INTOLERANCE DIALECTICS OF PATRIOTISM VS SECULARISM
Welcome to this
month’s article on Intolerance.
Whether it is Kiran Bedi or Sangeeta or Teesta Stelvad
or Pradeep Sharma or Sanjeev Bhatt,
all righteous oriented people have seen enough trouble in public life. Some news pieces
we shall cite as it is at the end, but such episode is nothing new whether it is left regime, Mayavati regime, Akhilesh / Mulayam regime / Mamta regime . Congress regime, for that, has been highest repressive
& it is so sad & surprising to note that WB CM who hesitates not to heckle a
Jadavpur University professor to
police custody just for drawing
some cartoons of hers. Elections were,
are & shall be most unfair in Bengal &
ruling party shall never garner
tolerance to bear media criticism , nor appreciate honest officers.
Officers toeing party lines shall
always be rewarded & it is
astonishing that so intolerant Mamata & her subjects
like Derek O Brien talk of Tolerance....!!!! People in Border districts are tolerating day in & day out the
influxes from across border & also the whole of Bengal are tolerating her ruthless political opportunism, oppression of opponents
& excesses of Namajs. We are all tolerating the influx of
BNP & Jamat cadres across border , chased by Awami League Govt &
the blasts happening here by
Bangladeshis plotting to kill Hassina sitting in Bengal.
Let
us start with a TOI news report;The excerpts from TOI:---
New Delhi: In unusually candid
remarks on Emergency, Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia on Friday said it
was a "mistake" and what happened during the anti-Sikh riots in 1984
was "wrong".
"Why can't we say together what
happened during Emergency is wrong. Let us not go back and forth on it. What
happened in the Sikh riots is wrong. Any loss of life in the country
irrespective of which government is in power, we need to say what is right is
right and what is wrong is wrong," Scindia said speaking at the Hindustan
Times Leadership Summit here.
Scindia insisted that people of the
country feel that there has been enough of "tu tu main main"
(sparring) about wrongs happening during the rule of one party or the other.
"Anywhere, If an incident is
wrong, it is wrong whether it concerns my party or some other. If something is
right is right. If something is wrong it is wrong. That is where lies the accountability
of a politician," he said asserting that the party affiliations come only
after humanity.
Asked to elaborate about his views on
Emergency, Scindia said that irrespective of what was the environment then and
that there is also a need to look at the issue contextually, "At the end
of the day if you if you hail our country for being the world's largest
democracy, you have got to stand for democratic values".
Disapproving of "any action,
which throttles the freedom of speech and expression", the Congress leader
said, "Emergency was a mistake" for our country when asked whether it
was a blot on the nation.
The remarks of Scindia come days
senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram openly
admitted the ban imposed on Salman Rushdie's controversial novel The Satanic
Verses during the regime of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was wrong.
Participating in a session called
"the Challenges Before Us", Scindia repeatedly targeted the NDA
government on the issue of intolerance and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi
of "not speaking out" on such incidents.
But it’s not
just The Satanic Verses . India has banned scores of books,
whether for hurting religious sentiments or because they broached political
and historical controversies. India is an odd sort of democracy, which clamps
down on the very lifeblood of democracy: free speech.
Here is a list of 11 books that
central and state governments need to unban immediately.
1.
Unarmed
Victory, Bertrand Russell,
2.
The
Polyester Prince, Hamish McDonalds ( on Antilla of Ambanis as nothing
lesser than a distinct state)
3.
Nine
Hours to Rama, Stanley Wolpert (a fictionalised account of Mahatma Gandhi’s
assassination written by the University of California historian, Stanley
Wolpert), on how Home Ministry provided scanty security to Gandhi on d D
day.
4.
The
Ramayana, Aubrey Menen
5.
Rangila
Rasul, which caused Lahore riots in 1927 for attacking Prophet & sowed
the seeds of Intolerance
Blasphemy in India
6.
Shivaji –
Hindu King in Muslim India, James Laine
7.
An Area
of Darkness, VS Naipaul (
8.
Great
Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, Joseph Lelyveld—on
Gandhi’s sexuality & homosexuality
9.
Jaswant
Singh’s Jinnah Biography ( banned in
Gujarat & some Hindu states)
10.
Lady
Chatterley's Lover, DH Lawrence
11.
The Lives
of Sri Aurobindo, Peter Heehs, ( a
cricism on the Avtaarship of Sri
Aurobindo)
In Delhi that
did not tolerate rape of Nirbhayaa & reverberated endlessly for days with
a fasting Anna, who had to end d
fast. In a city at d top of pollution table, the CM
Mr Arvind Kejriwal made zero intolerance
of corrupt Gandhi family
in Herald Tribune case.
