on innocent Muslims here, here and here.

*****Census reports have established that Hindus are more polygamous than Muslims, even though it is illegal for the former, and I myself know a Hindu electrician in Delhi who has engaged in bigamy. Puranic lore is full of multiple marriages by a single man – to quote some prominent examples, Krishna had thousands of wives, prominent among whom were Rukmini, Satyabhama and Jambvati; his father Vasudev had two wives, Devki (Krishna‘s mother) and Rohini (Balram‘s mother), and Ram‘s father Dashrath had three wives, besides even Bheem having a wife other than Draupadi (Ghatodkach‘s mother) and Arjun too had several, including Chitrangada and Krishna‘s sister Subhadra. Also, Islam mandates a limit of four wives and a responsibility of the husband to look after his multiple wives (if he has multiple wives in the first place) equally well, though I do agree that even this is anachronistic today. As for harems, these too have not been a monopoly of Muslim rulers, and the practice has existed among Hindu rulers too, such as in South India, and even among Buddhist rulers in Sri Lanka. 

 

Many people in India criticise Muslims for having many children because they practise polygamy, even though that isn't very common among Muslims either and as for children, it actually doesn’t make a difference to the number of children as long as the number of reproductive women remains the same. Four women would respectively give birth to the number of children they would, irrespective of whether they are married to one man or four different men! In fact, polygamy is not prohibited by Hinduism as a faith, and, in fact, it was outlawed for Hindus only after independence, and Nehru faced stern opposition for the same from orthodox Hindus.

 

******Interestingly, there are practising and cultural Muslims even in contemporary times who have been vocal for a gender-just, religion-neutral uniform family law (uniform civil code) for Indians across religious lines, without hair-splitting debates on interpreting scriptures or examining age-old customs on questions of legal rights. Public figures among them have included former president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and even others very critical of the BJP like actor Saif Ali Khan, columnist Tariq Ansari, activist Laila Tyabji and academician Sadaf Munshi, a position shared even by historians Romila Thapar and Ramachandra Guha very opposed to the BJP. Indeed, I too support the passage of a uniform civil code, rejecting waiting for some elusive consensus from orthodox patriarchs at the expense of our female citizens’ rights, and issues of personal laws clashing with modern human rights values keep cropping up not only for Muslims, but also Hindus (as you can see here, here, here, here and here), Christians, Zoroastrians (as you can see here, here and here) and Jews, and a uniform civil code in line with the fundamental rights of Indian citizens under the constitution can close that matter, undermining regressive clergy. More and more Indians of minority religious groupings should come out in support of a uniform civil code to demonstrate their genuine commitment to Indian constitutional values (like gender equality in this context) in a spirit of shared Indian nationhood rather than invoking them only against Hindu majoritarianism. Also, tax exemptions given to Hindu Undivided Families (HUFs) should be made available to similarly structured Indian family businesses of all religious groupings.

*******There is much that has been respectful towards the feminine in Hindu culture, like the concept of swayamvar, wherein the woman had autonomy or even complete independence to choose her husband, or the veneration of goddesses, even depicted as warriors taking on evil forces, which deserves appreciation, but those contending the complete absence of Hindu patriarchy before the Muslim invasions would do well to look at Puranic literature, which, even if not historically accurate, given it was penned by writers of the time, does indicate social trends demonstrating that patriarchy or even crimes against women were not unheard of. Examples include the disrobing of Draupadi by Dushasan and her harassment by Kichak (not held to be in conformity with the morality even of those times, but these literary references dating to ancient times reflecting the then society, which did see crimes against women, had no Muslim influence!), the abduction and forced marriages of Amba, Ambika and Ambalika by Bhishma and the rape of Araja by Danda. While there is the concept of a husband and wife being equal halves (ardhangini), there is also the concept of the wife revering the husband as a pativrata nari serving the pati parmeshwar. There is much patriarchal content even in the Manusmriti, acknowledged as such even by acclaimed Hindu rightist commentators like Aravindan Neelakandan. There is also a section of historical revisionists today denying the prevalence of sati in ancient India. Such elements have sought to conflate widows burning on the funeral pyres with their deceased husbands, sati, with jauhar or self-immolation by women to prevent molestation by belligerent soldiers, though that sati as a social evil existed even prior to Muslim invasions is acknowledged by commentators who cannot in the least be held to be biased against the Indic civilisation, such as historian Krishna Misri, a Kashmiri Pandit who, in her youth, alongside Muslim friends, had taken up arms to resist Pakistani intruders in 1947. The Hindu right-of-centre portal Swarajya has detailed the prevalence of sati in India since much before the birth of Jesus and Muhammad, rightly pointing to how it was chronicled by Alexander's men in 326 BC. Some have even gone to the extent of portraying anti-sati social reformer Raja Rammohan Roy as a closet Christian missionary and enemy of Hinduism (though he ironically actually resisted Christian missionaries), claiming to eradicate an even then almost non-existent practice, but even many Hindu right-of-centre public intellectuals have vehemently rebutted this narrative, and a greatly regarded 19^th century Hindu philosopher Swami Vivekananda, held in high esteem by very many Indians across the ideological spectrum, was full of praise for Roy, as you can see here and here.

