Ramadan
Ceasefire In Kashmir Meaningless If Media War Continues
Saeed Naqvi
I have never seen the electronic media
so totally defiant of the BJP government. Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s avowed
intention to calm Kashmir by announcing a Ramadan ceasefire appears to have
been dismissed as “appeasement of Pakistan and terrorists”.
A guest peering out of one of the six
windows on the TV screen was frothing in the mouth. “Murderers of our brave
jawans are being shamelessly appeased.” The other went one better: “a brave
nation does what the Sri Lankan army did to the LTTE – just finished them off.”
The anchor on this Aaj Tak show Thursday evening looked angrier than both. This
apparently is common fare.
The Communist
Party of India is receiving signals from its Kashmir unit that it may have to
rename itself. The ‘I’ in the CPI has been hurting the state unit for quite
some time. But after the recent surge in shootings, stone pelting,
“encounters”, sustained images of wailing women, trailing the spate of
funerals, and relentless media jingoism, the “I” now invites physical danger.
True, a defunct party by any name will remain defunct, but even so, Communist
Party of Kashmir (CPK) will atleast not incur the wrath of the street.
The relative
Ramadan peace is a good occasion to take stock. Even in days of drift in
Kashmir during the time of P.V. Narasimha Rao, Atal Behari Vajpayee and
Manmohan Singh, there was a semblance of political control by the National
Conference and the PDP. Elements of the Hurriyat had fingers on the street
pulse. The scene recently has been anarchic: there was no control.
Recent increase
in violence was described by reliable sources as “indigenous” which is not what
officials say. A narrative which
discounts outside “meddling” is not honeyed music to the establishment. Nor to
that shrill panel – on Aaj Tak. Ironical, isn’t it, that absence of outside
support to the insurgency disturbs us?
Just when
Kashmir was at fever pitch, the mayhem in Aligarh Muslim University erupted around
the photograph of Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
Friends are in
error if they consider the undiluted hooliganism on view in Aligarh an occasion
to engage in a serious debate on Jinnah’s culpability in partitioning the
country. The hoodlums of Aligarh were not busting their guts to have Jinnah’s
portrait removed from the AMU union office. Quite the contrary. Hindu Yuva
Vahini would love to provoke Aligarh hotheads to dig their heels in to preserve
Jinnah in the university precincts. This will be the ammunition which can come
in handy at all times. The campus will be the ordnance depot for frequent
explosions in the service of the projected Hindu Rashtra.
This is not
the first time in recent decades that AMU has been exploited for saffron
politics. Ever since Prime Minister V.P. Singh aggravated identity politics by
implementing the Mandal Committee report providing reservation in government
jobs to lower castes, the BJP has rushed to prevent the caste structure from crumbling.
Hindu consolidation, by building up the Muslim ogre, has been the obvious
strategy.
Aligarh was
frequently the target as part of this strategy. There was no Arnab Goswami in
the 90s but Hindi newspapers played a lead role in widening the Hindu-Muslim
divide.
A story
appears in newspapers that, after horrendous riots in Aligarh city, some of the
injured Hindus being taken to the University Medical College for treatment, are
being killed by Muslim doctors and interns. Even though the university is only
three hours drive from New Delhi, newspapers choose to rely on unverified
agency copy which, in turn, quotes upper caste Hindi newspapers.
An incredible
scene is being enacted on the outskirts of the university. Local scribes seated
on chairs arranged in a circle under a mango tree, sip tea even as one Krishna
Kumar Navman, BJP MLA from Aligarh, holds them in his thrall with graphic
accounts of murders in the hospital.
“Has anyone
visited the Medical College?”, I ask. They had not, they say, because it is
“risky”.
At the medical
college the picture is surreal: petrified doctors encircle me.
“No one has
come to us for clarification”, they complain.
Why have they
not reached out to the journalists with their story? After a long, pregnant
silence, they speak up. They thought it would be dangerous stepping out of the
campus “in the midst of communal violence”. This is what I call
uninstitutionalized apartheid.
That was 30
years ago when there were no TV channels to inculcate saffron nationalism on
the scale I saw the other day and which I have mentioned above.
Folks overtly
agitated or elated at the turn of events in Aligarh, may find it sobering that
Pakistan’s Jinnah is not the only leader around whom communal polarization can
be contrived. Ram Navami processionist in Kankinara, 24 Parganas in West Bengal
were so overpowered by the spirit of Rama that they pulled down the statue of
Congress President and India’s first Education Minister, Maulana Azad – a
person, who in his outlook was exactly the opposite of Jinnah. This was in
preparation for the Panchayat elections currently in the news.
Protection to
anti namaz lumpens in Gurugram, or those who pasted a Maharana Pratap Road
placard on Akbar Road (the placard was removed the next morning), Modi
clenching his fist at Tipu Sultan during the recent campaign, are minor
episodes in an epic of hatred being manufactured for 2019 ofcourse, and beyond
if need be. In this gameplan there is no real, long term respite for Kashmiris,
Muslims, or Indo-Pak peaceniks. Alongside, the rage of the dalits and tribals
is spiraling out of control. There is an element of simulation in anti
Muslimism for political reasons but the retribution faced by dalits and tribals
in the countryside is visceral.
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