Who Milks This Cow?

Nearly two thousand people died in the Bhagalpur riots. Many more were rendered homeless. Although Muslims were less than 20 per cent of the population, they constituted more than 70 per cent of those who had been killed or displaced. We visited a once-flourishing village of Muslim weavers, or julahas, whose homes and looms had been totally destroyed by a mob of Hindus. The survivors were being taken care of by a prosperous Muslim weaver in Bhagalpur town, who had laid out tents in his garden. Other refugees were being provided food and shelter by a Muslim religious organisation. Of government work in the resettlement and rehabilitation of the refugees there was not a sign.

I was shaken to see that my fellow Hindus would willingly partake of such savagery, and that my government would take no responsibility for the victims. Till then, the politics of religion had no place in my scholarly work or writing. My principal field of research was the environment. I had just published a book on the social history of the Himalayan forests, and had written scholarly essays on environmental conflicts in Asia and North America. However, I was now provoked to write an essay on the Bhagalpur riots for the Sunday Observer.

Ramachandra Guha in Outlook Here

BJP's exclusive politics and lonely canditate in UP

The BJP has just one Muslim candidate among its 403 in Uttar Pradesh where there live 37 million Muslims. It is symptomatic of the party's parochial agenda and vote bank politics.

I watched the BJP's spokesperson sporting the familiar self-righteous countenance indignantly trashing Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid's speech at Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh which has set the Ganges on fire. The Election Commission has been doing an outstanding job, so I will refrain from adding my three-bit of prudence on the EC's ire, excepting to say that other than usual electoral campaigning rhetoric that invariably occurs when addressing restless crowds, I did not see an orchestrated, deliberate attempt to undermine the constitutional authority of the EC albeit it may unintentionally have resulted in that consequence.

It seemed like a spontaneous outburst amidst cacophonous wild energy of teeming crowds that made for magnetic sound byte. But anyway, what was not surprising was the immediate collective chorus of the saffron brigade to demand Khurshid's prompt resignation for creating a "constitutional crisis". It was followed by a vociferous condemnation of "communal and vote bank politics". Really? The most flagrant revealing statistic of UP elections 2012 that reveals BJP's communal agenda will leave you flabbergasted. Let me elaborate.

UP would qualify as the fifth most populous country in the world based on its 200 million inhabitants. Larger than Brazil, with approximately 37 million Muslims residing in it (about 19 per cent of UP's denizens), more than in Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Morocco. And yet, there is one glaring revelation; the BJP has found just 1 Muslim candidate suitable for a ticket amongst 403 Vidhan Sabha seats. Isn't that an amazing expression of BJP's "exclusive politics"?

Incidentally, while BSP and SP have fielded 85 Muslim candidates, the Congress has 59. Communalism is not just about cosmetic minority appeasement, it is also about practicing absolute majoritarianism. Does the BJP believe in a multi-cultural, widely -ethnic secular society where political formations need to ensure broad-based representation ? Does it practise principles of fair representation? It is a question that the Sangh Parivaar can best answer.

Sanjay Jha in IBNLive.in. Here

Why the Sangh loves Anna Hazare?

When Anna’s team stands and shouts “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”, it is not hailing the Indian Republic but a mythic nation that exists only in the mind. It was no coincidence that the very stage on which Anna first fasted at Jantar Mantar had a map of India shaped in the image of Bharat Mata as the backdrop. It is no coincidence that Anna is a teetotaler given to flogging young men who do not obey him. It is no coincidence that Kejriwal has often shared the stage with an anti-reservation organisation called Youth for Equality. It is no coincidence that the electioneering they are doing is not directed against corruption but the Congress (even if the distinction is sometimes hard to make, it exists). It is no coincidence that Constitutional issues are so readily dismissed by Anna and Kejriwal, who has even anointed Anna above Parliament. It is no coincidence that through the Jan Lokpal Bill, they imagine an ombudsman who would be to the republic what Anna is to Ralegan Siddhi, someone who will whip us all into shape.

The support extended by the RSS, the overt expressions of sympathy, the covert mobilisation of numbers, the desire to make common cause with Anna, is not some public play at deception and politics, it is the manifestation of a genuine desire to make common cause with a man who has managed to fulfill their aims. Mobilise the people, corner the Congress, and fight to the death for Kashmir (only rhetorically, of course, for in reality the soldiers who die in the fighting are motivated by a far more prosaic professionalism).

Hartosh Singh Bal in Open. Here

Who the hell is this Subramanian Swamy?

Consistency and credibility have never really been Subramaniam Swamy's virtues. He has accused Sonia Gandhi of smuggling antiques, Harkishan Singh Surjeet of corruption, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Congress leader Arjun Singh of conspiring to derail the Rajiv Gandhi assassination trial, Vajpayee of getting drunk at an official function, and much more, without ever proving these charges. Yet, Swamy is now in the news for digging up hard evidence exposing the sins of commission and omission of UPA ministers in the 2G spectrum allotment scandal.

Maverick for many, evil incarnate for his detractors, Swamy is the epitome of opportunism in public life.

Now he is a great friend of the Hindutva forces, an avowed soldier of the Sangh Parivar and a true ally of the BJP in his singleminded pursuit of the 2G scamsters. But not long ago, on March 29, 1999, he held a tea party at The Ashok in Delhi, where Sonia Gandhi was his guest of honour. The sole purpose of the party as Jayalalithaa described it then, was to bring down the first Sangh Parivar government at the Centre, which was not even a year old.

Vajpayee is a terribly consistent friend who never forgives his foes. He had fallen out with Swamy when they were together in the Jan Sangh during the Emergency, when Swamy's evasion of arrest gave him a hero's halo. Despite Swamy's Ph.D. from Harvard, his communication skills in English, Hindi and Tamil and his links abroad, the Sangh chose Vajpayee as foreign minister and L.K. Advani as information and broadcasting minister.

Now he wants to steal the voting rights of the minorities. But he has always been consistent in his opposition to the anti-Brahminical politics of Periyar in Tamil Nadu. When Jayalalithaa got the Kanchi Shankaracharya arrested for murder, Swamy defended the alleged murderer, which probably helped him build bridges with the RSS again. Right or wrong, reasonable or rabidly communal, Swamy always barges into the news rooms, grabbing eyeballs and headlines.

d more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/janata-party-chief-subramaniam-swamy/1/153419.html?google_editors_picks=true

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/janata-party-chief-subramaniam-swamy/1/153419.html?google_editors_picks=true

Rajesh Ramachandran in India Today. Here

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/janata-party-chief-subramaniam-swamy/1/153419.html?google_editors_picks=true

Subramanian Swamy, Hindu Fascism and Tamil Brahmins

So, where does the Zionist way of Swamy’s thinking come from? It might be because Swamy is a Tamil Brahmin, and he feels that the social upsurge there which took the form of challenging and overthrowing the Brahmin domination in Tamil society from about the middle of the 19th century — no, it is not centuries old because the political elites in pre-colonial India were never Brahmins — and many Tamil Brahmins feel persecuted, intellectually and culturally at one level, and more acutely at the social and political levels. Many Tamil Brahmins are more receptive to the Hindutva thought than any other group in South India. Tamil Brahmins are in a continual intellectual sulk. Swamy personifies this.