The
paradox of Intolerance is nothing new
in India , where Geeta teaches
you not to pardon a foe but to kill
him if religion gets polluted. And
Chaandi / Durga emerges to save divine kingdom from wrath of demon by killing the demon himself. This is in
stark contrast with what
Jesus preached& Gandhi preached—peace n love. Indian mythology is more
inclusive of Maoist /
Marxist-Leninist doctrines in so far as
the way to win over an opponent is concerned. So, there is no Christian /
Gandhian pardon ceremony in Hinduism. The Hindu monarchy n feudalism
of ancient India thrived on strict punishments to errant / criminal, without any mercy pledge in
general. Buddhist monarchy brought in
the concept of peace n pardon & the
degree of peace preached by Ashok
in Sinhal / Ceylone is
well known by the tumultuous n atrocious Srilankan times at
Jaffna. So, to limit / restrict a Tolerance debate to a small time debate of 2015 is , to me, biased n inappropriate. Raja
Rammohan Roy brought in Brahma religion
as a reneissance over morbid Hinduism , long before Swamy Vivekananda went to
the world with the teachings of an illiterate wisest saint
Sri Ramakrishna that contended
“Jato mat, tato path”. This is the incarnation / reincarnation of Vaishnav philosophy & the
Sufism the Kabira way ; this is the
same Love message that
Chaitanya preached in face of
atrocities of Husein Shah. This is the
hymn of what Lalan Fakir , another near illiterate preached
to humanity.
But
Tolerance has not generally
been a
central theme of Aryan rules anywhere in the world. Even under the veil of
Democracy, both Napoleon & Hitler
evolved to highest soars on the strength
of principle & policies highly
intolerant of other clans . In the
name of Democracy , both extended Autocracy to a peak
of cynical treacherous tortures & even homicide, which no civilisation has
consented, howsoever financially
oppressive the other clan might be. And
today, just look at the bloody streets across Gaza; the same Jews , once butchered at gas
chambers , are killing boys, girls,
children & youths after financially suppressing the Palestinians , only on
the backing of the most powerful nation
of the world. So, where is tolerance?
Where was tolerance , when Christian
imperialists invaded India & African nations & ruled them for centuries , shackling &
enslaving millions & draining all their
wealth? When Sashi Tharoor raised
this basic common sense question in UK,
the support he got was from BJP & wrath he recd was from 10,
Janpath. Is Congress still afraid of British lords?
When Sashi Tharoor, in 2015, echoes the
Reparation payment demand , against
Depredation from 23% of world GDP
to 4% during 200 years of its rule, the Dadabhai Nawroji & Ramesh Ch Dutt way , “One-sixth of all the
British forces that fought in the war were Indian - 54 000 Indians actually
lost their lives in that war, 65 000 were wounded and another 4000 remained missing
or in prison.. Staying with India between 15-29 million Indians died of
starvation in British induced famines. The most famous example was, of course,
was the great Bengal famine during the World War II when 4 million people died
because Winston Churchill deliberately as a matter of written policy proceeded
to divert essential supplies from civilians in Bengal to sturdy tummies and
Europeans as reserve stockpiles…. We literally paid for our own oppression. And
as has been pointed out, the worthy British Victorian families that made their
money out of the slave economy, one fifth of the elites of the wealthy class in
Britain in 19th century owed their money to transporting 3 million Africans
across the waters. And in fact in 1833 when slavery was abolished and what
happened was a compensation of 20 million pounds was paid not as reparations to
those who had lost their lives or who had suffered or been oppressed by slavery
but to those who had lost their property….. Indian taxpayers had to cough up a
100 million pounds in that time’s money. India supplied 17 million rounds of
ammunition, 6,00,000 rifles and machine guns, 42 million garments were stitched
and sent out of India and 1.3 million Indian personnel served in this war. I
know all this because the commemoration of the centenary has just taken place. But
not just that, India had to supply 173,000 animals 370 million tonnes of
supplies and in the end the total value of everything that was taken out of
India and India by the way was suffering from recession at that time and
poverty and hunger, was in today's money 8 billion pounds. You want
quantification, it’s available. World War II, it was even worse - 2.5 million
Indians in uniform. I won't believe it to the point but Britain's total war
debt of 3 billion pounds in 1945 money, 1.25 billion was owed to India and
never actually paid.”, the same Congress
that fought British colonialism &
INA at same breath , cried foul & NAMO praised him overwhelmingly. Is it Tolerance?
Is it Tolerance to admit n absorb
n absolve all atrocities put in by Babar, Alauddin, Aurangzeb, Ghazni
, Nadir Shah & Chengiz Khan? Is
it Tolerance to absorb all atrocities by Shakas, Hunas,
Pathans & Moghuls ? It was a weak
Indian Aryans , after 5000 years of
invasion of lands habited by
aboriginal tribes & defeating them,
may be fatigued, that gave way to Muslim
feudal lords . Bandemataram echoes
the resurgence of that Hindu spirit
against Islamic predomination
/ oppression , with the Reneissant aid from the Western powers , the wisdom n
knowledge & social reforms that followed the
liberation la Constantinople.
But atrocities of British
Raj was
not so explicit to
public, since atrocities by the likes of Tipu Sultan &
Sirajauddulla were predominant
& only the Sepoy mutiny gave some credence to the freedom struggle against a common enemy from Britain. In fact, whether it is Indigo oppression or
Permanent settlement, it was peasantry which suffered &
it was local feudal landlords ,
who reaped rich harvests .
