Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has put his foot in his mouth again. By declaring in Nagpur that those who criticized Narendra Modi’s demonetisation of 500 rupee and 1000 rupee currency notes were anti-nationals, he has implied that the lives of the persons who died while standing in queues were insignificant. A few poor farmers committed suicide as they were unable to withdraw their own money.
George Bush had (in)famously declared “if you are not with us, you are with the terrorists.” Fadnavis is saying the same thing. The second step towards a totalitarian state and genocide is symbolisation and dehumanisation. By declaring that those living in Maharashtra had no choice but to support demonetisation, he has dehumanised his critics.
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Thereby, the BJP government is violating the right to life of Indians guaranteed by Article 21 because the right to access one’s own money is an integral part of the right to life. This is precisely why the Supreme Court refused to stay the dozens of writ petitions filed in the 24 high courts across India. “We are not considering the economic aspects but only the problems caused to the common man,” a bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and D Y Chandrachud said while refusing to stay the demonetisation.
To return to Fadnavis, this is not the first utterance which shows Fadnavis in a poor light. In October, he tried to broker peace with Raj Thackeray after the latter threatened to attack theatres in Mumbai which screened the movie Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, which used Pakistani artistes. And in February 2016, he declared that those who did not believe David Headley’s video recorded statement that Ishrat Jahan was a terrorist were “anti-nationals.”
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In 2015, Fadnavis’ government was in a quandary for issuing a controversial circular which stated that criticizing the government amounted to sedition. This was hilarious because Fadnavis had to backtrack by clarifying that he had not signed any such file and it was a mistranslation of the Marathi file in cartoonist Aseem Trivedi’s case.
But Fadnavis, being a lawyer from Nagpur, should know that criticism is a hallmark of democracy. Voltaire had famously said: “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.” But Fadnavis who disagrees with what his critics say, will defend to the death his right to brand his critics as traitors and anti-nationals.
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Journalist Rajdeep Sardesai had stated in an open letter to Fadnavis in September 2015 that the Chief Minister claimed that the sedition circular was a routine translation from Marathi to English of an order passed by the previous state government. This seemed to suggest that the role of the present government was little more than clerical without any application of mind to a serious issue.
But the Mumbai high court responded to a petition by cartoonist Aseem Trivedi, by directing the BJP government in Maharashtra not to implement the circular which was a victory for those who were worried that the circular could be misused by the police who take orders from the Chief Minister as he holds the home portfolio.
Also, Sardesai questioned why the state government did not immediately withdraw the sedition circular. This was because the so-called crime of `sedition’ is not a weapon to be used by a democratic government to stifle dissent and debate. If that is the case, the BJP is a pseudo-democratic government.
Fadnavis is toeing the line of his boss, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who always delivers monologues or political harangues and never gave an interview to any television channel whether Indian or foreign after being sworn-in as prime minister. In fact, in April 2015, the French newspaper Le Monde refused to publish written answers furnished by Modi’s public relations team in the form of a face-to-face interview.
Modi’s team approached Le Figaro which is a rival of Le Monde to stage this bogus interview. Le Monde’s south Asia correspondent Julien Bouisson put all of this on the internet and the newspaper later wrote an editorial flaying the “dangerous nationalism” of the Modi government in the Kanhaiya Kumar sedition case.
Any attempts to dehumanise and symbolise criticis who dare to question Prime Minister Modi and his admirers (such as Devendra Fadnavis), are a danger to democracy and equality. Till date, 75 people have died because of the demonetisation, while a so-called popular survey, which has again been staged by the government, declares unequivocally that a majority of Indians support the Modi government in its bid to unearth black money.
As Hitler (in)famously said: Repeat a lie to the people again-and-again and they will believe it.
The writer is is a journalist-cum-lawyer.