He is not acceptable in the Bharatiya Janata Party, the natural party of Hindutva, because he cannot expand his intellectual horizon to include the complex Indian social mosaic. That is why he speaks so glibly of transcending caste barriers when caste identity is at the base of the social churning across the heartland of North India. Swamy shows that he has no clue about the Indian political reality.

All that Swamy can hope to get is to head the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which is caught in a time warp much like the one Swamy is in.

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr in DNA. More Here

Justice eludes the victims of Makkah Masjid Blast

If at all we keenly examine the Makkah Masjid bomb blast, it will be clear that this terrorist attack was on the democratic and secular fabric of the country. Today four years are being completed for the Makkah Masjid bomb blast and it is very sad affair that the criminals are still free. The sadhu, sadhvi, sant, swami and army colonel who are caught are small actors. The real captain of the Hindutva terrorist is still free. In fact their organization’s i.e. RSS camps are going on large scale all over the country especially at Hyderabad as well. The government is silent on these.

The government had constituted the Bhaskar Rao commission on the police firing after the Makkah Masjid bomb blast and the commission after three years submitted its report to the government. Now the governments work is to table it in the Assembly and present before people. but the government’s intention is not good because of which the government is not making it public. However, the government wants to protect the police officers involved in the firing. It should be remembered that the government has blessed the police personnel involved in the firing on innocent people with rewards and awards. This way by taking advantage of the bomb blast, Muslim youth were targeted on the name of investigation. On this the State Minority Commission had appointed advocate Ravichander as advocate commissioner to investigate into the illegal detention, torture and arrests of the Muslim youth. Even this report is submitted to the government. However, the government is sitting on both these reports.

Civil Liberties know that there are such facts in the Advocate Ravichander report that the congress government will not have any right to rule. It will not have any moral right to be in the ruling position. In this report, facts are mentioned such as to how the Muslim youth were given electric shock, were beaten mercilessly, confined them under illegal detention and labeled with fake cases. In his report Advocate Ravichander himself has written that, ‘If you have tears prepare to shed them now’, with this one can understand how mercilessly the police might have behaved with the Muslim youth. Even after this the government is neither ready to accept its fault nor presenting the report.

We question all the media houses, as to why they have not come forward to conduct a programme in memory of the victims Makkah Masjid bomb blast and police firing, whereas they have conducted memorial programmes at other places such as Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat. Here we want to remind them that the persons who died at Makkah Masjid are also Human beings, is this attitude towards them because they belonged to Muslim community?

We also strongly condemn the attitude of police personnel who are resisting the Muslim community from offering homage to the victims and martyrs of Makkah Masjid bomb blast. Don’t we have the right even to pay homage to our brothers who have sacrificed their lives in resisting the Hindutva terrorism and became the victim of police firing? We question the double standard of the government who make special arrangements for the programmes at Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat and on the other side resist the people in paying homage to the martyrs by placing the barbed wire and blocking the roads. Here we want to remind the Congress government that Muslims are also Human beings.

Today on the occasion of four years of the completion of Makkah Masjid bomb blast and subsequent police firing, we demand the following:

• Demand to the government to present the Bhaskar Rao Commission report in the Assembly.

•  Demand to the government to present Advocate Ravichander report before the people.

• Demand to investigate the Makkah Masjid bomb blast and subsequent police firing seriously.

• Government should put a full stop to the Hindutva terrorism and book these terrorists under rule of law.

• The Secular parties and Muslim representatives should fulfill their responsibilities.

• We strongly condemn the police attitude for not allowing paying homage to the Martyrs of Makkah Masjid blast.

Lateef Mohd Khan, General Secretary, Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee More Here

Madhu Koda and his RSS Connections

Q Your political rise was meteoric…
A I had never imagined that I would be in politics, or even planned to join it. I was involved in a labour movement in mines. We were partly successful in our campaign. We were able to ensure miners got minimum wages and that they were paid OT (overtime) fees as well. A lot of miners benefitted from our movement. Over a period of time, my involvement as an activist fighting for the rights of miners led to the formation of a base of supporters and sympathisers in the organised and unorganised sectors.

Q At that time you weren’t associated with a political party...
A Yes, I wasn’t a member of any political party. But as my activities as a ‘mazdoor andolan’ leader expanded in 1989, mine owners began to view my labour activism adversely. They began lodging false cases against me. I then realised the strategic necessity of continuing my activism under the banner of a political party. That’s when I joined the BJP [in 1994].

Q Were you also with the RSS?
A Yes, I was in touch with them. I was with the BJP, and it is natural that I would be in contact with the RSS.

Madhu Koda in conversation with VK Shashi Kumar in Open. More Here and Here

Jantar Mantar was not our Tahrir Square

Bang on schedule, a few hours before the Chennai Super Kings took on the Kolkata Knight Riders, word leaked out that the UPA would give in to Anna Hazare. Hordes, by which I mean dozens, celebrated at India Gate, by which I mean that they held ice cream in one hand and candles in the other. The Leaders of the Revolution — Hazare, Baba Ramdev and Anupam Kher — could no doubt reflect on a job well done.

Except it wasn’t a revolution, Jantar Mantar was not our Tahrir Square, the Jan Lokpal draft bill is very definitely not the Constitution. In fact, pretty much everything about what played out at Jantar Mantar and on our TV screens last week undermined the principles that those who went on to frame the Constitution believed in.

Means, end and tone: all were problematic.

Look first at the means. What could be less objectionable than a fast? Isn’t it sanctified as the method by which Gandhiji won our freedom, after all? Except it wasn’t the method, and the equivalence just doesn’t apply. Gandhiji used his fasts against several different adversaries: the British, for example, in 1942; political opponents like Ambedkar, as in 1932; and to turn around sentiment in general, such as during Hindu-Muslim tension in 1924 and 1948. Each has a different moral value; using the threat of your death to ensure that separate electorates for Dalits aren’t brought into being is not the same, in my opinion and in Dr Ambedkar’s, as pushing a colonial state into compromise, or bringing mobs to bay. And pushing for your preferred draft of a bill through fast-unto-death is more like Gandhi vs Ambedkar than Gandhi vs the Empire. Except, in this case, your opponents certainly have far more democratic legitimacy than you have. We are left with an act that loses much of its moral value because the means just don’t fit the ends. 

And what about those ends? The Jan Lokpal bill is an abomination, a chaotic combination of bad, meaningless and disastrous ideas. (For the record, the government draft has serious flaws too, but not on this scale.) The “institution” to which it intends to give birth should terrify us, a super-prosecutor subject to no checks on its power, capable of investigating and judging pretty much anything and anybody it wants. Today, the threat of investigation slows down and stalls almost anything useful that the state could do — the bridges, the roads, the investment which all those candle-holders in urban India grouse don’t get made on time. Even a Jan Lokpal that doesn’t go rogue would paralyse a state already doing far too little.

And the Jan Lokpal would go rogue. Why wouldn’t she? Power corrupts, and this bill would grant her absolute power, without a check or balance in sight. Ah, say the bill’s short-sighted drafters, even if the person in the office is so powerful, she would at least be selected by a panel of irreproachable integrity. Well, forgive me, but I don’t think a Nobel or a Magsaysay confers on you the right to decide who rules me. The protesters hissed every time Alagiri’s name was mentioned — he was one of the ministers on the drafting committee — but give me Alagiri, with all his evident popularity in the south of Tamil Nadu, than Vidia Naipaul, popular only with the Nobel committee. It is an absurdity that the same people who blanch at the thought of World Bank aid altering project outcomes are agitating to see Bank of Sweden- and Ford Foundation-funded prizes determining who would sit in what would be one of the most powerful offices in the nation.