Religious oppression of centuries
drove dalits to convert
to Islam or Christianity , which too failed to eliminate their
age old tolerance of Oppression n
injustice in the hands of upper castes . But
these poor souls’ conversion resulted
in turn of events , as Hindu majority feudalism flourished under British raj
& Hindus became
new rulers of poor Muslim prajas. Division of Bengal by
Carzon saw the emergence of Hindu militancy against British Raj
& throughout the Independence movements across provinces & monarchies,
participation by Muslims remained an
issue , unless local rulers were
deprived or deceived by the British. So, Jugantar , Aurobindo, Alipore bomb case, Khsudiram & Prafulla Chaki,
most of
revolting terrorism sprung forth with chanting of Bandemataram ,
which was adopted
from the great anti-Muslim novel
by Bankim Chatterjee ,viz Aanandamath ,
much to the discontent of Muslim population, and whether Bagha Jatin to Surya Sen or BBD to Matongini Hazra, most of revolting names come forth from Hindu clan only even
after 1942 Quit India Movement
started off with a big bang. As portrayed
by Tagore in Ghare Baire, Chaar
Adhyay, Chokher baali & Gora, &
Pother Daabi by
Saratchandra, the majority face
of extremist as also moderate pan
India anti British movement was
Hindu & there were
very few Muslim fires of Nazrul’s
stature, who could lead
a literary movement against the Imperialist forces single handed .
Frontier Gandhi , Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
etc were all mostly from the moderate clan .
This
divide & frustration of tolerance
was manifested in the post Independence riots &
the long Tolerance by
Bengali Muslim in Bangladesh
, especially on intellectual front outburst against
the opportunist Muslim Feudal
Democracy ‘s oppressive &
tyrannizing regime on a great 21st Feb , leading to the creation of the only nation in the world carved off
a linguistic movement.
The ethnic cultural history of India made religion as a part & parcel of daily ritualistic life of India, of habits , totems , & practices, which
was not a case in the new nations of West. So, Secularism induced
the new state of 1947 to give equal
patronage to all religions
instead of dissociating with either religion .
So, for Irfan Habib or Romila Thapar
to complain of INTOLERANCE
growing just for last 3—6 months may be premature.
The paradox is,--- Nayantara Sehgal
should have been more perturbed during
emergency/ MISA. And same is true
for aged academicians. Unfortunately, during Naxalite Movements during 1969-1972 , when
police n Congress atrocities on common
masses, especially refugees crossed all
limits, only Mahashweta Devi had the
guts to write the novel 1084’s
mother. Hardly any voice was heard from Ray, Sen, & host of others in fear
of retribution. Is it not similar to the
same MISA fear n fear of harassment faced by professors n leftist pundits that Girsish Carnad was afraid this year? Was he afraid of life
to take back his claim of glory for Tipu
Sultan.
Vijay Tendulkar & Mahesh
Elkanchuar created several
great plays. In one of them, I
recall, the Mumbai riot was beautifully portrayed, where a Muslim family
was sheltered as Hindus
by a Hindu family but at dead of night , in promise of transporting them
safely to a Muslim area, they are handed over
to Shivsena / VHP/ Bajrandal
hooligans. And get butchered. This was
the period of real worry,--- in
the aftermath of 1992 Babri carnage. All of these intelligentsia afraid today
were alive but did not return
awards complaining of Intolerance. This is the dark time that created a demon Memon carved out of one very competent &
successful, achiever CA. And, as we all saw, Mr Jagdish Tytler
was not hanged for Sikh carnage, nor any Hindu leader—Asimananda to any sadvi. Even the blackest chapter in Indian political history beyond
Congress, -- the Gujarat carnage of
2002 did not incite
any such mass grievance.
The real grudge of intellectuals may
be different. The mostly leftist historians, economists to social scientists to
academicians are already all perturbed
the way Smriti Irani is running the show & the way Censor board to NFTI
are being run. A parallel International
film fest to the official one is an evidence thereof. The great showbiz NAMO has stopped
his Mon ki baat after his hollow calls for
swachchhata & Beti bachao
have yielded scanty results. Industry is disgruntled over 0.5 % rise in SB
Cess imposition. And is also disgruntled over
no conspicuous progress in opening up road, rail, water sectors
with public funds... just
some non-populist propaganda
oriented insurance & remote bank integration....cement to steel to infra ... the whole
share market is reeling under
China fever n there is no rescue way out. And, coming to intellectuals, there
have been threats n challenges
to so many films over the years n films like Shool could
not be released in whole of
Bihar. After Viswarupam, Kamal Hassan was too frustrated to
want to leave India. Aamir
Khaan’s fault was, he was late in responding to confirm that he won’t leave
India, but just watch Nandita’s Fieaq
again, or the play I cited a
few minutes back , & feel, you are a Minority living in a radical majority den & then speak out your feelings. You shall probably be a
similar father or mother , not much different from Amir n Kiran. Yes, he retracted n reacted to the huge hues n cries... after all, he is Amir Khan, & Mr Anupam Kher & Mr Ramgopal Verma did not bother to ask RSS
& SHIVSENA why, on drop a hat, a
Muslim would be charged with Sedition?
And did not ask, how dare any bloody
Hindu hooligan on street ask Amir or Shahrukh
to leave India for Pakistan?
