A DIVISION OF LABOUR
JOHN DAYAL
The good news is that with the Prime Minister, Mr. Modi, there
is no subterfuge, no deception, no mirages created with mirrors. You get what
you see. Or what you want to see, as in the case of the Gujarati Non Resident
Indians gathered in Madison Square Gardens in new York during his visit to the
United Nations and the United States in September last year.
This transparency is also the case with the leaders and foot
soldiers of the Sangh Parivar, that very interesting and rapidly expanding
First Family fathered by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and consisting of such
vigorous siblings as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and
the Bajrang Dal. In recent times, scores of new groups have been born to this
Parivar with names ranging from various Sene to the Hindu Jagriti Manch and
others researching the ancient sciences of the Rashtra. They make no bones of
the findings of their researches. Everyone in India is a Hindu; in fact
everyone in many parts of the world is a Hindu. If not, they are aliens,
therefore anti nationals, if not traitors.
The Christians, specially in villages, hamlets in Dalit
“bastis” and Tribal areas, who have been target of conversions to Hinduism,
politely called Ghar Wapsi, the Hindi for “Home-Coming” -- Hindi sort of camouflages and sanitizes
the violence, coercion and hate inherent in the phenomenon -- have known it for
several decades. Now Muslims are increasingly getting a taste of this pill,
sugar-coated last year by the promise they can enter a caste of their choice,
perhaps even that of the twice born Brahmin, instead of being relegated to that
the Dalit, once called Untouchable.
Mr. Modi has never hidden the fact that he has been a member
of the RSS since his childhood, and spent almost all of his adult life as a
Pracharak, the teacher-evangelist who leads the indoctrination of young men, barring
the years he held Constitutional office as the Chief Minister of the State of
Gujarat and now, the Prime Minister of India.
A delegation of Christian leaders from Delhi saw the real man when
they called on the Mr. Modi, at his official residence, 7 Race Course Road, on
24th December 2014 to greet him a day which for them, as for billions
of others in the world, was a day of good tidings and great joy, though he had rechristened it Good Governance
Day on which government officers and some ministers worked hard to spread his
message. This Christmas visit had been the
practice when Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister at the head of
the first National Democratic Alliance, though in his case, the greeting was
also very personal as it was also his birthday. The practice continued in the
decade that Dr. Manmohan Singh held office as the Prime Minister leading the
United Progressive Alliance.
Those present in that meeting hall narrate what followed, and in
great detail, though perhaps in whispers and with a sense of disbelief. Mr.
Modi accepted the bouquet flowers, as he did another from a family and a third
group, posed for photographs – mercifully no “Selfies’ as had happened with
senior TV and print journalists at his Meet-the-Press earlier last month – and
then made it clear the meeting was over. At this time, a few lay members of the
delegation told the Prime Minister they were deeply concerned at the violent
and coercive targetting of the Christian community, specially in rural areas of
Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the “Ghar Wapsi” programmes of the Sangh
Parivar that were disturbing the peace across the country. The Prime Minister,
they said, could break his silence and reassure the community. His voice would
perhaps end this impunity and persecution.
Mr. Modi turned, and ordered the cameras to be turned off –
the Prime Ministerial functions are routinely video-graphed by official
cameramen. We have just paraphrased versions of an acerbic diatribe that followed.
Mr. Modi said the Christian community was making a mountain of a molehill. It
was educated, had great access to the media and to international advocacy
agencies that blew events out of proportion. He could not take cognisance of
every small event, or speak on it. His
focus was on development. Even as the delegation sought to assure him the
community was all for the development of their motherland, Mr. Modi said with
deliberate coldness “Your compulsions are different. You may not be able to
stand with me.” He did not clarify his
remark in any detail.