But perhaps the most shocking and depressing aspect of what we witnessed was the tone of the protests. One, of course, was the obvious RSS tilt. Anna Hazare sat in front of the Bharat Mata icon that anyone who has nightmares about the Sangh will instantly recognise. The only genuinely popular leader on stage with him was Baba Ramdev, currently being used by the RSS as a stick with which to prod the BJP further to the right in UP. Ramdev turned up at Jantar Mantar on Friday with the RSS’s Ram Madhav; Sanghis were around everywhere, performing havans.

Mihir S Sharma in Indian Express. More Here.

Waiting for Justice in Gujarat

It’s nine years since many districts across Gujarat were swept by a tornado of hate. Innumerable lives were snuffed out, women and girls brutally raped and killed, and homes and livelihoods destroyed. Thousands of people fled their homes in mortal fear. But nine years is a long time. Nature equips the human body and spirit with extraordinary capacities to heal from great injury. Yet, there are some wounds that don’t mend even after a lifetime. I encounter such unhealed suffering among survivors of mass communal violence in Nellie of 1983, Delhi of 1984 and Gujarat of 2002. There is something about the violence of mass hate, which makes its wounds fester even after many others heal.

In villages and towns of Gujarat, survivors have adapted themselves to the everyday reality of second-class citizenship. I estimate that nearly 100,000 people have been permanently ejected and their erstwhile settlements ‘cleansed’ of Muslim residents. A quarter of these internally displaced people endure in austere relief colonies, established after the carnage by various Muslim organisations. The remainder have moved to the safety of numbers in poorly serviced Muslim ghettoes.

Across the state today, I observe what I regard as the ‘Dalitisation’ of the Gujarati Muslim. Like Dalits, Muslims in Gujarat today live in segregated settlements, socially devalued and economically ostracised. They are discriminated against in schools and police stations, deprived of basic public services, discouraged in both private and public employment, and excluded from social intercourse such as wedding and birth celebrations. Dalits have lived with these social and economic disabilities for centuries. But the process of pushing Muslims to the same humiliating margins of Gujarati society as Dalits was compressed into the single past decade. This is the enduring legacy of the politics of hatred and division, which has triumphed in Gujarat. We don’t know if and when this will ever change.

Muslims in Gujarat today don’t live in the expectation of another imminent orgy of mass violence. But they survive daily discrimination as an incontrovertible element of survival. Markers of Muslim identity are fading from Gujarati public life. In many villages, one of the conditions imposed on Muslim residents who wished to return was that the call of the azaan from their mosque should no longer resonate in the village. Auto-rickshaw drivers in every city in the country decorate their rickshaws with symbols of their religious faith (alongside pictures of buxom film actresses). In Ahmedabad, I can estimate that my rickshaw driver is a Muslim only because his rickshaw has no markers of faith. Muslim eateries have adopted culturally-neutral names like Ekta, Tulsi and Jaihind, and no symbols of Muslim faith decorate their walls.

We’re helping hundreds of survivors to fight criminal cases against those who slaughtered, raped and plundered in 2002. But we frequently lose these cases in courts, because many baulk at the last minute from naming their tormentors. They want to see them punished, but calculate that if they are to live in Gujarat they can’t afford to antagonise their neighbours. Some dignify these ‘compromises’ as forgiveness. But in their hearts they know that these are acts of surrender. It’s not easy to feel resigned to see your tormentors walk free on the dusty paths of your village everyday.

Many people who filed charges against their neighbours for the crimes of 2002 found themselves embroiled in false criminal charges, and some even spent months and years in jail. They dropped their charges, as the price to be freed from jail and be relieved from false criminal cases against them. Young Muslim men also live in fear that they will be picked up for terrorist crimes. Many are forced to spend hopeless years behind prison walls on flimsy charges of which they may be acquitted. But who can return to them the lost years of their lives? And of those of their loved ones who wait all these years outside in penury and despair?

It does little to reassure the Muslim citizens of Gujarat that their persisting persecution under his watch hasn’t dimmed the sheen of chief minister Narendra Modi — an icon for legions of his admirers. He is celebrated by virtually every national corporate heavyweight for the rapid economic growth and ‘efficient’ administration offered by his stewardship of Gujarat. Yet, he refuses to apologise for the crimes of the dark months of 2002 and the complicity of his state administration. On the directions of the Supreme Court, his personal role has been investigated — and raises many doubts. His former home minister and senior police officers are in jail for extra-judicial killings. His public speeches are laced with barbs, which taunt and label the Muslim community as regressive, violent and unpatriotic. But these make him not less but more of a hero for millions of his adoring middle-class supporters.

Madhavrao Golwalkar, the second Sarsanghchalak of the RSS from 1940 to 1973, dreamed of an India where religious minorities could live only as second-class citizens. The India of his aspirations can be glimpsed in today’s Gujarat. But the Constitution promised all its citizens a land of equality and fraternity. Its pledges lie in tatters for the Muslim residents of Gujarat, nine years after their massacre stirred the conscience of the people of India. Neither the law of the land nor the legacy of the Mahatma in the land of his birth has secured for the survivors of 2002 justice, security, social dignity and freedom from fear. How many more years will they have to wait?

Harsh Mander in Hindustan Times. More Here

Arundhati Roy on Afzal Guru

Each of these pieces I have written over the last ten years are pieces I never wanted to write. And each time I wrote one, I thought it would be my last… Each time I write something I promise myself I’ll never do it again, because the fallout goes on for months; it takes so much of my time. Sometimes, increasingly, like of late, it turns dangerous. I actually don’t do research to write the pieces. My research isn’t project-driven. It’s the other way around—I write because the things I come to learn of from the reading and traveling I do and the stories I hear make me furious. I find out more, I cross-check, I read up, and by then I’m so shocked that I have to write. The essays I wrote on the December 13 Parliament attack are a good example—of course I had been following the case closely. I was on the Committee for the Free and Fair trial for S.A.R Geelani. Eventually he was acquitted and Mohammed Afzal was sentenced to death. I went off to Goa one monsoon, by myself with all the court papers for company. For no reason other than curiosity. I sat alone in a restaurant day after day, the only person there, while it poured and poured. I could hardly believe what I was reading. The Supreme Court judgment that said that though it didn’t have proof that Afzal was a member of a terrorist group, and the evidence against him was only circumstantial, it was sentencing him to death to “satisfy the collective conscience of society.” Just like that—in black and white. Even still, I didn’t write anything. I had promised myself “no more essays.”

But a few months later the date for the hanging was fixed. The newspapers were full of glee, talking about where the rope would come from, who the hangman would be. I knew the whole thing was a farce. I realized that if I said nothing and they went ahead and hanged him, I’d never forgive myself. So I wrote, “And his life should become extinct.” I was one of a handful of people who protested. Afzal’s still alive. It may not be because of us, it may be because his clemency petition is still pending, but I think between us we cracked the hideous consensus that had built up in the country around that case. Now at least in some quarters there is a healthy suspicion about unsubstantiated allegations in newspapers whenever they pick up people—mostly Muslims, of course—and call them “terrorists.” We can take a bit of credit for that. Now of course with the sensational confession of Swami Aseemanand in which he says the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] was behind the bomb blasts in Ajmer Sharif and Malegaon, and was responsible for the bombing of the Samjhauta Express—the idea of radical Hindutva groups being involved in false-flag attacks—is common knowledge.
To answer your question, I don’t really do research in order to write. Finding out about things, figuring out the real story—what you call research—is part of life now for some of us. Mostly just to get over the indignity of living in a pool of propaganda, of being lied to all the time, if nothing else.