Nobody dared, & unchallengable Shivsainiks n Sanghpracharaks give
birth to unchallengeable bhais across Mumbai , UP, Bihar... True, PK could not happen easily in any other country
, nor OMG; Tasleema said it in no uncertain terms. But, as
President Pranab Mukherjee put it
in his speech , when the minds are so full of dirt, how can sadvi ministers clean
our nation n rivers off filth n
dirt????
Dr Abhijit Roy was killed, another 5
killed in Bangladesh... Dr Kalaburagi killed in Karnataka , not a single
murderer got caught . Dadri lynching
is just a surface to a
BIG BLACK HOLE... in a country,
headed by an RSS man whom most of world
reckons as the biggest culprit of
Gujarat carnage ,, Indian SC issues a freechit
to him & this man goes
silent whenever people
vote out BJP
howsoever patakas sparkle in
Pakistan. This man goes dumb, when Dr
Amartya Sen is humiliated & DU to
IIT tops; this man goes deaf ,
when in the name of ghar wapasi innocent
Christian n poor Muslims are targeted; this man
enjoys million rupee suit n popular show hosting in US & UK ,
when farmers are on suicide spree for
lack of MNREGA sustenance support in drought hit areas,
& he shirks off his responsibility like his party president, when his MP
& Minister go to a SP
ruled state & instigates
killing of an innocent Muslim , because, he believes too firmly that he
does not owe any responsibility in
a state
not run by his govt.
Bihar has ousted NAMO, Delhi has ousted, rural Gujarat has broken his shining India image, all ports
are running under a dishonest alliance admonished by ruling
party, Vyapam scam – infested
CM is ruling high
in MP, All the IASs
& NGOs are
under daily harassment , whosoever
are not toeing
NAMO line, but how long??? Is anybody
really omnipotent? All the intelligentsia is
disgruntled today, because even Atal behari Bajpayee never
silently supported any of
the divisive or
polluting agendas as are consented thru silence by today’s head of state & realizing
that D day may be nearing,
2016 may see more
Hindu hooligans raising ugly heads
crushing bomb blasting Memon bhais’
mastheads all over BJP strongholds .
When political columnist Tavleen Singh
asked a question about the Paris attacks and Islam, he replied, “A person who
is holding a Koran and killing people, he may feel [he] is doing an Islamic
act, but as a Muslim I don’t feel he is doing an Islamic act... He is a
terrorist and we should recognise him as a terrorist. My problem is not just
with the ISIS, but it is with that kind of thinking... This extreme thinking is
what I worry about.”
The above piece about Amir Khan
clearly depicts the mindset of an
average Indian Muslim whether married to a Hindu or not, but secular credentials of whom cannot be challenged by street side
Romeos n cameos. Average US
Citizen has reposed
faith in Barck Obama , because at
all crisis hour he is available by the side. But an average
minority in today’s India
knows, NAMO is not his PM, he shall not stand by him at his hour of
need. Just because
I am a Hindu & an RSS ideologue , I have right
to do anything & just
because you are a Muslim , you
have to measure each of words without freedom of speech is a Pakistan like immaturity n emotional idiocy, as Rahul
Gandhi has put it. And Dhabolkar to Pansare to Kalburgi to Ananthmurthy are
bigger assets of the nation, to crores beyond sangh parivar &
outside India than Saskshi Maharaj, who
adores Nathuram Godse as a Patriot.
Indian history could not be
rewritten by Murlimanohar Joshi , nor the staunch rightists be able to do that this time;
only Standard & Poor ranking for India is going down daily despite NAMO’s sincerest efforts resulting in upgrading India’s rank in Ease
of Business Index substantially.
And the stubbornness of the
rulers is reflected in the way they have humiliated
old BJP stalwarts like Arun
Shourie & Advani &
the Indira like autocratic n authoritarian style is explicit in the way GOI is handling Parliament , only to
fail in most fronts. In 2015, nobody would have made Indira
Gandhi a Priyadarshini PM whatever be her success in carving out
a free nation out of Pakistan.
And when the CM of
Haryana or Governor of Assam can
give anti-Muslim &
pro-Hindu statements without
reprimands n removals from PM,
like the provocative
remarking Advaitanath & Sadvis ,
any intellectual assuming India to be an intolerant country would be 100%
correct in his assumption.
Of all
animals, cow is d most sacred in India, strangely,
whereas tiger, lion ,garuda,
peacock,rat,owl, swan etc are carriers
of our great gods & goddesses but they
are not holy. But Cow on a
balloon nay a plastic cow caused
removal of Bovine Divine sculptor
Anish Kapoor from a Rajasthan Govt panel &
it may be more intolerant than
murder of idol worship
hater Kalaburgi. Tolerance means just towing rowdy
Sangh / Shivsena line today or
else risk property, fame, life...NRIs
are no bigots but for last 2
years they are hero worshipped much more , & talents ;like Dr Vinayak Sen are charged with sedition...!!! By any means,
Indians escaping hate socio polity
across Jaath to goth to caste Hindu lands
cannot be subjugated / relegated
to dust at the cost of spring cuckoos that shall flees as spring shall be over. Since independence there
have been many riots & I personally
have followed the course of dalit uprise in Bihar’s hinterland, where CPI(ML) garnered strength & imparted that to have-nots
after massacre of 16
dalits by Ranveer sena. 32 Bhumihar
males were butchered by kasais @ 100/- per head. That has not
reduced atrocities harped /
showered on dalits in Punjab, Haryana, northern Rajasthan &
western UP. It has not reduced rape n
murder of dalit girls even in ruling family’s bus... Abduct n forced marriage of poor
girls from eastern states , from
gunpoint dance parties, to multiple
brothers into Draupadi lives are
running unabated. In a
country where Brahmin
Shaivites &
Vaishnavites, Lingayats n
Iyers-Iyengers-Nayars -Pandeys hold
the most of the power & below that
power is grabbed by Rajputs.,
Thakurs , Bhumihars, reservation
has made rich OBCs richer;
Yadavs to Kamas to Kapus the
power centers; & harijans the
ultimate champions of tolerations
. There are just handful of mahadalits gone up the
economic echelons , rest are unable to ride the ladders whatever be the degree of incentives.