Not only in the times of Razia Sultan, Chand Bibi, Nur Jahan, Jahanara and the queens of Bhopal or even prominent medieval Arab Muslim women, even today, Muslim women are not a monolith, not even in Muslim-majority countries; for example, one can see skirt-wearing, educated Egyptian and Jordanian Muslim women not sporting any veil (not even a headscarf in many cases), working as senior executives in companies in their own countries and in places like Dubai, giving orders to educated men working under them. Barring Iran and regions ruled by militias like the Taliban and ISIS, veils or headscarves are not mandated by law in Muslim-majority countries either. It is important to note that mandating veils or headscarves is not explicitly sanctioned by the Quran, and Prophet Muhammad himself is believed to have mandated education for girls, opposed female infanticide  and is believed to have said that children (he did not specify only boys) must be taught archery, horse-riding and swimming, his first wife Khadijah herself having been a successful businesswoman. There are also Muslims disputing the narrative that Prophet Muhammad married a minor, instead mentioning the age of that wife of his, Ayesha, to have been eighteen at the time of marriage, and there are also feminist Muslims contending that the supposed reference to wife-beating in verse 4:34 of the Quran is a mistranslation, as you can see here and here. Several Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Indonesia, Mali, Senegal, Tunisia and Kosovo have actually had women as elected heads of government. In the Middle East and elsewhere in the Islamic world, women have also been excelling in business, scientific research, sports (as you can see here and here) and even participating as combatants in security forces taking on ISIS and Taliban terrorists (as you can see here, here, here and here). In fact, Bahrain has a higher representation of women in scientific research than India, Malaysia has a higher percentage of women as techies than India, the Maldives has a higher percentage of women in the police force than India, and Bangladesh has a higher percentage of women in the workforce cutting across all sectors than India, and as an Indian myself, I sincerely wish for our nation to do better on this front. Also, even historically, while not at all seeking to deny large-scale crimes against women and promotion of patriarchal attitudes by some Muslim invaders in India  (and indeed, Muslims too should not endlessly, out of confirmation bias, try to deny historical facts), as discussed earlier, it is not as though Hindu societies were at all entirely free from patriarchy even prior to their advent, and one can still see much traditional patriarchy even in non-Abrahamic societies not invaded by Muslims, say in Nepal (as you can see here and here), Japan (as you can see here, here, here and here), Tibet (as you can see here, here and here) and several Buddhist-majority countries in Southeast Asia like Vietnam and Cambodia. Among Islamic states, Saudi Arabia too has been showing some positive shifts, like allowing women to participate in professional sports, even in international sports tournaments like the Olympics, to giving them the right to vote and contest  in the very limited elections that take place there to the right to drive to the right to travel abroad without a male’s permission. In fact, from 2011 onwards, there had been a movement of several Saudi women, supported by some progressive Saudi men, asserting what they perceived was their right to drive.

********AMU and Jamia Millia Islamia are universities ranked highly even by bureaucratic accreditations done under the Modi sarkar. I personally know Hindus who are economics, law or media graduates from Jamia Millia Islamia and who have had a great time there, and Hindus who studied at AMU too without any problem, notwithstanding much entirely false and sometimes blown-out-of-proportion propaganda. None other than PM Modi has personally acknowledged the high standards of research at Jamia, and indeed, people there have come up with patentable inventions. Jamia is also appreciable for using solar energy and reaching a near-zero carbon footprint, other than rainwater harvesting as also acknowledging the third gender in admission forms. The rights of minorities to administer educational institutions have been protected under Articles 29 and 30 of our constitution, as is the case with jurisprudence in many other countries, and even Pakistan has Christian colleges and now a proposed Hindu university, and the US too has a Hindu university.