Arundhati Roy in Guernica. More Here.

BJP is Brahmin Janata Party : Aakar Patel

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is sneeringly called the Brahmin-Baniya party, but this isn’t true. It is actually the party of Brahmins. BJP president Nitin Gadkari is Brahmin and so are the party’s leaders in both Lok Sabha (Sushma Swaraj) and Rajya Sabha (Arun Jaitley).

The BJP has always been a party of Brahmins. Founded in 1951 as Jana Sangh, the BJP’s first leader was Brahmin (Syama Prasad Mookerjee), its most important thinker was Brahmin (Deendayal Upadhyaya) and its most successful leader was Brahmin (Vajpayee).

The party’s top leadership is peppered with Brahmins (Murli Manohar Joshi, Ananth Kumar, Seshadri Chari, Kalraj Mishra, Bal Apte).
L.K. Advani is different, and from the Lohana caste.

The Brahmin gene is coded into the BJP by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose founder (Hedgewar), most important thinker (Golwalkar), current leader (Bhagwat), and previous leader (Sudarshan) were Brahmin, as was the author of Hindutva (Savarkar).
Except for one man (Rajendra Singh), every RSS sarsanghchalak since its formation in 1925 has been Brahmin.

The RSS’ Hindi weekly Panchjanya is run by a Brahmin (Baldev Sharma) while English weekly Organiser stars the Brahmin duo of Jay Dubashi and M.V. Kamath. The BJP newspaper Kamal Sandesh is also edited by a Brahmin (Prabhat Jha).

The Bajrang Dal’s warriors are led by a Brahmin (Prakash Sharma). Even Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh’s labourers are led by a Brahmin (Girish Awasthi). The Mazdoor Sangh’s leadership (see www.bms.org.in/representative.htm) is dominated by Brahmins, which is quite remarkable given India’s reality of caste in labour.

The RSS takes its Brahmins seriously and grooms them young. Student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is run by two Brahmins (Milind Marathe and Vishnudutt Sharma).

The organization’s female wing, Durga Vahini, is however run by a Brahmin (Mala Rawal).This concentration of Brahmins in central positions is for one reason: The Brahmin is the intellectual keeper of the Hindutva flame.


The Brahmin in caricature is wily when seen from the non-Brahmin perspective, and principled and uncompromising when seen from the Brahmin perspective. The Brahmin is also thought to be intellectual. But if intellectual means being open to ideas, he isn’t.

The word “ideologue” that our media uses for BJP leaders is correct. It must be understood in the narrow sense of holding a belief and not letting it go despite evidence. What is that belief? It is that India has one problem: Muslims.

The difference in orientation—Brahmin versus Baniya—shows in the priorities of the BJP and Congress.
The three big Congress ministers—Manmohan, Pranab and Chidambaram—are all economists. The three big BJP leaders—Advani, Swaraj and Jaitley—are none economically inclined.

We can read all 986 pages of Advani’s My Country, My Life and not encounter a thought or idea about his country’s illiteracy and poverty. Someone else will worry about them. Advani’s concerns are emotional—how Mother India is being ravaged by Muslims and Christians in Kashmir, Assam, North-East and so on.
The BJP isn’t interested in economics as a subject of politics, because Hindutva is not constructive but sullen. Though both Manu and Kautilya weigh in on it in their texts, economics has not been a Brahmin concern. The Brahmin’s concern has been keeping his identity pure.

The BJP’s electoral issues—Babri Masjid, Pakistan, uniform civil code and Article 370—are about identity. Specifically, about how Muslims must alter their behaviour. BJP social reform means demanding that others change.

The BJP’s ideology is not positive, in that it does not seek to create, but negative: Muslims should not keep that mosque, Muslims should not keep their civil law, Kashmir should not keep special status.

The BJP is the party of anger, and it represents our sentiment against Muslims, which is deep and universal. In that sense, the BJP has and will always have a larger constituency than the fifth it gets as its share of the vote.
The BJP represents Hindu chauvinism, which is quite ugly and which, as India grows muscular through the economy, the world will encounter with shock.

Like all parties in history that keep pointing to a minority as being the majority’s problem, the BJP’s leaders make their argument in reasonable terms.

The BJP’s rhetoric is calibrated and it always operates one notch below violence, though it understands what the consequences are. The BJP does the mischief and then steps back while violence visits Muslims and Christians.

In his autobiography Advani acquits himself of the murder of 3,000 Indians after his Rath Yatra by saying that the riots happened not along the Yatra’s trail, but elsewhere in India. The BJP sleeps comfortably with its actions, and the great Brahmin Kautilya teaches us in Arthashastra’s eighth chapter that citizens are expendable in the larger interest.

From Aakar Patel's analysis in livemint.com. More Here.

Now that Aseemanand has confessed, what about the innocent Muslim youth languishing in jails?

Whispers have become words. Murmurs have taken form of sentences. Private conversations and personal convictions are no longer confined within the four walls of a decrepit Muslim household. A quiet sign language has been replaced by a wild scream. The guilt-soaked eyes have got new sparkle of hope and redemption. The Indian Muslim has finally got the guilt-free-pass handed by a ‘devout’ Hindu priest Swami Aseemanand of Dangs, Gujarat.

 

Aseemanand’s judicial confession – that he and his Hindutva men were responsible for five major bomb blasts – has opened Pandora’s Box. The bees of the box have stung so many men in Khakhi. One confession has destroyed the credibility of countless police officers. It is safe to assume that Rajwardhan, the then Rural SP of Nasik, did not sleep properly on Friday night. He weaved a dangerous fictional tale in order to implicate 11 innocent Muslims in Malegaon’s 2006 blasts. It is equally safe to assume that the conscience of former ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi must be cursing himself. It was Raghuvanshi who proudly displayed sketches of two suspects who bought new cycles. How conveniently he forgot the fact that the sketches don’t match with the bearded Muslims languishing in jail! How conveniently he forgot the fact that Shabbir Masiullah, one of the accused, was already in Mumbai police custody since many months before the blasts! How conveniently he forgot the fact that Noorul-Huda, the accused number one, was under close police watch since many years! 

Aseemanand’s confession has brought open the divide within the CBI. The confession is an indictment CBI as well. CBI blindly followed the footprints of KP Raghuvanshi when it filed a supplementary chargesheet in Malegaon 2006 blasts repeating the lies woven by ATS. How conveniently CBI relied on ATS theory that Zahid, the Imam of Phoolsavangi, planted bomb when he was leading Friday prayers hundreds of miles away!  It is altogether a different matter that Aseemanand was arrested by CBI! Therefore it can be safely assumed that there are two kinds of CBI; one highly communal and the other secular. Does CBI stand for Communal Bureau of Investigation?