All
of a sudden people who do not even know the full text n context of Vandemataram are
too active in implementing Total
stand up by audience , by law. And
minorities who do not stand up ,
are kicked out of hall / charged huge fine/ surrender of passport. Even
Pretty Zinta engages in such zealous act
. This is primitive. In US a citizen has
a democratic right to ignore a special homage to national flag & models
wear innerwares made in national
flag design.
In Parliament, Rajnath Singh said the
literal translation of the word is "sect neutral" and not
"religion neutral" or "dharm nirpeksh". "India's
religion is already dharm nirpeksh," he said. ? Some would argue that it
is the BJP's insistence on a monolithic Indian culture that lies at the heart
of the intolerance seen in recent months. Pushparaj Deshpande, an analyst with
the Congress Party, contrasts the idea of a secular Constitution with the concept of a Hindu Rashtra. During the
earlier NDA regime people believed that Prime Minister Vajpayee could not turn
his eyes away from social conflicts beyond a degree because it was presumed the
BJP’s coalition partners in the government would mount pressure on him to
uphold, to use his own term, raj dharma. This comfort is no longer ours.
Today, people know, ruling party is engaged in Love Jihaad , much more than Make in
India. There may be no denial of Tipu Sultaan’s massacre of 200 Hindus. But
that he fought British should not need
a threatened Girish Karnad
to drop the demand for
renaming BIAL after him.
At the same time, Govt of
Karnataka’s decision to celebrate Tipu Anniversary is more
Muslim patronizingly political.
Now, just have a look at the following
treatise excerpts from Scroll,--
***This proclamation of Indian
tolerance is meant to showcase Hindu magnanimity, which, it is asserted,
envelops the “sisterly” traditions of Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. It is the
Muslims and Christians who are intolerant – they refuse to accept their
Hindu-ness or find the Idea of Hindu problematic – and of course the liberals.
***Everything is hunky-dory with the
nation, they claim. Tolerance is India’s signature and never has it been as
pronounced as it is now. Had so-called liberals not been muddying the waters,
India’s spirit of tolerance would not have been questioned today.
***Hindutva’s sway has been checked,
and people are rebutting majoritarianism. But the real credit for initiating
this must go to the students of the Film and Television Institute of India who
pressed their demand for the removal of the new institute chairman for months,
even after the media lost interest in their agitation.
***In the past too we have protested
regimentation, bullying, arrogance and bigotry in this country, like when
Nayantara Sahgal sharply criticised the draconian Emergency regime, or when
people spoke up after the Babri Masjid demolition, the 1984 Delhi riots and the
2002 Gujarat riots. The People’s Union for Civil Liberties founded by
Jayaprakash Narayan, PEN International and NGOs too numerous to name have
raised the red flag at different times with courage and conviction.
***Khushwant Singh, we must recall
with pride, had driven to the residence of President Giani Zail Singh to return
his Padma Bhushan after the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.
****The much deeper issue is the way
these akademis and ministries use awards to gain a hold over academic,
scientific and artistic communities. Without doubt, many members of these
collectives have, and continue to, pamper people in control of these bodies.
Everyone knows this, including those who have received the recognitions without
indulging in vulgar lobbying. When these clean recipients accept their awards,
are they not unwittingly being party to practices that undermine the value of
their work. And beyond themselves, have they not reduced the value of academic,
scientific or artistic integrity and independence? Have awards not been given
to the same intolerant people that the returnees today oppose on principled
grounds? Getting an award is a moment of great pride, but we fail to recognise
that this pride blinds us to the larger malaise afflicting these recognitions.
Intolerance begins right there. We have not seen the same national condemnation
from us, the self-proclaimed liberal group, of the ridiculous sedition charges
against the Tamizh folk singer Koven and the way he was arrested. Engaging with
the society cannot be a reactionary process, it has to be observational and
constant. We have to remain sensitive and proactive even in the most peaceful
of times. Did we need to wait for the death of people to speak up in an
unequivocal voice? In the past few months, India has witnessed an alarming rise
in attacks against minorities, over 600 cases of violence (406 targeting
Muslims, the rest against Christians) have occurred between May 2014 and May
2015. In the last five months, countless such instances have been recorded with
lynchings in Dadri, Udhampur, and Uchekon Moiba Thongkhong being just the most
prominent. We have seen people being murdered for nothing more than “offensive”
comments on social media, and for transporting beef. Similarly, atrocities
against Dalits have registered a 19% increase (47,064 cases in 2014, a majority
after May). Again, 2015 has seen horrific caste atrocities in Faridabad, in
Ahmednagar and in various places across India.
