Mr Modi’s passion of hatred

SOON after Black Tuesday, an episode of the TV programme —‘The Big Fight’ — witnessed perhaps the unholiest war yet. One that this country’s government is raging against its own people: a war seeped in hatred which will only fan communal tension. Narendra Modi, general secretary of the BJP, also unleashed the party’s hidden agenda: scour the wounds inflicted by communalism to the extent that it helps you win elections in states where your own government has done precious little. But it is precisely the politics of hatred that gave birth to a Bhindranwale in Punjab and to Osama bin Laden.

To equate Islam with terrorism is perhaps the biggest mistake we can make and to say this so brazenly as Modi did will only further alienate the secularists in Islam and I have no reason to believe that there are any fewer Islamic secularists than there are Hindu secularists. To equate Islam with ignorance just because Islam is a younger religion — the point Modi made — smacks not just of ignorance but a gross insensitivity.

What would Modi and his party like us to do in India as a fallout of what happened in New York? Would he like us to destroy every edifice of secularism that we have so patiently built and which his party has destroyed? Would he like the people of India to be consumed by hate rather than driven by a quest for real progress for real people?

Taking on an Islamic scholar of the eminence of Rafiq Zakaria without scant regard either for his intellect or for his age is a testament to the arrogance of this government. The same government which has allowed people to go unpunished for scam after scam; a government which has doled out ambassadorial positions to people just because they were the overseas friends of the BJP; a government that has made every attempt to shy away from any accountability. It is the politics of today’s India that is worrying.

Are we at all keen on becoming a civil society or should we be content with the religious jingoism of Modi-speak? Would we be better off telling Muslims that they don’t belong or weave them into the fabric of this country, especially at a time like this when they are so vulnerable? An airplane crashed into a building in the US but what about the damage we have inflicted on this country’s secularist outlook when some henchmen of this present government bought down the Babri Masjid? In the aftermath of the WTC crash, I have been appalled by statements of ‘‘right-thinking’’ individuals which suggest that all Muslims are terrorists — a point that even Modi alluded to.

The government today has lost its right to rule if this is the thought mandate that it doles out to its key functionaries. It is no longer a government that governs. It’s a government that attempts to govern using the Toffler theory of prospering within chaos. That is precisely why every right-minded Indian should be worried.

We have seen how this government buckles under every social responsibility it needs to meet. Instead of focusing on today’s problems, when we should be concerned about the starving millions in this country, we have a minister who is more keen about introducing astrology. This government is better off defending scam-tainted ministers and removing competent people like the Jagmohans of the world.

The big question that should have been posed at the debate was what if one of the terrorists in New York had been a Hindu. Would we all have been painted as terrorists? Would then everything that we stand for be eliminated because of one rotten apple? I guess we, as a nation, are at a crossroads today: what needs to be the focus of our attention is conveniently dusted under the carpet. So a government can actually escape accountability to the Liberhan Commission for what happened in Ayodhya or to the Venkataswamy Commission for the ugliness of our defence establishment and indulge in mere tokenism emerging out of deep religious alignments. If this is the government that we are happy with, we will never ever solve Kashmir; we will never ever have peace in the Northeast, or settle the hearts of millions of Muslims in this country.

It is indeed a travesty of our times that around this time, last year, Vajpayee paid obeisance to a couple of saints at Statten Island in a city which today reels under a hatred bred out of religious polarities, and yet today our foreign minister is the first to articulate a need for a ‘concert of nations’ that must stand up against terrorism. I ask you is the terrorism that the state practices by fanning communal hatred any less of a crime than the one perpetrated in New York? What Narendra Modi said on that evening was yet another version of mass hatred that will have near fatal consequences for the nation’s polity. Yet we ignore it. And how different are we as Hindus when we perpetrated our fair share of cruelty on the Dalits? These are the core issues that today’s India needs to be seized with. For it is we in India who saw a burning Graham Staines and raped nuns. It is we in India who have been accused of causing riots to win a few votes.

Some days ago, Vajpayee reshuffled his cabinet hoping it would end all confusion. But he needs to do more. He needs to introspect. The secularist in him must awaken and control the damage that his own party is doing to the nation. Or he will have the singular honour of governing a fractured nation — where the politics of hatred has so easily replaced the politics of progress. And I am not even talking about the politics of accountability! It is this India that we need to see, not the India that the Modis of this world would much rather have. Vajpayee is the only statesman we’ve perhaps had in a long, long time. But I’m sure he wishes to be known for the India he helped unite rather than an India which he helped divide.

So let’s not replace the bayonet with either the Koran or the Gita. Let us not seek out hatred just because we wish to win the Assembly elections in UP.

The time for healing could not be more appropriate..

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