Harish Gupta, the then Hyderabad Joint Commissioner of Police, took inspiration from KP Raghuvanshi when he falsely implicated 19 Muslims in Mecca Masjid blast case.

The role of RSS has come on spotlight after Aseemanand’s confession. Ram Madhav, RSS spokesman, has said that confession was given under “duress”. He should know that it’s a judicial confession recorded as per the guidelines laid down in Section 164 of Criminal Procedure Code which says that confessions recorded before a magistrate are legally admissible evidence. Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab had given confession under the same section. It is very difficult to retract the confession given under this section. If one retracts confession then it is quite possible that perjury charges will be slapped on him. Retired Bombay High Court judge Justice Hosbet Suresh is of the opinion that the accused can retract his statement. In a recent interview Justice Suresh remarked, “Even if the prosecution relies on it, the magistrate who recorded the confession is summoned and he will give evidence in the court. The magistrate can be cross-examined”.

The communal and biased role of investigating agencies must be fully examined by Prime Minister Manmoham Singh. There is an urgent need for a legislation which will hold our investigating agencies accountable for their misdeeds. Delivering the Fourth R.N. Kao Memorial Lecture on January 19, 2010 organised by the Research and Intelligence Wing (RAW), Vice-President Hamid Ansari had called for greater “oversight and accountability” in the operations of the country’s intelligence agencies. He had suggested setting up of a standing committee of Parliament on intelligence. He passionately argued that just like other democracies like the United States and the United Kingdom, the “concerned agencies should make public their mission statement, outlining periodically their strategic intent, vision, mission, core values and their goals”. It is high time to implement the suggestion of Hamid Ansari. 

Similarly we need to have a mechanism in place whose job is to keep watch that no innocent is falsely accused on terror charges. 32 Muslims have been wrongly imprisoned on terror charges. Four years of incarceration has ruined their lives; their families had literally given up the hope that they will get justice. It remains to be seen how the Indian government is going to right the wrongs done by law-enforcing agencies. Will the offending police officers be booked under the same stringent laws which were abused by them? This will be the biggest test of Indian democracy.   

Indian Muslim’s quest for inclusion in new India will remain a dream unless the guilty police officers are punished. The average Indian Muslim is still trapped between two keywords: Justice and survival.  

From Mubashir Mushtaq's article in Inquilab. More Here

 

Unravelling Hindutva Terrorism

When the bombs went off at Malegaon in September 2006, killing about 40 people and injuring many more who had gathered for the Friday afternoon prayer at a local mosque, the first arrests were of Muslim men who were supposed to belong to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The police claimed to have cracked the case. Less than a year later, in May 2007, when a similar bomb exploded in Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid killing nine people, the police claimed that these were "sophisticated" bombs detonated via a cellphone located in Bangladesh and the main culprit was supposed to be a Muslim man affiliated to the Harkat-ul-Jehad al-Islami (HuJI). The police arrested some random young Muslims from the city and tortured them into confessing their "guilt". Six months later, when another bomb went off on the eve of the last Friday of Ramazan, in the Ajmer shrine in Rajasthan, it was again blamed on "jehadi terrorists".

It has taken the courageous, if simple, act by Hemant Karkare, the anti-terrorism squad chief of Maharashtra police, of following the available leads to show the linkages between the Malegaon bomb blasts and Hindutva-linked groups. Without this one single act, all these linkages would, perhaps, have remained hidden behind the lies and half-truths dished out by our security establishment. As is well known now, a group called Abhinav Bharat organised this attack. This group includes some religious figures as well as a serving officer of the Indian Army. There have been other clear instances of Hindutva groups involved in bomb making in Nanded, Kanpur, Bhopal and Goa. Most of these are linked to the Bajrang Dal, which is a front of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). There is now a clear linkage between the RSS and its fronts and personnel and a series of bomb blasts. This is apart from the evidence, much stronger, which links this redoubtable organisation, to scores of communal killings, the Gujarat riots of 2002 being the last of its "big" examples.

If terror derived from religious fundamentalism has one headquarter in India, it is the RSS. Their younger siblings, the Islamic, Sikh or Christian fundamentalists, though dangerous in their own ways, cannot match the organisational network, financial muscle or political legitimacy that the RSS – its affiliates and personnel – possess. After all, India’s principal opposition party is a 100% subsidiary of the RSS and it is the shrill communal politics of this "family" which has created that political climate where any terrorist act could be, despite all evidence, linked to Muslims.

Nevertheless, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism among Muslim communities is a serious issue. It has dangerous consequences, not just for its regressive social and political effects on the Muslims themselves, and needs to be fought with vigour. Islamic fundamentalism has also incubated and nurtured terrorist organisations and initiated violent acts, not just in India but also all over the world. None of this can be denied nor can the guard against Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism be lowered.

However, it is now amply clear that our security agencies, government institutions and ministries, specially the home ministry, are deeply compromised by communal prejudice. In each of the cases highlighted above, and in many more, the prima facie evidence, both forensic and circumstantial, pointed to the involvement of Hindutva groups. Yet, unmindful of all evidence, they refused to follow open, clear leads pointing to Hindutva groups, but rather went around building fairy tales about Islamic terrorism’s involvement, picking up random Muslim men (and some women), torturing them till they accepted their "guilt" and finally claiming success in the case. As late as January this year, when the Hindutva terror link to Malegaon had been firmly established, and the Rajasthan police were already questioning the accused of the Ajmer blasts for their links to the Mecca Masjid bombs, the Hyderabad police was merrily arresting Muslims who, they claimed, were linked to the Mecca Masjid blast of 2007. The complicity of the Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh police in the murder of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife, or the killing of Ishrat Jehan and her friends is now clearly established. There is also prima facie evidence of communal prejudice and wrongdoing in police action in cases like the Batla House encounter in Delhi. Unfortunately, the list of cases where communal prejudice by the police and security establishment is evident is so long that it can fill volumes.

While there has been some effort to recognise and address caste and gender prejudices and discriminations, there has been a certain cussedness about not accepting and redressing the discrimination and prejudice against religious minorities, particularly the Muslims. The present United Progressive Alliance government has taken some commendable steps to address this issue, primarily through reports of the Sachar Committee and the Ranganath Misra Commission. These have opened up space to discuss the structural discrimination and prejudice against Muslims in India as well as the measures needed to redress this. It is also true that the criminal link between Hindutva groups and bomb blasts has come to the fore under this regime. Nevertheless, this is not sufficient; urgent steps are needed to disinfect our security establishment of the communal virus. Whether the present Home Minister P Chidambaram can measure up to this task, and whether the Congress Party can find the political will to take on Hindutva inside the administration and state structures, is an open question.

From the editorial of EPW the Economic and Political Weekly

To read in full click here. and here

Prosecute the culprits who demolished the Babri Masjid

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) did very little during its first term to re-secularise Indian politics and society emphatically, barring the revamping of the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) to produce non-communal and pedagogically superior textbooks, and the establishment of the Sachar Committee on the status of Muslims.

Today is the right moment to decisively marginalise the BJP and reaffirm secularism. The best way to do so would be for the UPA to seriously pursue the prosecution of the culprits of the Babri demolition and the wave of violence which followed, and above all, the Gujarat pogrom. Simultaneously, the UPA should do all it can to empower the marginalised among the Muslim community by aggressively implementing the recommendations of the Sachar Committee and the Ranganath Mishra Committee.

