Ram
Mandir And The Muslim Citizenship Issue: Different Hindu Responses
Saeed Naqvi
Dated:
27.12.2019
A settlement may well be taking place
somewhere near the base because one is hearing stories of students arguing with
conservative parents before trooping out to join a hostel here, a college there
to merge in the nationwide protests. These are “ostensibly” against the
Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). “Ostensibly”,
because a mass upsurge does not possess precise comprehension of a complicated
issue nor its geometric lines. It proceeds on the basis of a vague, intuitive
grasp of a larger reality: something evil is afoot.
Are the unspeakable brutalities of the UP
police some sort of rearguard action on the government’s part to protect the
key bastion? All fangs bared, psychologists will tell you, is a sign of fright.
Or, is Yogi Adityanath climbing up a few notches to look taller than the duet
in Delhi?
Police barging is into Muslim mohallas,
terrorizing the elderly and women, picking up the youth (not always without an
eye on ransom money), in brief, inviting “skull caps and beards” onto the
street to provide visuals for a gleefully complicit media. But focus on the partisan
media must not obscure the oases of courageous, balanced journalism with the likes
of Ravish Kumar of Hindi NDTV in the lead. They deserve applause. This media
keeps protests (and police excesses) at Benaras Hindu University and Aligarh
Muslim University in equal focus. The assiduous effort to polarize on communal
lines by the rest of the media, the one which does not show policemen smashing
CCTV cameras, are challenging journalistic decency. Whether the no holds barred
excesses of the Yogi will smother the embers of protest or barely cover them with
an ashen sheet, only time will tell.
How long will the darkness in UP last?
Sahir Ludhianvi summed it up very simply:
“Zulm phir zulm hai, barhta hai to mit
jaata hai
Khoon phir khoon hai, tapke ga to jumm
jaayega”
(Brutal repression cannot last in perpetuity.
Blood, when shed, leaves stains)
The black-hole of UP must not be allowed
to distract attention from a historic new phase the youth have inaugurated in
the nation’s political life. First, the movement signals a generational change.
The time may well have come for senior pundits to contemplate retirement in the
72nd year of the Republic. The placards are not only teeming with
ideas, they are also brazenly irreverent: Hindu hoon, chutia naheen” for
instance. I am perfectly willing to substitute “Hindu” with “Muslim” in the
text.
Opening of the ventilators is the single
biggest contribution of the youth agitation, the realization that one can heave
a sigh of relief. The regime’s invincibility had been dinned into large
sections by a faction of the media which too is now in the process of being
exposed in the wake of the protests.
It was bad enough that the protests
erupted with the suddenness of revelation, what is worse for the regime is the
fact that they have taken place against the backdrop of electoral decline. Reverses
in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, a narrow shave in
Haryana, embarrassment in Karnataka, must be galling for a party which saw
Hindu Rashtra within grasp after a thumping majority of 353 seats in a House of
543.
Even though the Supreme Court gifted a
judgement to the BJP affiliates enabling them to finally build a Ram Temple in
Ayodhya, the political consequences of this outcome are ironically negative for
the party. Communal polarization burgeoned when the temple was an issue, with
Muslims pitted on the other side. For the faithful, a temple exactly on the
spot where Rama was born, is a matter of supreme satisfaction. But by the same token
the politician has lost an issue – the goose that laid the saffron egg is dead.
This is one additional reason why the Citizens
issue was urgently required to keep up the communal temperature. But a great
miscalculation attends this move. Ram Janmbhoomi had been an issue since the 19th
century, given a boost by the idols being placed inside Babari Masjid in 1948. The
“Shila” processions in 1989, the carrying of bricks consecrated in thousands of
village temples all the way to Ayodhya was a marketing strategy that would
leave Madison Avenue gasping. Even more spectacular was L.K. Advani’s Rath
Yatra, carrying a replica of Ram’s carriage from Somnath to Ayodhya, generating
sufficient saffron to boost the BJP from a mere two seats in 1984 to power
under Atal Behari Vajpayee in a little over a decade.
Narendra Modi had this advantage plus
the tailwind of post 9/11 global Islamophobia to which he added his own “Mian
Musharraf” rhetoric (grinding his teeth) in Gujarat elections and the sky-high communalization
post 2002 Gujarat pogrom.
The Citizens issue, however, though
loaded with communal intent has resonated quite differently with the youth – of
all denominations. The Citizenship issue terrifies the Muslim but the image of
petrified Muslims has, contrary to Hindutva expectations, touched a soft cord. Women,
with students in the vanguard, in occupation of spaces of progressive politics
is another new, heart warming trend.
How New Delhi proposes to firm up the Citizenship
Register in Assam without upsetting the warm relations with Dhaka is something
of a puzzle. Does the lack of anxiety on Sheikh Hasina’s brow indicate back
channel assurances? Will Muslim distress across the border not provide a handle
to the opposition in Bangladesh?
The expanding protests have given heart
to various groups. The traditional metropolitan elite, distanced from power
with the consolidation of the Modi-Shah duet, has already pulled out its calculators,
working out the electoral mathematics for the future. The habitual quest for
connections causes them to dream dreams of an implausible two party system. The
emerging reality is more federal than unitary. Delusory dreams are in any case
premature because the BJP is not disappearing in a hurry. If the party ever has
its back against the wall, there is still a willingness to surpass Balakot by
yards.
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