Why Modi's silence on Hindu hardliners is dangerous for India
Former Union minister and a BJP MP from Darjeeling in Bengal SS Ahluwalia while speaking in Lok Sabha during the debate on conversion said something very pertinent. He pointed out that schoolchildren had been invited to Parliament to watch the proceedings and the language and manner of discussion would be a dangerous influence. Ahluwalia is right, history lessons for these schoolchildren began with Mahatma Gandhi, the man who led the country to independence. The same kids who Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed via video conference on spreading Gandhi's message of Swachh Bharat.
What Ahluwalia conveniently forgot on the floor of the House was that a member of Parliament from his party had that very day hailed Nathuram Godse as a patriot. Godse, an RSS worker, was shamed in history textbooks for his cowardly and terrorist act of assassinating the father of the nation. Parliament was discussing the deceitful conversion of 200 Muslims to Hinduism by RSS offshoots Bajrang Dal and Dharma Jagran Samanwaya Vibhag as part of what the RSS itself claims is a ghar wapsi programme.
Rajeshwar Singh, the convenor of the Dharma Jagran Vibhag, claimed on national TV the day before that in the next five years, they would want to fulfil the dream of a Hindu Rashtra by reconverting all Muslims and Christians in the country; the not-so-subtle message that the Sangh Parivaar sent through the mass conversion was that those who do not believe in Hindutva had no place in what is a secular, inclusive democracy.
Not to be left behind, BJP's rabblerouser-in-chief Yogi Adityanath has announced that nothing will stop him and his co-workers from the planned mass conversion ceremony of 5,000 Muslims and Christians on Christmas, two weeks from now, in Aligarh. Adityanath is the same man who claims the Taj Mahal was built on the site of a Hindu temple. Those familiar with the events and propaganda that led to the destruction of Babri Masjid in 1992 and the subsequent nationwide bloodshed might not be surprised at the parallels with the current situation.
It was indeed surprising then that BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu who spoke on behalf of the government on Thursday claimed that he was proud of his roots as an RSS member and that the Sangh had no hand in communalising the secular fabric of the country. One cannot blame Naidu who smiled in ignorance when professor Saugata Roy read out verses by Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda on religious harmony that ran contradictory to Narendra Modi's appropriation of the Swami during election campaign.
Naidu was right in defending the BJP MP's statement on Nathuram Godse because his party's ideological fountainhead the RSS had claimed just two months ago that "Godse was much better than Nehru — he pulled the trigger on Gandhiji's chest after a respectful bow. But Nehru stabbed him from behind and greeted him from front."
The article published in the RSS mouthpiece Kesari further read "Nehru's selfish politics was behind all national tragedies, including Partition and Gandhi's assassination. After an honest evaluation of Nathuram Godse's arguments and historical documents related to Partition, if history students feel Godse aimed at the wrong target, they cannot be blamed. Nehru was solely responsible for Partition of the country". The article was written by none other than the BJP's candidate from Chalakudy in the Lok Sabha elections, B Gopalakrishnan.
The BJP's defence in Parliament, like that of most RSS leaders, was that the conversions were not forceful and were just reconversions of those Muslims who were once forcefully converted. What Venkaiah Naidu and the Sangh affiliates did not tell the House was that the 200 Bengali Muslims, who belonged to a slum colony in Agra had been promised BPL ration cards, that would validate their existence as ragpickers and slum dwellers.
Most of those converted belonged to Murshidabad in West Bengal and had scattered in cities like Mumbai and Delhi for livelihood.
The BJP forgot to tell the House that Muslims from West Bengal were the subject of constant violent attacks by the right-wing fringe who accuse them of being Bangladeshi immigrants. Like many from their ilk, these daily wage workers at the receiving end of abject poverty find the ration card, a vital proof of identity and nationality, a life-saver from constant harassment by local goons and cops.
The choice of population and locality for the conversion was well thought of. Most residents of Madhunagar in Agra belong to Murshidabad as discovered by mediapersons who visited the area.
According to the National Sample Survey data for 2009, Murshidabad has the ignominious distinction of being the poorest district in India with 56 per cent of its population living below the Rs 27 per capita per day poverty line declared by the Planning Commission.
The prime minister of this country while assuming power spoke of sabka saath, sabka vikaas, little did one know that it came with commercial terms and conditions applied. In the six months of his government, Modi having addressed some of the world's most influential parliaments, declared Mahatma Gandhi, the man whose love for the poor was exemplary, as his idol and whose ideology drove his policies. But from "haraamzadas", Godse and forceful conversion of the poor, the prime minister has proved all his detractors right.
Modi's silence, which was notoriously used by the likes of Pravin Togadia and his henchmen from the Sangh Parivaar to polarise Gujarat during his three terms as chief minister, has now travelled with him to Delhi. And nothing about this silence, absolutely nothing, can be misconstrued as paranoia. The PM who claims to be a man of action and, by his own admission, does not allow any influence on his decisions cannot be blind and deaf to the calls of hatred and polarisation by his colleagues in the government.
The Supreme Court's observation of April 2004 on the Modi government in the infamous Best Bakery case of Gujarat could well be recalled today as it sums up the uncanny similarity to the situation today. "The modern day Neros looked elsewhere when innocent children and helpless women were burning," said the SC while acquitting all 21 accused in the case.
This country had given Modi a second chance, who showed immense promise by leaving behind his days as the mute spectator of communal experiment in Gujarat and claimed to have reformed as the reincarnate of Sardar Vallabh bhai Patel and Swami Vivekananda initiating his journey to the PM's office with a Sadbhavna rally in Gujarat.
But Modi fell short of telling his government that Vivekananda's concept of nationalism was based on the foundation of humanity. He could have done a great service to his idols by quoting from Swami Vivekananda: Messiah of Resurgent India which said: "Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghosh and Mahatma Gandhi, all three were great humanists besides being great nationalists. As a matter of fact their nationalism emanated from their deep sense of humanism. Hence their nationalism did not suffer from narrow minded understanding of religion."
By choosing to look the other way, Modi is not only contradicting Vivekananda and Gandhi who he wanted to appropriate, but also dangerously repeating the same alleged calculated mistake of 2002. By looking the other way, he is again allowing the yogis and the sadhvis to usher in a culture of hatred in the country.