Frittering away the people’s mandate

Frittering away the people’s mandate

FPJ BureauUpdated: Friday, May 31, 2019, 09:07 PM IST
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Arun Jaitley is a privileged member of the all powerful trika – Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley and Amit Shah – of the ruling coalition that presides over the destiny of India. He has dismissed the protests against ‘rising intolerance’ as ‘manufactured rebellion’, betraying ideological intolerance of Narendra Modi.  It looks Arun Jaitley – the fire brand opposition leader in Rajya Sabha – and Arun Jaitley – the Union Finance Minister- are a different persona. The political compulsions make him to defend his master, whose loyalty he has so judiciously cultivated.

Incidentally, he is also the Information and Broadcasting Minister, controlling the print and electronic media, particularly the most powerful mass based public broadcaster – Doordarshan. It is obvious he is getting rattled by the outrage against the growing religious intolerance in the country.  However, he is less than sincere when he says that the protests and the return of the awards are ‘manufactured.’  This is nothing but red herring, avoiding the real issue of communal disharmony spreading in India. More than 400 eminent persons – writers, historians, artists and film makers – cutting across social and political spectrum – have protested against the highly vitiated atmosphere prevailing in the country. Their views can’t be dubbed as ‘manufactured’ by any stretch of imagination. And the opinions of Raghuram Rajan, Narayan Murty and Zubin Mehta are not ‘manufactured.’

Arun Jaitely asks: ‘Where is the intolerance?’  He says ‘the national situation is absolutely peaceful. If some incidents happen…you cannot link them to the Centre.” But he cleverly ignores the fact that it is the members of BJP and Sangh Parivar who are allegedly linked to these incidents of violence – be it the mob lynching of a Muslim in Dadri or murdering of the rationalists- Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi.

After a lull for a few days and his spirited rebuttal of ‘rising intolerance,’ it is expected the communal speeches of hatred by members of his party would stop. But it is not to be. While Arun Jaitley was dismissing the protests by the intellectuals as ‘manufactured,’ the leaders of BJP and Sangh Parivar have resumed issuing threats again. A BJP leader in Karnataka, S N Chennabassappa, has threatened to behead Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, if he dared to eat beef in public. The Hindutva leader Sadhvi Prachi called Shah Rukh Khan a ‘Pakistan agent’ for his statement in an interview to a TV channel that there is ‘extreme religious intolerance’ in the country. And the BJP general secretary, Kailash Vijayvargiya, has accused him of living in India with his heart in Pakistan.

These are the statements by fringe elements. The I&B Ministry, of which Arun Jaitley is in-charge, has not permitted the screening of a documentary, ‘Caste on the Menu’, relating to the beef consumption in Mumbai, produced by the students of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Out of the 35 documents screened at the 12th Jeevika: Asia Livelihood Documentary Festival 2015 on October 31, it was the only documentary denied the permission for screening.  If this is not intolerance, intimidation and attempts to muzzle the freedom of expression and stifle the dissent, what else is it?

An article in the latest issue of ‘Panchjanya’- the RSS mouthpiece- says the premier university of the country, JNU, nurtures anti-national elements whose object is to break India. It accuses the student unions of being ’pro-Naxal, anti-government and anti-Hindu.’ This has invited sharp reaction from the students and the faculty of the JNU. In a statement, the JNU Students’ Union President V Lenin Kumar has said: “Earlier they used to accuse the JNUSU members of being ISI agents working for Pakistan. Whoever questions is anti-national. Any one promoting values that uphold the rights and dignity of ordinary citizens is labeled a Naxalite.  RSS believes in an India that is for a particular kind of Hindu, not even for the ordinary believing – often meat-eating – Hindu who wants to live in peace with other communities.” And a Professor of History, Neeladri Bhattacharya, reacted: “The problem lies with the RSS’s idea of the nation. It is sectarian and undemocratic. For the RSS, India is a Hindu nation and only Hindus are legitimate citizens of India.”

The manner in which the election campaign was conducted — keeping the development plank on the back-burner — in Bihar, by Narendra Modi and his right hand man, BJP President Amit Shah, has  further polarised the people on communal lines. After all, it is a state election and winning and losing is part of democratic electoral process.

According to historian Irfan Habib, “When it comes to ignorance and idiocy, RSS and IS are just the same. The events of 1947 show that RSS out did IS in hate crimes.” In yet another article in an RSS journal ‘Rashtra Dharma,’ it is claimed that the Sangh ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya was opposed to ‘Hindu-Muslim unity,’ He believed that ‘a person turns an enemy of the nation after becoming a Muslim… while a Muslim may be good individually, he is bad in a group and… a Hindu who may be bad individually is good as part of a group.”  M S Golwalkar, the ideological fountainhead of the RSS, was an admirer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. It is this ideology that breeds communal hatred and religious intolerance – pitting Hindus against Muslims – a recipe for disintegration of India.

What is astonishing is when all these communal incidents are flaring up, Narendra Modi keeps studied silence. In his ‘Mann ki baat’; he speaks on many issues, but he prefers to keep quite when it comes to the activities of communal forces that threat to tear apart the social fabric of India. The Prime Minister is a conscious keeper of the nation. He can’t afford to act as a BJP leader and RSS pracharak. It is interesting to know what he and his cabinet colleagues – Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Manohar Parrikar and Smriti Irani – have assured the RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat at the coordination meeting held in September between the RSS and the BJP, on the eve of elections in Bihar.  His silence is taken as tacit support and emboldened the Hindu fundamentalists and extremists within his party and the Sangh Parivar.

The manner in which the election campaign was conducted — keeping the development plank on the back-burner —in Bihar by Narendra Modi and his right hand man, BJP President Amit Shah, has  further polarised the people on communal lines. After all, it is a state election and winning and losing is part of democratic electoral process. The abuse of official machinery for the election campaign, half the Union Ministers camping in Patna, is unprecedented in the electoral history of India.

The cheap language and jibes that he used against his political rivals has definitely belittled the august office he is occupying. Amit Shah’s statement that if BJP loses in Bihar election, Pakistan would celebrate by bursting crackers is a rank communal statement, aimed at polarising the people, besides questioning the patriotism of those who vote against the BJP. Modi government is squandering the mandate the people gave for taking India on a path of growth and development.

As the global ratings agency Moody’s Analytics says, PM Narendra Modi must keep his party members in check or risk losing domestic and global credibility. It says, “In recent times, the government also hasn’t helped itself with controversial comments from BJP members… the belligerent provocation of various Indian minorities has raised ethnic tensions.”

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