Minorities vs. Minorities: The new right-wing game plan for 2014

[ajtr]

Minorities vs. Minorities: The new right-wing game plan for 2014

Amaresh Misra
Before joining the Times of India in 1993 as a roving correspondent, I was part of the radical Left movement led then by the CPI-ML (Liberation). However, sufferings of dalits, adivasis and the working classes—natural Left constituencies—did not contribute to my early, personal radicalization. Still a student leader in the Allahabad University, I took active part in debates, discussions concerning national-international topics—and agitations mainly—on student issues.

In 1984, the day our Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated, I was in Calcutta. I had gone there to take part in the national conference of the Indian Peoples Front—the only attempt of its kind—of a Communist Party sponsoring a democratic-peoples party in India—made under the leadership of late comrade Vinod Mishra—the then general secretary of the CPI-ML (Liberation).

Since I was also part of an agit-prop street theatre group—the Dasta Natya Manch (DNM)—we were performing a play on Calcutta streets—when the situation rapidly deteriorated after the news of Mrs Gandhi’s assassination. We were told to run and hide as police vans were coming our way for a total clampdown on any movement on foot or vehicles. Yet, after about half an hour, I saw a mob attacking a Sikh truck driver. After a while, the driver was on the streets, begging for his life. Thrashed mercilessly by the mob, the Sikh was soon burned to death, a tyre hanging around his neck.

The police were nowhere in sight.

Back then, I was only 18 years of age; the incident traumatized me so deeply that after I got back to Allahabad I fought with everyone—including my close relatives—who—as per the norm those days—were abusing Sikhs incessantly.

For several days, I was unable to sleep; I was full of rage; it was good that I did not have access to a gun those days—I would certainly have used it on some right-wing, communal/anti-Sikh element in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh.

I am expressing my inner most urges to make a point—that during desperate/unjust times—a sensitive human being—belonging to the majority community—can be driven to anti right-wing violence. Being a ruling class brahmin—whose family had protected Muslims during the 1947 riots—and who took any violence against minorities as a challenge to his sense of honour directly—also must have contributed a lot to my aggressive stance.

So, imagine the plight/mindset of minority communities who saw unspeakable crimes—raping of daughters and mauling of children—being committed on their kith and kin.

Then in 1986—communal police officers of the Uttar Pradesh police—unleashed massive state sponsored violence —even on respectable Allahabadi Muslim citizens like the Delhi-based journalist Zafar Agha—working for India Today—a prestigious weekly. In the 1980s, much before the Ram Mandir movement, communal/right-wing forces used the police and the Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC), to butcher Muslims in Meerut, Muzffarnagar and Aligarh.

Slowly, I began realizing that in India—sometimes—one can survive—even thrive—as an upper caste Naxalite. But it was impossible to live life with dignity as a member of any minority community.

The Babari Masjid was pulled down in 1992; as narrated by several Mumbai cops openly—and included in the Srikrishna Commission Report—Muslim children were given milk laced with poison—by Mumbai Police officials themselves—who were supposed to protect them. I have narrated the terrifying tale of 4th degree torture on Muslims—perpetrated by senior Mumbai Police officers during in the post-1993 Mumbai blast phase—in a recent article.

By the time I learned about the 2002 Gujarat genocide and the brutal, day light killing of Ehsan Jafri in Ahmedabad, I had already realized that unless a revolution shakes the system in India minorities are destined to live as second class citizens.

There was some hope when Congress came to power in 2004 on a strong anti-communal plank. Manmohan Singh, while assuming the office of India’s Prime Minister in 2004, promised an end to the divisive era of communal conflagrations seen in the 1990s.

During the years of the UPA I regime, violence against Christians in Orissa and elsewhere made national headlines; to me, it became obvious that had the Maoists—most of them upper caste Hindus of Orissa like Sabyasachi Panda—not intervened to beat back Bajrang Dal-RSS-VHP activists/leaders—Orissa would have witnessed several more Graham Staines type murder cases.