The testimony of police officer Anju Gupta in the case against Advani and others in a Rae Bareli court is a landmark development, which holds the potential for bringing the perpetrators of the Babri demolition to justice. Anju Gupta’s account of the events of December 6 can and should be richly corroborated by other evidence, including eyewitness accounts and video footage of the inflammatory speeches by Sangh Parivar leaders and the kar sevaks’ actions.

The UPA would do the public a great disservice if it drags its feet on this case. The urgency to end the impunity of Hindutva leaders cannot be overemphasised.

From Praful Bidwai's article in Frontline

To read the full story click here.

RSS leader said ‘Ram is too effeminate to serve our purpose.’

In 1990-91 I had interviewed at great length the chief priest of the Ramjanmabhumi temple itself, Baba Lal Das, a remarkably courageous, ecumenical man of religion who was murdered soon after the mosque was demolished. He told me that during the previous seven years of the movement in support of the temple, no major political leader of the movement had cared to worship at the temple, except one who had got a puja done through a third party without herself visiting the temple.

I may tell at this point my favourite story about the devotion to Ram of the Hindu nationalists. Once, in the course of his only visit to an RSS shakha, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi looked around and found on the walls of the shakha portraits of some of the famous martial heroes of Hindutva such as Shivaji and Rana Pratap. Being a devotee of Ram, Gandhi naturally asked, ‘Why have you not put up a portrait of Ram also?’ Those were not the days of the Ramjanmabhumi movement and the RSS leader showing him around said ‘No, that we cannot do. Ram is too effeminate to serve our purpose.’

 .... ... ....

Many of the most famous temples of Ayodhya, the pilgrimage centre that has become a symbol of religious intolerance in South Asia today, were built with the help of land grants and tax exemptions given by the Shia Nawabs of Avadh in the pre-colonial days. By being patrons of temples, they were making a statement both on their position vis-a-vis the Ramanandis who dominated the sacred city and the Sunnis, constituting an important component of the Muslim community there. Likewise, when B. R. Ambedkar, the Dalit leader and writer of India’s Constitution, decided to convert to Buddhism along with a sizeable section of his followers, did so after much deliberation. It was not the standard Therawada Buddhism, with its closetful of deities that he chose, but a more austere Buddhism that, by being close to Islam and Christianity would represent a sharper disjunction with Hinduism. By his conversion, he was making a state­ment to the Hindu world.

From Ashish Nandy's thesis on 'The Present State of Gods and Goddesses in South Asia' in Manushi

To read the full report click here

Nikkamma number 1

First, I want to assert that I am not a blind supporter of Manmohan Singh. How could I love a man who openly declares his love for George Bush and who has stooped low to get an autograph of Obama! But, nevertheless, I didn't like the way he was ridiculed, scolded and derided by Luh purush L K Advani. The choice of the word Nikkamma was in bad taste. Manmohan Singh may have played with the destiny of the nation in bonding with USA. But to call him Nikkamma is different.

All these days, weeks and months the scathing comment by L K Advani never faded away. Now I was pleased to hear it from Khushwant Singh. Oh! what a reply it is! I enjoyed it. Each and every word of it.

Dr. Ajmal sent it to me. Thank you, Dr. Ajmal!!

Now read the story! It was published here and here.

Nikkamma number 1

By Khushwant Singh
Like millions, I watched Mohan Bhagwat’s press conference on TV. He is the head of the RSS; the BJP is the progenyNikkamma number 1 of the RSS. The BJP leaders had a bitter fallout and are looking for guidance from one who now represents their founding father.
Bhagwat did not commit himself to anything specific. Like any father would, he told his squabbling children to settle their differences between themselves, without involving him. However, he did express the opinion that it was time the BJP retired its old leaders and infused younger blood in the party. He did not name anyone, but it was obvious who he meant. That his voice counts a lot was proved by the fact that the next day most of the top leaders of the party, including L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Venkaiah Naidu went to call on him to get his aasheervad — blessings.
It can be assumed that the one man almost certainly to be asked to step down will be L.K. Advani. He should have left the political scene in a blaze of glory, but now not many tears will be shed for him. And for good reasons. Did he ever regret the role he played in the demolition of the Babri Masjid? If he did, as he claims, why did he not tender an apology? Did he regret the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat? If so, why did he protect Narendra Modi from being sacked as Prime Minister Vajpayee evidently wanted to do? Is it possible that as home minister he did not know of Jaswant Singh’s mission to Kandahar to swap three jehadi militants for 150-odd Indians held hostage in hostile territory? There cannot be an iota of truth in his statement that he knew nothing about Jaswant’s mission till it was over.
An important omission in the analysis of the rapid decline of the BJP is the role of the RSS. The BJP took its ideology from the RSS. Islamophobia was its motivating factor as it was of militant right-wing organisations like the Shiv Sena and Ram Sena. An increasing number of people no longer subscribe to this ideology. Membership of these parties has dwindled.
Mohan Bhagwat’s assertion that the RSS includes members of the minority communities, including Muslims, has to be taken with a large dose of salt. While he decides on replacements for Advani and Rajnath Singh, he should also take a closer look at the factors which have contributed to peoples’ disenchantment with what all these parties stand for and the readiness with which they resort to violence to achieve their ends.
I have no regret over Advani’s discomfiture and imminent fadeout from national politics. He has done grievous harm to our efforts to create a truly secular India. He described Manmohan Singh as nikamma — useless. It so happens, Manmohan is still much in use, while Advani’s own erstwhile colleagues have pronounced him as of no use any longer. It is as comic a tragedy as any we have witnessed in recent times.

Meena Kandasamy on "Rise of hindutva in Tamil Nadu" -I

Meena Kandasamy is the emerging face of Indian literature. She is from Chennai. She is basically a teacher and teaches college students about the nuances of poetry and literature. She is an established poetess now. Besides she is a social activist, writer, blogger, peace activist and a fine human being with a heart that beats. She likes to describe herself as a woman writer who is obsessed with revolutionary Dr.Ambedkar’s message of caste annihilation. Below it we present one of her article published in Boloji.com.

Doing It Everyday
Hindutva Consolidation and Conscription
in Tamil Nadu Through Celebrations

I hate, I despise your feasts
I take no pleasure in your solemn festivals.
When you offer me holocausts and grain offerings
I will not accept them...
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
And righteousness like an overflowing stream.
(The Book of Amos 5:21-24)

In the transformation of the Hindutva agenda that has included hard cash and hate consolidation, you don’t go in search of Gods, they come to your pavement, your doors. The city comes to a standstill, the juggernaut of the gods-and-devotees continues. The new-found religiosity is stifling and stunning and a little hard on your ears, but it is contagious. You are drawn into becoming a spectator, and not before long, the skeptic in you has put in the papers, you are part of the excited crowd, caught in the frenzy of fundamentalism that is caramel-coated with devotion. This one-after-another-after-another ensures that all days are holy days. Occasion is reduced to almost a routine. The weekend is downsized to being a jazzy, glitzy flamboyant festival. Like the kinky Osho once remarked, living becomes an eternal celebration. And, you are doing it everyday. Why worry if Hindutva is working on you 365/24/7? Arrey, nobody’s complaining yaar. Yes, but little knowledge has never been more dangerous. There is cause to complain only when we are made to realize (by none other than the Sangh Parivar) that this holding of festivals, this appropriation and hijacking of the public sphere is their program in the project of Hindu consolidation, mass conscription and ‘collectivization’.