But his party men have made it quote clear that anyone who is
not volubly supportive of the Prime Minister and his alliterative agenda of
development is against the national interest, and therefore, by implication, a
bit of an anti-national, if not a traitor. This definition puts a strain, not
just on religious minorities, but also on Dalits and Tribals seeking the
protection of their rights, their land and their resources. It also pushes into
a corner civil society and sections of the majority community if they oppose
the excesses of the Sangh Parivar, specially its maverick groups. These include
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, the Bajrang Dal and a
score or more new “senas” and Manch that have sprouted specially in the North
and Central region of the country and are the main engines of the aggressive
Ghar Wapsi targetting the poorest sections of the Muslim and Christian
communities in small towns and villages.
No one seems willing to
point out, or admit, that while conversions of a religious nature are an
exercise in free will and constitutional rights of freedom of conscience, be it
from Christianity to Hinduism, Islam to Hinduism, Sikhism to Hinduism or vice
versa, Ghar Wapsi is a political process carried out by powerful exponents of
religious nationalism. It does not even have the legitimacy of freedom of
political expression, which can make many a senior leader switch from the
Congress to the BJP.
On the eve of the Republic Day visit of the United States
President, Mr. Barak Obama, there have been statements by the President of the
Bharatiya Janata Party, Mr. Amit Shah, freshly exonerated of charges of
multiple murders in Gujarat, that the Ghar Wapsi campaign does not have the
support of the party or the government. There have also been stories planted in
a pliant television and print media that Mr. Modi is annoyed at the Ghar Wapsi
events as they hurt India’s image, and therefore his project to invite foreign
investments.
But this could be little more than eyewash. Many years ago,
the eminent jurist, Mr. A. G. Noorani,
wrote a book “A Division of Labour” in which he meticulously documented
evidence and arguments to prove that the Bharatiya Janata Party and the
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and its daughter-groups such as the VHP worked in
tandem, their cadres, programmes and grassroots work merging seamlessly in targetting various sectors and peoples. The Ghar Wapsi, and similar programmes, are
led by senior members of the Sangh and the BJP, including such luminaries as
Adityanath, the head of the Gorakhpur Math, and the lead speaker of the BJP in
Parliament on issues of religion and culture.
Defending Ghar Wapsi as “natural” and calling for a national law against
conversions are former BJP president and currently union minister, Mr. Venkiah
Naidu, Finance Minister, Mr. Arun
Jaitely, and several other of their colleagues in New Delhi and the state
capitals. Official spokesmen of the party routinely wage a daily battle on
satellite news channels denouncing “missionaries” and linking development with
an end to what they say is a missionary effort to change the demography of the
nation. The violence by their non-state associates, well documented by the
media, has been severe, involving active participation of local civil and
police authorities. The impunity is total. The government’s silence is loud.
There is also reason to question the model of development that
has been presented. All too much data has been adduced since the May 26, 2014
swearing in of Mr. Modi as chief minister. His campaign had harped on what he
had “done” in Gujarat in almost two and a half terms as Chief minister. But as
friends and foes have pointed out, other than assisting crony capitalists, the
growth model did precious little to improve the state’s status which continues
to be one of the worst in the country, and the world, on social indices such as
child health, infant mortality and other norms that people internationally take
as inseparable from economic growth.
Translated to the national scale, this growth model is seeing
the death of the process that protected the rights of the working class, the Tribals,
and the protection of India’s precious forest cover, and the environment in
general. Land acquisition reforms, as they are ironically called, will make it
easy for the state to grab tribal lands not just for highways, but also to be
given away to industries, including the piratical mining sector with its
history of pillage and rapine of virgin forests. And this is just the beginning.
The Church in India, and globally, is committed to a
preferential option for the poor. As, indeed, it is bound by faith to give
witness to the Word. Both are impossible to practice if there is no courage to
challenge the forces that seek to circumscribe, control and even stop this twin
process, by force if required.
The leadership of the Church, and of other religious
minorities, need to fathom how they respond to this challenge, and engage with
the lunatic fringe, the ruling political party, and the head of the government,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is not going to be an easy task.
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