Things came to a head in 2008. With just a year left before Parliamentary elections in 2009, bomb blasts began rocking Indian cities with alarming frequency. Security agencies and police forces of different states blamed an unknown outfit—the Indian Mujahideen (IM)—for the blasts. From July to September 2008—in a span of just three months—more than 100 blasts—killing innumerable men, women and children—tested the patience of Hindus and Muslims—to the outer most limit.

The electronic media began playing the `breaking news’ card after 2008 blasts. Hundreds of Muslims too died in 2008 incidents. But instant media trials—which earned media houses the rap of the Supreme Court—blamed Muslims—and Muslims alone—for the blasts. Imagine the kind of anger Muslim and Hindus must have felt against each other back then; so, whoever was behind the 2008 blasts, isn’t it obvious that the detonations constituted part of a conspiracy to divide the nation along communal lines for someone to achieve power in 2009? We have only two national parties. Who would benefit more—Congress or BJP—in a communally surcharged electoral atmosphere is anybody’s guess.

Further on, September 19, 2008, saw the Delhi Police Special Cell gunning down two Muslim youths in the now infamous Batala House encounter; October 2008 saw blasts in Malegaon and several other places. Then almost by divine intervention—Hemant Karkare—the Maharashtra ATS Chief—brought out—for the first time in the history of post-Independence India—concrete proof of Sangh Parivar involvement—in bomb blasts.

With this one act, Hemant Karkare foiled the entire game-plan to communalize the polity. Perhaps, because of this reason Karkare—along with Kaamte and Salskar—was killed mysteriously, during the 26/11 operations. At the time of his assassination, Hemant Karkare was close to implicating top RSS-BJP leaders in terror acts.

After all the name of Indresh—a top ranking RSS leader—did crop up as a perpetrator—in the Samjhauta Express blast case (Read about it here: RSS leader Indresh Kumar paid for Samjhauta blast).

On hindsight, Karkare’s martyrdom halted the dangerous, communalization of Indian politics that would have brought BJP to power for sure in 2009.

In 2012, the first thing that came to my mind when I heard of violence in Assam was that communal/right-wing forces had begun their game of preparing for 2014 Parliamentary elections.

But 2012 is not 2008. In the 1960s and 1970s, communal riots between rival mobs used to be the norm. 1980s were home to the police Vs Muslims/Sikhs/minorities syndrome. Bomb blasts `planted by Muslim perpetrators’ replaced old type of communal conflagrations in the 1990s and 2000s.

But after the 2008 exposure of Sangh Parivar terrorism, the efficacy of bomb blasts achieving communal polarization became doubtful.

So, this time around, it seems that ethnic riots with a communal slant—between minorities—are replacing bomb blasts. Instead of a minority-majority clash, the game plan seems to be of pitting one minority against the other. This explains the way Bodo militants—belonging to an ethnic minority group—first attacked Bengali Muslims—a religious minority. Then an issue of Bangladeshi infiltrators was inserted in the script.

Soon doctored images of violence on Muslims, pamphlets, SMS’ mushroomed out of nowhere—and before one could gather one’s wits—a `Muslim backlash’ was seen first, in Pune, Mumbai and Karnataka. Then, Allahabad, Lucknow and Kanpur saw mild protests and violence.

The Lucknow violence happened in front of me on 17th August 2012—I happened to be in the city for some personal work. In the afternoon, I went into town to meet some Muslim friends.

My friends were coming out of the Teelewali Masjid in the heart of Lucknow city after the Friday namaaz when stones started flying—one hit a friend of mine on the head. Suddenly, the cry of Bajrang Dal activists on the prowl went up. Though incidents in Assam and Burma were being avidly discussed, Muslims who went to the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha on August 17, 2012 to protest actually wanted to voice their anger against stone pelting by Bajrang Dal activists.

Not a single newspaper wrote about what I saw...

In Allahabad, Muslim community leaders had cancelled the scheduled protest on August 17. The Lucknow pattern was repeated—Muslims coming out after rendering the all important `Jume (Friday) ki namaaz’ in old Allahabad—were provoked by Bajrang Dal activists.