*********Contrary to what some portrayed, Article 370 had nothing to do with regulating the extent of central government funds being poured into Kashmir. While the constitutionality of how the abrogation was carried out is beyond the scope of this article, the Indian state, ever since the accession of the princely state of J&K to India on 27^th October 1947, has maintained for decades that J&K is an integral part of India, even if with some special privileges in an asymmetrical federal system agreed upon at the time of the accession of J&K to India. Given that the abrogation of Article 370 was accompanied by such a harsh communication blackout, which caused much hardship to citizens [that led to adverse effects not only on businesses but, coupled with other means of communication being disrupted, also medical treatment (even resulting in very tragic fatalities, with ambulances not being called in time owing to no landline, mobile or internet connectivity for some months, and doctors could not access latest information about Covid-19), schooling, university applications, transferring money to students outside the valley, checking on ailing relatives, funerals etc. for law-abiding Kashmiris, while mobs continued to protest violently and militants continued to strike, the militants using satellite telephones], the longest ever internet shutdown in any democratic country globally, coupled with detentions of several mainstream, non-separatist Kashmiri political leaders subscribing to the Indian constitution for no crime committed by them but to silence their voices, the move could not end stone-pelting or militancy, in which non-Kashmiri Indian civilians, even if Muslims, have unfortunately been targeted, nor help win over Kashmiri Muslims (in fact, the move irked even pro-India and politically ambivalent Kashmiri Muslims, as much as some pro-BJP Kashmiri Muslim faces have indeed been propped up), nor really inspire many Kashmiri Pandits to return to Kashmir (in fact, many from the very few still staying there have felt deeply insecure, even considering leaving the valley after some rather tragic and reprehensible terrorist attacks targeting them even after the abrogation) nor encourage many non-Kashmiri Indians to settle there. And the BJP still retaining special statuses (under Articles 371A to H of the constitution relating to Northeast Indian states that the BJP has explicitly promised to not amend) and domicile restrictions in states of Northeast India (even strengthening domicile restrictions on buying land in Meghalaya as well as the Bodo-majority and Karbi-majority areas of Assam, and domicile restrictions do exist on owning property even in other hilly regions with fragile ecosystems like Himachal Pradesh under Section 118 of the Himachal Pradesh Tenancy and Land Reform Act, 1972, and have been demanded by Jammuite Hindus and Ladakhi Buddhists after the abrogation of Article 370 as well) and Scheduled Tribe areas [under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, and the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996] with their own history of separatist and Maoist terrorism that have actually taken more lives than in Kashmir (as you can see here and here) and have also caused mass exoduses of civilian populations (as you can see here, here and here), these insurgencies also having been sponsored by foreign powers (as you can see here, here, here, here and here), only exposes the hypocrisy of the BJP, and while some may argue that the blanket communication blackout in Kashmir for months together would have still helped the security forces in counterterror operations, holding the entire regular personal and professional lives of very many law-abiding fellow citizens hostage for months together is still not acceptable and has not been done in other conflict zones in the country. The BJP’s divergent approaches are quite obviously because it has managed to win elections in Northeast India and tribal areas in mainland India (the BJP won 35 out of the 47 Scheduled Tribe seats in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019), unlike in Kashmir, and reforms like allowing progeny of J&Kite women married to non-J&Kite men a share in property and giving citizenship to Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) could have been brought in by the then BJP government-appointed Governors’ administration in J&K (Governors were running the administration since 20^th June 2018 and Lieutenant Governors since 5^th August 2019) without wholesale abrogation too, given that Article 10 of the then J&K constitution recognised the right to equality under Article 14 of the Indian constitution. Also, the argument that Kashmiri militants can now be lodged in jails and tried outside Kashmir is irrelevant, for even before the abrogation, they were often transferred to jails in the city of Jammu, overall largely free of terrorism, and if it is argued that the city of Jammu has also seen some terrorist attacks, so have, rather unfortunately, many cities across mainland India, even by some Kashmiri Muslims, as you can see here, for example (and attempts of terrorist attacks outside Punjab have been made by Khalistani terrorists too, as you can see here, for example, which does not mean that the government can or should, in general, restrict freedom of movement of citizens from secessionist conflict zones). Nor, I repeat, has the BJP actually had a history of being above appeasing separatists. After making much noise over the delay in hanging Afzal Guru convicted for involvement in the reprehensible attack on the Indian parliament in 2001, the BJP under PM Modi, as mentioned earlier, contributed to having commuted the death sentence of Khalistani terrorist Balwant Singh Rajoana, and even felicitated for their courage former Mizo separatist rebels, who had taken Chinese state support, in the presence of Chinese officials! Not only that, they have actually given blanket amnesty to Bodo separatist insurgents under PM Modi and even earlier under PM Vajpayee, including to those with a track record of killing unarmed civilians. Mentioning how the vast majority of  Kashmiri Muslims felt aggrieved by and smelled hypocrisy in the months-long communication blackout they will never forget does not widen the gulf between them and mainland Indians, nor does mentioning, for that matter, how like other residents of conflict zones globally, Kashmiri Muslims have suffered gross human rights violations at the hands of rogue elements in the Indian security forces [these human rights violations by rogue elements in the Indian security forces have been acknowledged even by General VP Malik who led India to the victory in the Kargil war, other military veterans like Major Gaurav Arya, and by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former BJP defence ministers (both now no more) Arun Jaitley and Manohar Parrikar], something Kashmiri Muslims are indeed themselves very well aware of; in fact, acknowledgement of genuine grievances with empathy by more mainland Indians would help bridge divides [an approach more and more Kashmiri Muslims should also adopt vis-à-vis the Kashmiri Pandits, and more mainland Indians must realise that Hindus will feel fully safe in Kashmir only when Kashmiri Muslims feel fully integrated in the Indian national mainstream (just as only when the vast majority of Sikhs turned their backs to the idea of Khalistan did Hindus feel safe in Punjab, which they did not prior to that when the insurgency was ongoing), and what can and should be done to the end of integrating Kashmiri Muslims can be the subject of another article altogether].