In looking at the glamorous and much-photographed instances: say, the Vinayaka Chaturthi rituals in Tamil Nadu that occasionally result in loss of limb, or life, and waste of newsreel, we have ignored the larger, risky picture of what is happening the rest of the year. Choreographed Kumbh-melas and stage-managed rath yatras have their lesser known counterparts: itsy-bitsy Hindutva festivals that ravish daily calendars, that continue to be born everyday. Sociological analysis by Fuller, Geetha and Rajadurai , and Anandhi have studied the Vinayaka Chaturthi celebrations in the state of Tamil Nadu at great length. Their independent researches has shed light on the imitation and replication of the Maharashtra example in the immersion of Ganesh idols [Fuller], of the recruitment of the subaltern sections in this event [Anandhi], and the engineering of the clashes with the minority communities [Geetha and Rajadurai]. Fuller’s engaging thesis—the most recent study on the Vinayaka Chaturthi celebrations—describes of how the Sangh Parivar successfully appropriates local, traditional Hindu rituals to create a wider Hindu unity and establishes that “the primary goal for the Parivar in the utilization of such rituals is to persuade all Hindus to become conscious of belonging to a single, majority community.” Alas, Hindutva doesn’t stop with showing its might on the fourth day of the Bhadrapada. Hindutva celebrations are not once-in-a-year carnivals. Its like the local cinema screening sleazy films: there are four shows a day, and its almost always houseful. Or given the militant and deceptive posturing of the Orange Order outfits, here is a fitter illustration: Hindutva conscription is not always an imbecile Operation Shock Treatment (though that is resorted to during carnages, rapes, murders, and other cold-blooded lunacies). It is Operation Slow Poison. Every day, every week, every year. It works like tiny doses of arsenic, it percolates and mingles with your bloodstream, and before you are aware, you are dying the little deaths, someone else dictates your life. Such an assimilation is an all-year project.

In this paper, I have attempted to analyze the importance the Sangh Parivar lays on festivals as an integral part of their agenda of action, this continuous process of Hindutva conscription and consolidation through celebrations and rituals that are organized (or sometimes, hijacked); the varied attempts to appropriate the public space; the targeting of the oppressed sections and the women, its subsequent effects and the overall grave threat this seemingly innocent program poses to communal amity.

Sangh Parivar credo on festivals

The supreme ideologue of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), ‘Guruji’ M.S. Golwalkar believed that the festivals were a “medium of mass-awakening” besides the one-hour shakhas. In his Bunch of Thoughts, he wrote that “the tradition of national festivals that the Sangh has evolved is a potent medium of awakening the masses to our true and integrated national life.” So there dear readers, brace yourself for the first lesson we are to learn from a bunch of thoughts: the tradition of national festivals is what the Sangh has evolved. The festivals have not arisen out of centuries-old practice (how much more can they demean our ‘golden heritage’ that even according to their claims is five-thousand years old), or age-old traditions (parampara and sanskriti: where are they?). Instead the national festivals are mass-market products evolved by the Sangh.

Festivals differ largely from their one-hour-a-day meeting sessions. While shakhas are private bouddhik sessions for members only, Hindutva celebrations are sinfully different: they are bouddhik sessions for the public. It is an indoctrination amidst bhajans, it is a seduction in the midst of festive processions. If the freedom of imagination allows one to compare the shakha to a training ground of the desi Nazis, then the festivals are their fishing grounds. Every citizen is baited with what is scrumptiously called ‘cultural nationalism.’ The RSS, the parent organization of the large, unwieldy Sangh Parivar officially recognizes and observes only six national festivals. They are: Varsha Pratipada/ Yugadi (The Hindu New Year’s Day), Hindu Samrajya Dinostav (Coronation Day of Chatrapati Shivaji), Guru Pooja, Raksha Bandhan, Vijayadashami, and Makar Sankranti.

But this isn’t the norm for other members of the Parivar. Known for its dubious deviance from its claims, this issue is no different. Doublespeak arises out of their twice-born-ness. While the RSS recognizes only six days (please note the absence of the national independence day in this list), other organs of this large, fertile family have patented all calendar days for one festival or another.

It is widely known that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) carries the religious activities of the RSS, and is in charge of the festivals and celebrations. Let me attempt an analysis of the Hindutva Agenda of mass mobilization through a reading of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s statement on ‘Fairs, Festivals and Yatras’. Here are some excerpts from its official website: www.vhp.org

“The man is a social animal. He does not like to sit idle or live alone. He even wants to share his personal feelings of joy and sorrow with others. That is why he is fond of Festivals and Yatras as these are the main source of collectivization. The celebration has become the part and parcel of the human life since long.

In India celebration of fairs and festivals has become like a ritual. They are being celebrated separately according to one's faith, religion and custom. The festivity has special. significance in Hindu society as they are considered to be the real source., of imparting sanskara on the society. They are the reflectors of the memories of our great culture and civilization. In a Hindu house every day is a festival day.

Seeing the importance of Fairs, Festivals and Yatras, the V.H.P. started managing various Fairs, Festivals and Yatras to create the feeling of oneness and unity amongst various communities of Hindu society.”

I hate to interpret the obvious, to explain what dances from words set down in black and white. But an essay requires logical coherence, and an author’s indulgence now and then, to not only scream her ideas, but also to read out from between the lines.

The first statement is the recognition that festivals and yatras are the main source of collectivization. No wonder then, that the Sangh Parivar uses these festivals and yatras as the main tools in its political program. Religion, is not the criteria now, nor is dear-old-damned-for-dead spirituality. In the game of numbers, in the question of mobilization, the saffron wing has selected its potent machinery.

The second statement that needs to be given weight, is that every day is a festival day in a Hindu house. This is almost like dressing the sacrificial lamb before leading it to a butcher. Underlining the fact that there exists an innate religiosity in the Hindu home, is a way of preparing for that religious, festive fervor to be tapped, and exploited.

Next, we are told of how and why the VHP started ‘managing’ various fairs, festivals and yatras (that we collectively call as celebrations in this paper). Seeing the importance, or so the VHP says. Seeing is learning. Seeing is replicating. The VHP’s ‘management’ of fairs, festivals and yatras is not spontaneous, or devoted, or even remotely religious—it is a mere capitalization.

India's dangerous divide!! by Ramachandra Guha

A day after I heard a BJP leader denounce the Congress for making the Muslims into a "pampered and privileged minority," I found myself making a turn into the busiest road in my home town, Bangalore. Just ahead of me was a Muslim gentleman, who was attempting to do likewise. Except that he was making the turn not behind the wheel of a powerful Korean-made car but with a hand-cart on which were piled some bananas.

That the fruit seller was Muslim was made clear by his headgear, a white cap with perforations. He was an elderly man, about 60, short and slightly-built. The turn was made hard by his age and infirmity, and harder by the fact that the road sloped steeply downward, and by the further fact that making the turn with him were very many motor vehicles. Had he gone too slow he would have been bunched in against the cars; had he gone too fast he might have lost control altogether. Placed right behind the fruit seller, I saw him visibly relax his shoulders as the turn was successfully made, with cart and bananas both intact.