On August 11 in Mumbai too, the initial violence occurred when MNS activists taunted Muslim youths for `sitting idle’ after Assam and Burma incidents. Not many people are aware of the fact that till recently, Raj Thackarey’s MNS had a lot of Muslim activists as well.

In Mumbai, after the initial flare-up, some professional elements—revealed to me by Mumbai police sources as being under contract (supari) to create violence on August 11, 2012—to defame Muslims—took over. They were the ones who beat up the police and molested women constables. I was surprised when I saw comments on the net by some noted secular-social activists condemning Mumbai violence without taking into account genuine Muslim grievances or probing the criminal-mafia-supari angle.

The exodus of northeast Indians began from Pune and Bangalore, Karnataka. The infiltration in Pune by RSS-ISI-Mossad type elements is well known in Maharashtra police circles. In fact, three Muslims—Sarfaraz, Imran Khan and Arif—have been arrested by the Pune police for sending fake SMS’. According to the Pune police, Imran received the SMS from Sarfaraz—the former then forwarded the same to Arif. Now while Imran Khan runs, a small business, Arif sells CDs. But—here is the best part—the police are unwilling to reveal anything about Sarfaraz!

In the light of Qateel Siddiqui’s murder inside Pune’s high security Yerawada jail premise—the framing of several Muslim youth of the city in terror cases by the Maharashtra ATS headed by Rakesh Maria—a known Muslim baiter—Maharashtra police sources claim that the attack on students of the northeast—and the circulation of SMS’—might have been the work of some Muslim youths who actually are police informers! Now Sarfaraz is saying that one Kanjeel Sheikh of Ahmednagar forwarded the SMS’ to him!

A front page report in Indian Express, published on August 22, 2012, quotes the Karnataka police in saying that Anees Pasha, a cell-phone repairman, might have sent the inflammatory SMS’ that led to the exodus of northeast Indian students from the state.

Now, who is Anees Pasha? The Indian Express report goes on to report that “Police sources (Karnataka) said that Pasha is a highly skilled cell-phone repairman... Police had often sought his assistance in retrieving software data during their investigations in the past”!

Isn’t this shocking? How come Muslims arrested in terror cases turn out to be either police informers or collaborators? RK Singh, India’s home secretary, talked of a Pakistani hand in the circulation of SMS’; is Anees Pasha a Pakistani? If yes, then how was he working for the Karnataka police? As the charge-sheet filed by the Maharashtra ATS against Raj Kumar Purohit and other accused in the 2008 Malegaon blasts shows, is there really a connection between ISI and the RSS?

Again, only an impartial investigation can reveal the true picture. But, it is apparent that as the 2014 elections draw closer, the cycle of violence will only increase. Tens of thousands of Muslim and Hindu men, women and children—belonging to the poorer/lower middle classes—or ethnic/religious minorities—will be sacrificed like proverbial lambs. Communal/right-wing forces—backed by foreign agencies (not just ISI)—have a high—do or die—kind of stake in 2014. Any definitive secular government—even of the Third Front type—is alien to their interests. They will stop at nothing to achieve power. A fascist government under Narendra Modi following widespread anarchy—and the killing of minorities by minorities—form part of their grand scheme of things.

This time, perhaps, even divine intervention will not be able to save India.



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Hate begets hate


The country is once again dangerously adrift in a stormy sea of competitive hate politics. The signs are both ominous and familiar — the systematic creation of hatred against people because of their ethnicity or religion; rumours and hate propaganda choking the internet; the public moral


justification of violence against targeted communities on grounds of ‘larger’ alleged wrongs; and weak-kneed State action against people and organisations which preach hate and organise slaughter and arson.
In what is probably the largest displacement of human populations by hate violence after Partition, four lakh Bengali Muslim and Bodo people are driven away from their homelands after attacks and the burning of their villages. They are living fearfully in cramped makeshift relief camps. In Mumbai, mobs protesting the Assam attacks and slaughter of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, run amuck, criminally set aflame public property and attack media and police personnel. Rumours of retaliatory attacks by Muslims against people from North-east India in many southern cities have led to a panic exodus of migrant students and workers.