**********Already, some pro-BJP propagandists have started labeling these champions who did India proud as stooges of anti-India forces seeking to destabilise the country, as you can see here, here,  here, here and here, and while some have invoked PT Usha’s remarks apparently critical of the protesters, she herself clarified that they were misrepresented and she stands with the protesting wrestlers. 

 

In Pakistan, everything going wrong and any democratic dissent over real problems or seeking secularism (yes, there are Muslims in Pakistan arguing that Pakistan should be a secular state, like Hasan Nisar, Marvi Sirmed, Parvez Hoodhboy, Najam Sethi and the murdered Sabeen Mahmud, even if they don’t/didn't/haven’t taken/hadn't taken a pro-India line on every matter) is often dubbed as a foreign Hindu-Jewish-Christian conspiracy to destabilise Pakistan, and Pakistani Muslims expressing dissent are said to be foot-soldiers, possibly paid foot-soldiers, of these supposedly evil foreign powers. Now, in India, we are unfortunately following suit - don't own up to any of our real problems, and claim all dissent by the political opposition or civil society to be a result of a Christian missionary or Islamist conspiracy to destabilise India, and Indira Gandhi used to blame the CIA, even to seek to discredit a stalwart of the freedom struggle like Jayaprakash Narayan when he dissented against her! We do not want to go down the Pakistan way or again the Emergency way, do we?!

The same conspiracy theories were peddled for the anti-NRC protests and the agitation against the farm laws.

 

Speaking of the CAA+NRC, without negatively stereotyping the majority community of any country, be it even Pakistan (as you can see here, here, here, here, here and here), while I express solidarity with the non-Muslims who have faced and are facing systematic persecution by Muslim extremists in Pakistan (as you can see here, here, here and here) and Afghanistan (as you can see here and here) and have earlier faced systematic persecution by Muslim extremists in Bangladesh (during Khaleda Zia’s tenure as prime minister of Bangladesh, the Hindu minority suffered intense persecution, acknowledged even by secular-minded Bangladeshi Muslims, as you can see here; that said, in more recent times with Sheikh Hasina as prime minister, the percentage of Hindus in Bangladesh has increased, as acknowledged even by the BJP), and while I support the CAA (though it should have included Ahmedias and Shias; I understand that liberal practising and non-practising Sunni Muslims are also under threat in Pakistan, but their requests will have to be examined based on genuine proof of persecution, whereas placing that burden on non-Sunni minorities known to be persecuted and facing extinction would be grossly unfair, even if a few misuse it), for their Indian citizenship applications being expedited, and I do understand that since the Nehru-Liaqat Accord, the Indian state took up responsibility for non-Muslims in Pakistan (then including Bangladesh), hence making them, who belonged originally to the undivided India as of 1947 and mostly did not support the partition a bigger responsibility than refugees from elsewhere, I would indeed argue that the issue of the NRC was indeed a matter of genuine concern for a large number of people, for no clarification was made by the government initially that the countrywide NRC would be on lines different from the one conducted in Assam, where citizens without official identity documents were treated as guilty of being illegal migrants until proven innocent, with even grave errors committed such as Indian military veterans and a 102-year-old man being wrongly detained as foreigners. While I certainly do not oppose, and in fact, wholeheartedly support, legally deporting actual illegal migrants (except non-Muslim refugees, or Muslims with a legally established case for asylum) from Bangladesh [as has even been done on several occasions (as you can see here and here), whom the Bangladeshi state is even willing to accept] and beefing up border security to prevent illegal immigration, to make the entire Indian citizenry prove its citizenship would have been an immensely wasteful exercise in terms of time and finances [the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) exposed a huge scam in the Assam NRC in 2019, accepted by the then finance minister of Assam from the BJP], and given that non-Muslims would indeed be given exemption from proving Indian citizenship under the CAA, the economically backward Muslim citizens of India without official identity documents understandably felt vulnerable about being potentially stripped of their citizenship and detained for no crime whatsoever, a rather undesirable position even if later able to prove their innocence. Thus, I believe that the protests against the NRC were legitimate, and many of them were indeed completely peaceful and upholding the secular ethos of the Indian constitution (as you can see here and here), also demanding justice for the Kashmiri Pandits in some cases (much before the release of that hateful film The Kashmir Files), as you can see here and here. I do, however, strongly and unequivocally condemn some elements for resorting to violence (as you can see here, here, here and here), vandalism (as you can see here and here) and hate speech (as you can see here and here) in the anti-NRC protests, which was indeed also strongly opposed by many Muslims themselves.