****“Unfortunately…our Constitution
has…given equal rights to everybody, just as a person without understanding may
give equal rights to his children and to the thieves in his house and
distribute the property among all”, said Golwalkar.
****Two articles in
RSS’ Organiser (on 30th November, 1949 and 25th January 1950)
demanded that instead of the Constitution, the Manumsriti be enacted
as the law of the land. This is the same document that Ambedkar publicly burnt,
because it prescribes that:
1. Women are an embodiment of the
worst desires, hatred, deceit, jealousy and bad character. Women should never
be given freedom (IX-17 and V-47 & 147).
2. The Lord has prescribed only one
occupation for the Shudra, to serve meekly the other three castes (I, 91).
3. Killing a woman, a Shudra or an
atheist is not sinful (IX-17 and V-47 & 147).
4. If the Shudra intentionally listens
for committing to memory the Veda then his ears should be filled with molten
lead and lac (III-4).
*** The debate over film actor Aamir
Khan's comments has gone so far off the rails that it has inspired, among other
things, the perfect Hindutva sentence. But the discourse seems dangerously disconnected from what was
actually said and done, almost as if real individuals and what they say don't
matter in what appears to be a higher-level drama played out on a broader
stage. Nuance no longer matters. Say the word intolerance, and you're a
politically motivated, anti-national, paper rebel who is actually being
intolerant. Here's the thing though: It's not all that hard to present an
alternative narrative in which what Khan said could be championed by the same
patriots who are going hammer and tongs at him now.He said that he was
concerned about people committing crimes not being brought to justice and about
government representatives not making responsible statements in the aftermath
of messy incidents. Moreover, he made it abundantly clear he wasn't pinning the blame on one party, using as his example what went wrong in 1984.
***Narendra Modi was not always prime
minister of the country. He has, however, admitted that there have been times
when Indians were ashamed to be from this country. Instead of leaving, Modi too
remained in the country and made efforts to change the way things are. In many
cases that involved appearing in front of large crowds of people and
bemoaning the state of India. Khan essentially did the same thing.
***Back in August, I read a heart-warming piece by a Jewish Indian named Nathaniel Jhirad that celebrated
India’s ecumenism and religious diversity. Recalling the chant of his
synagogue’s hazan being followed immediately by a similar sounding azaan
issuing from a nearby mosque, Jhirad wrote, “This is what it means to me to be
Jewish in India: The idea that multiple faiths can peacefully intermingle not
only doesn’t shock us, as it does for some in the West ‒ it’s actually
taken for granted."
***This is not to say I found England
an intolerant society. On the contrary it was in most ways far more tolerant
than India. But its tolerance had a very different texture, seeming like
something learned gradually, with difficulty but also determination, while
India appeared from a distance like a society where tolerance had grown
organically, and has a far longer history, and was more deep rooted for that
reason.
*** While India’s tolerance was
deeper, though, it was not as wide as England’s, for it was based on a respect
for religious rights and customary rights but did not extend to any modern conception
of individual rights as a whole. To illustrate what I mean, think of the
incident . A few months ago where the Shiv Sena MP Rajan Vichare, dissatisfied
with the food served in Delhi’s Maharashtra Sadan, acted in the manner typical
of a Shiv Sainik, stuffing a chapatti in the mouth of a catering supervisor.
The man happened to be Muslim, and happened to be fasting for Ramzan. The
offence, captured on a cell phone video, was momentary, and appeared so even
when looped in slow motion on news channels, but Vichare found few defenders
even among Hindutvavadis, for he had transgressed against a religious taboo
respected even by those who didn’t share it. The same regard for
religious and customary rights makes Indians wary of European laws that restrict
the wearing of turbans and burkhas. At the same time, far more serious
violations of human rights and Indian law, such as the torture that we all know
is routine in police stations across the country and often directed at
innocents, do not evoke anger or elicit any protest from the population at
large.
**** Those unfamiliar with Islam tend
to view it on the basis of news reports the way the two Yale professors viewed
life in Bombay. Conversely, Muslims who experience their religion as grounded
in amity, goodwill and compassion respond to news reports of terror by saying,
“This is not Islam at all." And both sides are wrong in the sense of
failing to capture the complexity of what I have called limited but organic
tolerance. In this light, it is easy to understand the negative reaction of
large sections of the public to intellectuals returning awards in protest
against growing intolerance. One would wish the responses were less personal
and vitriolic, but their general drift is natural. These are people who experience
daily the respect for religious rights evident in Indian society, and can’t
understand why a few isolated and seemingly unexceptional incidents have led
people to take such a step.
****India is a rare but not unique
case in its tradition of organic tolerance. Across Asia in particular, we find
numerous examples of communities living together through some form of amicable
compromise that stops short of a liberal recognition of individual rights. We
also find examples of those traditions coming to an end, often a violent one,
under the pressure of nation-states defining themselves in narrow religious,
ethnic, or linguistic terms that fail to capture their historic diversity.
Pakistan is the most obvious example of that unfortunate trend.