In district towns in which I have worked, I observed during the 1980s how dedicated communal organisations skilfully spread rumours, which manufacture hatred locally and provoke communal attacks. But hate propagandists are today equipped with sleek new vehicles of cyberspace and mobile phone technology, which they deploy to transport provocative falsehoods, rumours and emotive messages of hate across the country — and indeed across the world. These recast people of different ethnic or religious identities as the dangerous ‘other’, and foment suspicion, dread and loathing against them. Morphed pictures of bloody corpses near robed Buddhist monks in Myanmar, circulated through the internet and mobile phones, provoked protestors who gathered in Mumbai. Messages claiming that people from the North-east would be attacked in retaliation for the killings in Assam led to their panic exodus.

Even more hazardous is the creation of an alternative moral universe in which violent attacks on people of specified communities is accepted as defensible, even justified. The underlying ethical assumption is that it is acceptable to physically attack people who belong to a community which has committed a real or perceived wrong. The same rationale was meted out for the slaughter of Sikhs in 1984, ‘understandable’ anger against all Sikhs because two Sikh bodyguards murdered Indira Gandhi. Even today I hear people say that the carnage against Gujarati Muslims in 2002 was a natural outcome of spontaneous mass anger because Muslims allegedly burned the train and killed pilgrims in Godhra. The demolition of the Babri Masjid and the years of violence which accompanied it were explained by warranted anger because Muslims had demolished temples in medieval times. Whenever Christians are attacked, people immediately speak of missionary ‘conversions’, as though this in any way is cause for the killing of Christians.

In Assam, the violence of indigenous Assamese against the Bengali Muslim community is described by leaders of the BJP, All Assam Students Union and the Sangh organisations as righteous anger against ‘outsiders’. Economic refugees are emotively described as ‘infiltrators’ from Bangladesh, and although scholars estimate that only around 10% of the Bengali Muslims in Assam are illegal residents, by implication the attacks and ethnic cleansing of the entire community is rationalised. Likewise, radicalised Islamist leaders use persecution of Muslims to provoke and justify mindless violence of the kind witnessed in Mumbai.

It is long overdue that the people of this vast diverse nation affirm that nothing — nothing — can justify the shedding of blood of even a single person, or sexual assault, or the burning of her properties, for no reason except that she belongs to the religious or ethnic community of a perceived wrong-doer. We cannot be selective in our espousal of non-violence, democracy and rule of law. If, for instance, we believe that there are illegal residents in Assam, the only legitimate demand is not mass violence and ethnic cleansing, but for due process of law to identify the illegal residents and if proved to return them to their homeland.

This clouded moral universe is further blurred by compromised or weak-kneed political and administrative leadership, which fails to uphold the equal rights of all persons, regardless of their faith, caste or ethnic identity. In Assam, the government entered into an accord with the Bodos for autonomy in Bodo-dominated areas. Bodo militants drove out Santhal descendants of tea plantation workers and Bengali Muslims in successive waves of attacks since 1993, and 1.75 lakh displaced people continue to live even today in refugee camps, for nearly two decades. The government did nothing to restore these displaced people to their homelands, and thereby incentivised ethnic cleansing. It is terrifying to consider the destinies of people now in fresh camps, if they, too, are not firmly assisted by a fair and caring state to return to their villages.

But amid these storm clouds, hope still shines through. In a blog, Siddharthya Roy reports a meeting called by the Police Commissioner of Pune regarding the fear exodus of Northeastern people. He reports that the hall was full of Muslim people who unequivocally said ‘my home is open for them’. A maulvi mourned that 30 Assamese workers cleaned and repaired the old Masjid, left suddenly yesterday. “How am I to celebrate Eid without them?” The Mufti said, “If you receive an SMS that tells you to get angry about what’s happened in Assam, delete it. We will not fight battles in the name of Assam in Pune.”