Also, a word about the farmers' protests in 2020-2021. There were genuine concerns with the farm laws, such as a clause about not allowing farmers to raise their grievances in civil courts, but allowing a bureaucrat, not necessarily following legal procedures, to exercise his/her discretion to adjudicate disputes between farmers and big corporations and the very definition of 'farmer' including big corporations, other than there being a dearth of enough vegetable-market infrastructure for farmers to directly access on their own terms, concerns articulated with nuance even by the Swadeshi Jagran Manch of the RSS, an organisation that is indeed close to the BJP, and inserting such problematic clauses and pushing these laws without proper parliamentary debate clouded any objective discussion about the merits, if any, in the other provisions of these controversial laws. Also, steps similar to these farm laws had been tried but failed to deliver in Bihar. Many poor farmers died of the cold in the protests against the farm laws in 2020-2021, thus invalidating the contention that those protesting against these laws were only rich middlemen in the agrarian sector, and farmers from not only Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh but also other parts of India, like Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, did participate in the protests against the farm laws. While it is unfortunate that the proponents of the Khalistan movement (that has also entailed acts of terrorism against unarmed civilians, as you can see here, here, here and here) also infiltrated the protests (see, for example, this, this and this) as also that some Sikh protesters (including even some who may not have necessarily been supporters of the Khalistan movement) unnecessarily  made a show of religious identity over a non-religious set of legislations for the whole nation and resorted to unlawful modes of protest, that does not mean that there were no genuine grievances or that all or even most of the protesters were anti-national. While very many of the protesters were Hindus, it should also be acknowledged that very many Sikhs themselves are vocal critics of the Khalistan movement (indeed, many Sikhs have had a stellar track record in our Indian security forces, even against Khalistani terrorists), such Sikhs even having been its targets (as you can see, for example, here, here and here), and many Sikhs in the farmers’ agitation too very openly distanced themselves from the Khalistan movement. Indeed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while withdrawing the laws, himself conceded that the farmers of India as a whole largely did not support the controversial farm laws, which makes sense, for if they did, they constitute a far greater number of voters than some agrarian middlemen or some extremists from a minority religious grouping, and the laws would not have had to be withdrawn, the way the CAA (which, an NRC aside, I personally support with the addition of Ahmedias and Shias) was not, despite extensive protests. 

 

It must, however, be noted both in the case of the anti-NRC protests and the protests against the farm laws that when a section of the society is aggrieved by some legislative or executive direction being taken by the government, inevitably, extremists from within that section will unsurprisingly also be vocal about the same and even try to hijack the cause for their extremist agenda, which does not, in any way, mean that there are no actual issues with the public policy measures being opposed or even that such extremists represent the entire agitation, and from the Karni Sena opposing the film Padmavat (even reprehensibly attacking a moving school bus with children to that end, and as usual, fake news was circulated on the social media that the perpetrators were Muslims) to the Jats, Gujjars and Patidars demanding reservations (as you can see here, here and here), it is clear that the protests against the NRC and farm laws, which, as explained above, indeed had a sound basis, were not the only ones that had elements engaging in illegal vandalism and violence. 

 

By:

Karmanye Thadani
Knowledge Council