****Where is a sense of justice in
India today, in Dadri or beyond? On which topic – minority protection or
otherwise – did we hear a word of reassurance from Modi? Did he tell his chief
minister in Haryana to stop talking about cows and instead focus on removing pigs
wallowing in muck outside the Cyber City in Gurgaon? Did his party offer a word
of solace to the family of the poor Kashmiri trucker killed by goons on the
Jammu national highway? Did he speak to his government in Rajasthan and ask why
it felt the need to remove a Safdar Hashmi poem from a textbook? The fact is
that many in India do feel a sense of despondency today and it runs beyond
the minority community. One doesn’t have to be a Muslim to see how Modi’s
silence has emboldened hoodlums who see it as his tacit approval and, as a
result, are leaving their internet troll avatars behind to come out on the
streets.
**** All baseless
news items are high on page 1 , while
daily political intolerances in West Bengal are becoming unbearable to stir up the Tolerance-Intolerance coexistence fabric of India, the way Islamists & Extremists coexist
& wealth n fear coexist in Gujarat & Punjab.
An article from The Telegraph that you
may have all read out... it is just one of so many happening each
month, but no national newspaper found it important to put it conspicuously.
What happened to Dhiren Let, a former four-time
MLA of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), in Mayureshwar in Bibhum
district on Saturday should have been on the front page of all the national
dailies. It, however, found place in only The Telegraph.
"I joined active politics in 1962 and have been a CPM member since 1968. I have seen a lot but nothing can match today’s experience.
I was pleading – not for my life but for my dignity – as the attackers wanted to take off my clothes in what would have been a very public humiliation.
I had to hold my ears and squat in public, and promise to dissociate myself from the CPM. I did it to spare myself further indignity.
Nothing can be more humiliating than a (former) four-time MLA being stripped in his (erstwhile) constituency in public. I feared that could happen and pleaded with them. In the process, tears rolled down my cheeks.
We were 250-odd and had begun our march from Gargaria in Mayureshwar (about 190km from Calcutta) at 10am and reached the village of Satpalsa half an hour later.
Around 10.35, while passing through Satpalsa’s marketplace, the rally was attacked from behind by 50-odd people who carried rods and sticks. We identified some of them as Trinamul activists. Eight to 10 cops had been deployed for our rally but they disappeared.
Most of us started running but I came back when I saw from a distance that my colleagues Ray (the MLA), Dom (a party central committee member and former Bolpur MP), Arup Bag and Faridar Rahman (local politicians) were being mercilessly thrashed. That’s when some among the attackers got hold of me. There were 15, or perhaps a few more. I knew many of them by face as active Trinamul workers. While some of them started beating me, others - and this was unforgivable - tried to strip me. They kept saying, 'we’ll finish you here today”, and (among themselves) “bring out the bombs and wipe them out'. They were hurling expletives. Some of them reeked of alcohol. Most were young enough to be my son or grandson. It was all happening in front of hundreds of local people in and around the marketplace. Not one protested. At one point, with my bloodstained clothes half torn, I stood up and tried to scamper away, limping in excruciating pain. But they caught me. That’s when that video was taken. At least 10 times they made me hold my ears and squat while barking out an oath for me to repeat - an oath to detach myself from the party. It was extremely insulting. But I was by then determined to live to fight another day. So I went through the motions and they let me off. *** Last year, Bishnu Chaudhary from Bansberia in Hooghly district was dragged out of his house to a local club, battered and burnt with cigarette buttsfor the crime of attending a rally of the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party. News of vehicles being waylaid on the way to BJP rallies did not shock the people of Bengal. Of course, it can be argued that the culture of political violence in Bengal is not new. The CPM had practiced it for so long and with such impunity that it assumed a veneer of normality and became an accepted democratic method. It was, after all, under the Left that Bengal turned into a party state with no dividing line between the party and the government. It was also the CPM-led Left Front government that responded with an iron hand when peasants protested against it. One cannot forget that Medha Patkar, a greatly respected activist, was accosted and slapped by CPM members while she was on her way to Nandigram, where farmers were agitating against the usurpation of their land. In his heyday, senior CPM leader Prakash Karat had declared that violence was part of the everyday political culture of Bengal – whatever his party did, therefore, was normal. This was the way political opponents should be treated, he seemed to suggest. Still, during the days of the CPM hegemony, local party committees had some degree of control over the violence. Now there are no constraints, nobody to curb the violence. The Trinamool Congress has replaced the CPM in all spheres and delegated violence to local goons. Besides, it must be asked, can the history of violence justify the events of today? Last year, the ascendance of the BJP at the Centre had sparked fears that it could soon replace the CPM as the second biggest political party in West Bengal. Strengthening these fears, CPM members migrated en masse to the saffron party. This too resulted in more violence. But today, while the CPM seems to be regaining its old space under the leadership of Suryakant Mishra – who has managed to drag the demoralised party out of its offices and on to the street – the Trinmool Congress has become even more desperate. The temerity of its leadership can be seen in their statements. Dismissing the allegation of the involvement of the Trinmool Congress in the attack on Dhiren Let, one of its leaders said that instead of running to the press and crying before it, the CPM should seek their protection before taking out processions. And what is our response to this violence? In the early days of it, when some respected writers and intellectuals were asked to join a protest against the attacks on the CPM by the Trinamool, they refused by describing the episodes as inconsequential. This is exactly how some of the leading Leftist intellectuals had reacted to the revulsion against the Left Front-led violence in Singur and Nandigram. Increasingly, students in universities and colleges – including Jadavpur University and Calcutta University – are being roughed up for daring to join outfits critical of the Trinamool government. Principals of colleges and headmasters of schools have to pay the price for showing reluctance in following the diktats of Trinamool’s local leaders.