In Bangalore, Akbar Ali, convener of the Muslim Welfare Association appealed to people from the North-east who were fleeing the city, “Those who feel unsafe in their homes are welcome to come to our homes and mosques to take shelter. We will protect you, but please do not leave the city. It is your city as much as ours.”

Harsh Mander is a member of the National Advisory Council

The views expressed by the author are personal

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Sangh fishes in Assam waters

New Delhi, Aug. 20: The Sangh parivar is using the recent Assam violence and the Bangalore exodus to try and rebuild its base in Assam where the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress has successfully wooed caste Hindu votes away from the BJP.
Repeating a familiar strategy, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad are overtly talking of a Hindu-Muslim divide in Assam while the BJP has confined itself to the more politically correct illegal immigrants issue, targeting the Congress for treating them as "vote banks".
The collective objective is the same: driving a wedge between Hindus and Muslims and projecting the BJP as the sole "saviour" of the former.
Sources said the Sangh-BJP's problem in Assam was that the Congress had "beaten" them at their own game of using Hindus against Muslims.
Whether singly or in alliance with the Asom Gana Parishad, the BJP has failed to build on the votes it had amassed in Assam in the 1990s on the illegal immigration plank.
"Gogoi successfully rallied the caste Hindu Assamese behind the Congress. With them came the other Hindu groups in due course," a BJP source said.
"The Muslims too stayed with the Congress for a while until the All India United Democratic Front emerged as an option. We fell between the two stools."
In 2006, the BJP had 10 MLAs in Assam but in 2011, the number fell to five.
BJP sources conceded that their priority was to regroup the Hindus of Assam, at least large sections of them, and that the only card they had was the "anti-Muslim (Bengali speaking) one".
On August 16, a day after the exodus of northeastern citizens began, Sangh joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale assured them "help, security and safety". He directed local Sangh offices and student wing ABVP to help out those in distress.
Hosabale's statements had a political underpinning too. "The current problem is the result of tension between the local communities who are genuine citizens of the nation and the Bangladeshi Muslims who are illegal migrants," he said.
He revived the old slogan of "detect, delete (their names from the voter list) and deport" while emphasising that the "swayamsevaks" had helped the Bodo victims.
Surendraji, who heads the Assam Seva Bharati, another Sangh front, posted a statement on August 2 on Sangh website samvada.org that said: "Hindu and Bodo families are very thankful to the timely and quick help provided by Seva Bharati."
There was no mention of the dispossessed Muslims, also living in camps like the Bodos.
VHP leader Praveen Togadia, banished from his home state of Gujarat by Narendra Modi, visited Kokhrajhar on August 4. He urged the "Assamese, Bangla Hindus, all tribes... in Assam to stand together as one to fight the modern-day invasion" by the Bangladeshis.
Togadia said that in future elections, these groups should vote for candidates who "protected" them against such "invasions".
For all their adversarial relations, Togadia and Modi thought alike on Assam, except that the chief minister deployed it as a weapon against the Congress.
In Junagadh on August 15, Modi challenged the Prime Minister saying the country wanted to know as a "matter of right" how he proposed dealing with the "illegal Bangladeshi migrants".
Rhetoric apart, the Sangh deployed its volunteers on a relay vigil at Bangalore City railway station from August 15 to 19 to help out those fleeing the city. A similar step was taken in Jaipur. Yesterday, the BJP announced a helpline for northeastern citizens.
Sangh websites, which work vigorously even in normal times, operated with renewed energy and posted articles with titles such as "Comparison: Asom 2012 vs Gujarat 2002".
The message was that while the Gujarat "riots" involved local populations, the Assam "civil war" was "instigated by illegal foreign intruders" and supported by "secular forces" via "voter and ration cards". The inference was that Assam was "far more serious" than Gujarat.
BJP president Nitin Gadkari told a seminar in Delhi today that the solution was to "construct a wall" on the Bangladesh border just as Israel has built embankments around the Gaza Strip.
Gadkari said since he had the experience of building the Pune-Mumbai expressway as then PWD minister of Maharashtra, he was the "best person" available for consultation.