Friday, December 27, 2019

Ram Mandir And The Muslim Citizenship Issue: Different Hindu Responses


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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Friday, December 13, 2019

We Waited For A Contest In Britain, We Got A Massacre


We Waited For A Contest In Britain, We Got A Massacre
                                                                              Saeed Naqvi

The evening began disastrously not only because Boris Johnson won by a landslide but because our host, Lord Meghnad Desai, could not cook us a meal, having hurt his right hand (it is in plaster); our collective viewing of the election results was thrown into further disarray because his TV burnt out. Inexhaustibly stocked row of three refrigerators came in handy: smoked salmon, Italian bread and pizzas. At 10 pm he switched on his IPad. Exit polls had given Boris the biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher in 1987.

A member of the Labour party for 49 years, one would have expected him to become quiet and reflective. Instead he broke into song, wriggling what in leaner bodies would be the waist. We asked for a mini cab. The driver turned out to be a big, burly, black young man with a beard which I find disagreeable when it comes without a moustache. He was from Conakry, Guinea, the peaceful West Asian country that I have travelled through in the past to reach Sierra Leone. He opened up because of my name. “We have lived peacefully here” he said, taking one hand off the steering wheel. “Now we shall live timidly.”

London remains the cosmopolitan hub, where Boris has not made much of an impression. Scottish nationalism always had a mellowness of single malt, lilt of the bagpipes and the quaintness of kilts. This nationalism is not claustrophobic because it also reaches out to the EU. In Northern Ireland, Republicanism has gained – so Dublin becomes closer, not farther from Belfast.

The very first to greet Johnson has been Donald Trump, his business cohorts smacking their lips at the prospect of a burgeoning Anglo Saxon club, particularly now that France’s Emmanuel Macron is thumbing his nose at Trump’s America. And Macron is not alone.

The scale of Boris Johnson’s victory boosts what I call Bannonism sky high. Let me explain. George Soros and Steve Bannon who is a friend of Trump and the KKK, have been shuttling around Europe trying to divert popular anger away from socialism which contemporary capitalism paints in lurid colours. It is McCarthyism to its tips. While Soros, a liberal capitalist, seeks an integrated Europe to thwart “leftism”, Steve Bannon, Trump’s conscience keeper, is keen for Italy’s Matteo Salvini, France’s Marine Le Penn, Spain’s Santiago Abascal and Britain’s Nigel Farage to clasp hands and shift Europe so far right as to be teetering on Fascism. This school received a boost last night.

It would be irresponsible to describe Johnson as closet fascist but his friend Farage is. If one surveys the rise of anti migrant, anti semitic parties from Victor Orban of Hungary to leaders in Austria, Germany, Poland – it is a depressing list. In the presence of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Benjamin Netanyahu and others, the Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz accused the Polish leadership of antisemitism in almost abusive language: “Poles suckle anti-Semitism from their mother’s milk.” This, from a public platform in Warsaw.

The Warsaw incident came to mind as soon as I saw Tory leader Michael Gove appear behind the microphones at the Tory headquarters to prime up the mood before Boris Johnson made his first appearance after the historic victory. It was the sort of time in the morning when people want bed tea. Suddenly, a stern looking Gove is brought slowly into focus. And, lo and behold, the only community he mentions are Jews. “Through this campaign, our Jewish citizens have been living in fear.” Then a Churchillian pause: “no longer will Jews live in fear”, he thundered. Why this outburst?

There is a background to this inexplicable intervention. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, former Co-Chair of the Conservative Party has been fairly regular in complaining that “anti Muslim” prejudice had “poisoned” the party. The principal “culprits” in her line of fire were Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Zac Goldsmith. Gove’s generosity of expression in favour of Jews, at the moment of Tory triumph, is designed to send a message to the Warsis in the party: like it or lump it. How can the Tories have forgotten Gove’s brazenly anti Muslim book Celsius 7/7 published in 2006? Corbyn was battered and bruised not only through this campaign but over the years as a “danger to Britain”, “traitor” a friend of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and other “devilish” characters. By sheer incantation, some of it sank in. Ofcourse, Johnson’s message was simpler: “get Brexit done.”

What the mainstream media will keep mum about, alternatives like London Economic, a digital newspaper, publishes and with increasing credibility. The news portal exposed that one of Britain’s leading barristers, Jolyon Maughan QC, director of Good Law Project, alleged that the BBC indulged in showing “coded negative imagery” of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn since his election in 2015.

It is universally proclaimed that Johnson, lies, fiddles expense accounts, is seen at European airports in a daze after late night parties but he remains the darling of the electorate, as result 2019 has shown.

Another London Economic analysis shows that people generally have another perspective when presented with policy options but the very same people vote in a completely different direction. Why? Because the media is bombarding the voter with high level, right wing propaganda.

Lord Rothermere, a billionaire living in France, owns the Mail and the Metro. Rupert Murdoch, billionaire US citizen own the Sun, Fox News, B Sky B, News corp. Alexander Evgeny, ex KGB Russian billionaire, owns the Independent, Evening Standard. Richard Desmond, a billionaire, did own the Daily Star and if it has passed onto someone else, it certainly is not to the socialist international. In brief, 80 percent of media is owned by billionaires. For those of us grieving in India on this score, is there not a pattern? As the late Bobby Talyarkhan used to sign off his column: “Do you get me, Steve?”

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