****SABARMATI, AHMEDABAD: President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday commented on Swachh Bharat
Mission saying that "real dirt of India lies not in our streets but in our
minds" and "in our willingness to let go of views that divide society
into 'them' and 'us' and 'pure' and 'impure'.""At the heart of this violence is darkness, fear and
mistrust," he said adding "while we invent new modes of combating
this ever spiraling violence, we must not forget the power of non-violence,
dialogue and reason"."Ahimsa (non-violence) is not a negative force.
It is not just non-injury. Ahimsa is that moral possibility which can dispel
the darkness and make us aglow with light. Gurudev Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi
were bearers of this light and that light must continue to guide us," he said.President
says that those who believe in God do not take lives of others. "Those who
abide in truth, those who are devotees of truth as God, of Satya Narayan, do
not take lives of others, but sacrifice their own," he said. The chief of
armed forces also said that India must free its public discourse from all forms
of violence, "physical as well as verbal". "Only a non-violent
society can ensure the participation of all sections of the people, especially
the marginalized and the dispossessed in our democratic process," he said.
Now, please have a look at the Intolerance in US .
Tolerance may break a final logjam, to
ultimately rein in the too powerful Arms lobby, to reduce the hapless vulnerability
to masses to gunmen. Maybe, Obama is
finding himself helpless even after 2 terms before the power alleys that run the show from greenrooms. But there are
speedy trials too . However, when it comes to Al ghariv / Guantonamo, it
is worse than Kashmir , where hundreds
simply disappear everyday. Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with
first degree murder Oct. 24 in the death of Laquan McDonald. A video
released by police shows
Van Dyke shooting the teenager 16 times. Van Dyke is an extreme example of a
pattern of unnecessary deadly force used by US police. American police
kill a few people each day, making them far more deadly than police in Europe.
Historic rates of fatal police shootings in Europe suggest that American police in 2014 were 18 times more lethal than Danish police and 100 times more lethal than Finnish police, plus they killed significantly more frequently than police in France, Sweden and other European countries. As a scholar of sociology and criminal justice, I recently set out to understand why rates of police lethality in the US are so much higher than rates in Europe.
Annual fatal police shootings per
million residents. Data is based on most recent available. US: 2014; France:
1995-2000; Denmark: 1996-2006; Portugal: 1995-2005; Sweden: 1996-2006;
Netherlands: 2013-2014; Norway: 1996-2006; Germany: 2012; Finland: 1996-2006;
England & Wales: 2014.
Conclusion----------- Intolerance is a very wide term, worldwide.
If the Communist China intolerates any voice against Communist &
pseudo-Communist leadership at gun
points, so did the USSR with the ever tolerating Russian people , queuing up daily in freezing
cold for a piece of bread / some potatoes / some Vodka, for hours
. And atrocities of Stalin &
his deputies were to be tolerated
by not only opponents & public, but also his party colleagues having
difference in opinions. In India,
probably a Hinduistic rashtra was
possible with Netaji at helm , which did not happen. Golwalkar could not ascend to be a people’s leader . Had he been so,
today we could have found a Hindu India. Nepal has recently suffered the brunt
of all atrocities from a Hindu Indian leadership for not toeing the
Hindu line in constitution but adopting secularism much to dismay
of RSS n BJP. All over the world ,
Rightism preaches Intolerance. And extreme leftism, howsoever suffering from
Sedition charges of pseudo secular
sovereign, also prospers thru Kangaroo Courts ( goth type ) judgements against
whosoever dares Saloa Judam . And liberation mongers in Kashmir go abducted by state & their half-widows
live lives of extreme misery. Anti Awamy
League infiltrators flare n prosper to
treacheries in West Bengal & people
, especially in border districts suffer
haplessly in the hands of minority appeasing forces . See, the fate of girls & ladies enslaved n killed by
ISIS , Boko Haram & Talibans . And see
the similar plights of common
Muslim masses irrespective of African to
Saddam to ISIS to Irani ( pre & post Khomeini) , post Russian Afghanistani,
pre & post Gaddafi Libyan , & Idi
Amin administration. And in monarchies / autocracies in the likes of Swaziland to North Korea, the ladies of
omnipotent lord are the ones suffering the highest. Why ladies alone? Shiites , Kurds &
thousands of Syrians are fleeing
n dying daily . Girls that join ISIS
also cannot escape the sexual greed of militant lords. { Che served
his fasting soldiers with some innocent ladies, who had to
tolerate it all in the name of
revolution.}
Since, even in Communist nations , there is
hardly any cessation of
tolerance, it may be highly unfair n
inequitable to ask for same in a nation n society ridden by class, creed, religion n caste divides .
ANINDA GHOSH
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