One should not read too much into a single image, but it does seem to be that that perilous turn was symptomatic of an entire life -- a life lived at the edge of subsistence, a life taken one day at a time and from one turn to the next. In this respect the fruit seller was quite representative of Indian Muslims in general. Far from being pampered or privileged, most Muslims are poor farmers, laborers, artisans and traders, says Ramachandra Guha, noted historian and writer.

Excerpts from his article :

In October 1947, a bare six weeks after India and Pakistan achieved their independence from British rule, the Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote a remarkable letter to the Chief Ministers of the different provinces. Here Nehru pointed out that despite the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim homeland, there remained, within India,

"a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want, go anywhere else. That is a basic fact about which there can be no argument. Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilized manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State."

In the wake of the recent incidents in Mumbai, these words make salutary reading. It seems quite certain that the terrorists who attacked the financial capital were trained in Pakistan. The outrages have sparked a wave of indignation among the middle class. Demonstrations have been held in the major cities, calling for revenge, in particular for strikes against training camps in Pakistan. The models held up here are Israel and the United States; if they can "take out" individual terrorists and invade whole countries, ask some Indians, why not we?

Other commentators have called for a more measured response. They note that the civilian government in Islamabad is not in control of the army, the army not in control of the notorious Inter Services Intelligence agency, the ISI not in control of the extremists it has funded. They point out that Pakistan has itself been a victim of massive terror attacks. India, they say, should make its disapproval manifest in other ways, such as canceling sporting tours and recalling diplomats. At the same time, the United States should be asked to demand of Pakistan, its erratically reliable ally, that it act more decisively against the terrorists who operate from its soil.

One short-term consequence of the terror in Mumbai is a sharpening of hostility between India and Pakistan. And, as is always the case when relations between these two countries deteriorate, right-wing Hindus have begun to scapegoat those Muslims who live in India. They have begun to speculate as to whether the attackers were aided by their Indian co-religionists, and to demand oaths of loyalty from Muslim clerics and political leaders.

There are 150 million Muslims in India. They have gained particular prominence in one area: Bollywood. Several top directors and composers are Muslim, as well as some of India's biggest movie stars. One, Aamir Khan, was a star and producer in "Lagaan," a song-and-dance epic about a game of cricket that was nominated for an Academy Award in 2002.

But Muslims are massively underrepresented in the professions -- few of India's top lawyers, judges, doctors and professors are Muslim. Many Indian Muslims are poor, and a few are angry.

Pakistan was carved out of the eastern and western portions of British India. To this new nation flocked Muslims from the Indian heartland. Leading the migration were the lawyers, teachers and entrepreneurs who hoped that in a state reserved for people of their faith, they would be free of competition from the more populous (and better educated) Hindus.

Pakistan was created to give a sense of security to the Muslims of the sub-continent. In fact, it only made them more insecure. Nehru's letter of October 1947 was written in response to a surge of Hindu militancy, which called for retribution against the millions of Muslims who stayed behind in India. Three months later, Mahatma Gandhi, who was both Father of the Indian Nation as well as Nehru's mentor, was shot dead by a Hindu fanatic. That act shamed the religious right, who retreated into the shadows. There they stayed until the 1970s, when, through a combination of factors elaborated upon below, they came to occupy center-stage in Indian politics.

From the 1980s, the dominance of the Congress party has been challenged by the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP seeks to make India a "Hindu" nation, by basing the nation's political culture on the religious traditions (and prejudices) of the dominant community. Charging the Congress with "minority appeasement," with corruption and with dynastic rule, the BJP came to power in many states, and eventually in New Delhi. However, its commitment to the secular ideals of the Indian Constitution is somewhat uncertain. For the party's members and fellow travelers, only Indians of the Hindu faith are to be considered full or first-class citizens. Of the others, the Parsis are to be tolerated, the Christians distrusted, and the Muslims detested. One form this detestation takes is verbal -- the circulation of innuendos based on lies and half-truths (as in the claim that Muslims outbreed Hindus and will soon outnumber them).

Another form is physical -- thus, the hand of the BJP lies behind some of the worst communal riots in independent India, for example Bhagalpur in 1989, Mumbai in 1992, and Gujarat in 2002; in all cases, an overwhelming majority of the victims were Muslims.

In its activities BJP is helped by a series of allied groups. Known also by their abbreviations -- RSS, VHP, etc. -- these were in the forefront of the religious violence of the 1980s and beyond. Roaming the streets of small- (and big-) town India, they addressed their Muslim prey with the slogan "Pakistan or Kabristan!" (Flee to Pakistan, or we will send you straight to your graves). Meanwhile, their ideologues in the press -- some with degrees from the best British universities -- make the argument that Muslims are inherently violent, or unpatriotic, or both.

In fact, the ordinary Muslim is much like any other ordinary Indian -- honest, hard-working and just about scraping a living.

A day after I heard a BJP leader denounce the Congress for making the Muslims into a "pampered and privileged minority," I found myself making a turn into the busiest road in my home town, Bangalore. Just ahead of me was a Muslim gentleman, who was attempting to do likewise. Except that he was making the turn not behind the wheel of a powerful Korean-made car but with a hand-cart on which were piled some bananas.

That the fruit seller was Muslim was made clear by his headgear, a white cap with perforations. He was an elderly man, about 60, short and slightly-built. The turn was made hard by his age and infirmity, and harder by the fact that the road sloped steeply downward, and by the further fact that making the turn with him were very many motor vehicles. Had he gone too slow he would have been bunched in against the cars; had he gone too fast he might have lost control altogether. Placed right behind the fruit seller, I saw him visibly relax his shoulders as the turn was successfully made, with cart and bananas both intact.

One should not read too much into a single image, but it does seem to be that that perilous turn was symptomatic of an entire life -- a life lived at the edge of subsistence, a life taken one day at a time and from one turn to the next. In this respect the fruit seller was quite representative of Indian Muslims in general. Far from being pampered or privileged, most Muslims are poor farmers, laborers, artisans and traders.

The failure to punish the perpetrators of successive pogroms has thrown some young men into the arms of fundamentalist groups. But the number is not, as yet, very large. And it is counterbalanced by other trends, for instance, the growing hunger for modern education among the youth. The desire to learn English is ubiquitous, as is the fascination for computers.

Even in the disgruntled valley of Kashmir, a press survey found that the iconic founder of India's most respected software company, Infosys Technologies, a Hindu named N. R. Narayana Murthy, was a greater hero among Muslim students than the founder of Al Qaeda.

Since the reasons for the poverty (and the anger) are so complex, a successful compact between Indian Muslims and modernity will require patient and many-sided work.

And the BJP must recognize, in word and in deed, that the 150 million Muslims in India have to be dealt with in a civilized manner, and given the security and the rights due them as equal citizens in a democratic and non-denominational State.

Writing in 1957, the historian Wilfred Cantwell Smith pointed out that Indian Muslims were unique in that they shared their citizenship "with an immense number of people. They constitute the only sizable body of Muslims in the world of which this is, or ever has been true."

True no longer, for in many countries of Western Europe and even in the United States, the Muslims are now a sizeable but not dominant component of the national population. This makes this particular case even more special. For if, notwithstanding the poisonous residues of history and the competitive chauvinisms of politicians, Indians of different faiths were to live in peace, dignity and (even a moderate) prosperity, they might set an example for the world.

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