300 Days of the Narendra Modi government

Modi’s 300 days

Hate, persecution and Impunity

JOHN DAYAL

The Bharatiya Janata Party Government of Mr. Narendra Modi, it is becoming increasingly clear, intends to remain focused on expanding the national penetration of the  religious nationalism ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak sangh, whose  cadres and polarising hate campaigns against Muslims and Christians brought it to power ten months ago. Its secondary objective is to try to keep alive  the flow of foreign investments and the Indian corporate sector, even if it means whittling away whatever safeguards there are  to protect the environment, land and forest rights and basic constitutional rights of  association such as trade unions.

Since May 2014, there has been a marked shift in public discourse. 

The  300 days have seen an assault on democratic structures, the education  and knowledge system, Human Rights organisations and Rights Defenders and coercive action using the Intelligence Bureau and the  systems if the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act and the Passport laws to crack down on NGOs working in  areas of empowerment of the marginalised sections of society, including Dalits, Tribals, Fishermen and women, and issues of environment, climate, forests, land and water rights.

Environmental norms have been diminished to an extent that now they will be almost non existent, threatening the environment and the climate. Land acquisition laws are being changed to benefit crony capital. 

The immediate focus is on the threat to secularism, which underpins India’s modern existence as a country.

Despite a tongue lashing by  President Pranab Mukherjee on Republic Day and repeated assertions of freedom of faith by Vice President Hamid Ansari – not counting the naming and shaming done by visiting United States President Barack Obama – the government has learnt little. Mr Modi, at a public function called by the Syro Malabar Catholic church,  spoke of security of minorities, but failed to name the Sangh parivar as the spruce of much violence. In fact, he put the aggressors and the victims on the same platform.

His Home minister, Mr Rajnath Singh, a former president of the BJP and like Mr Modi, a lifelong member of the RSS, has been transparent in announcing his sympathies. He has called for a national ban on conversions, a national ban on beef, total opposition  for scheduled caste rights for Dalit Christians and Muslims. And he too has hedged in  saying he will punish the spewing of hate and coercion.

This official patronage and  impetus given to the divisive and  corrosive politics of the Sangh Parivar in the 300 days of the government of Mr. Narendra Modi has further endangered  the security of religious minorities, assaulted national institutions and the education system. Mr. Modi came into office riding a promise of development, his election campaign fuelled  by unbridled hate against Muslims and Christians.  Development remains a mirage, but the hate has fuelled violence across the country.

A civil society report “300 Days –Documenting Sangh Hate and Communal Violence Under the Narendra Modi Regime” lists least 43 deaths, Muslim and Christian, in over 600 cases of violence, 168 targeting Christians and the rest Muslims. The number of dead is other than the 108 killed in Assam in attacks by armed tribal political groups on Muslims.  Desecration and destruction of churches, assault on pastors, illegal police detention of church workers, and denial of Constitutional rights of Freedom of Faith aggravate the  coercion and terror unleashed in campaigns of Ghar Wapsi and cries of Love Jihad.

An analysis of the Christian data alone shows Chhattisgarh topping the list with 28 incidents of crime, followed closely by  neighbouring Madhya Pradesh with 26, Uttar Pradesh with  18 and Telengana, a  newly carved out of Andhra Pradesh, with  15 incidents.   Of the deaths in communally targeted violence, two  were killed in Orissa and Telengana,  8 in Gujarat, 12 in Maharashtra, 6 in Karnataka and 25 in Uttar Pradesh. Apart from these, 108 people were killed in Assam in attacks by Bodo militant groups. The violence peaked between August and October with 56 cases, before zooming up to 25 cases during the Christmas season, including  the burning of the Catholic church of St Sebastian in Dilshad garden in the national capital of New Delhi.

Much of the violence,  54 percent, is of threats, intimidation, coercion, often with the police looking on. Physical violence constituted a quarter of all cases, 24 per cent], and violence against Christian women, a trend that is increasingly being seen since the carnage in Kandhamal, Odisha, in 2007 and 2008,  was 11 per cent. Breaking of statues and the Cross and other acts of desecration  were recorded in about 8 per cent of the cases, but many more were also consequent to other forms of violence against institutions.

A disturbing trend is the  rising communal violence in West Bengal where the  BJP and the RSS have redoubled their efforts to fill what they see is a political vacancy following the decline of the Communist Party of India Marxist and the Congress party in recent times. The violence has peaked in the gang rape of a 72 year old Nun in a  convent and school in West Bengal. The official apparatus is now busy trying to prove to the world that it is just another crime, committed by foreigners or professional criminals.

There has been a relentless foregrounding of communal identities, a ceaseless attempt to create a divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The BJP leaders guaranteed to abuse, ridicule and threaten minorities. Hate statements by Union and state ministers, threats by Members of Parliament, state politicians, and cadres in saffron caps or Khaki shorts resonate through the landscape. But most cases go unreported, unrecorded by police.

The Prime Minister refuses to reprimand his Cabinet colleagues, restrain the members of his party members or silence the Sangh Parivar which claims to have propelled him to power in New Delhi. Mr. Modi calls for a ten-year moratorium on communal and caste violence. His government soon declares Christmas to be a “Good Governance Day” in honour of  the BJP leader and former Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee. There are fears at a severe whittling down of the 15 Point Programme for Minorities, a lifeline for many severely economic backward communities, and specially their youth seeking higher education and professional training.

Mr. Modi’s “assurance” to religious minorities is challenged and countered by Mr. Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the powerful Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, who asserts, repeatedly, that every Indian is a Hindu, and minorities will have to learn their place in the country. Speaking at the 50^th Anniversary of foundation of its religious wing, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Mr. Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS Sarsanghchalak bluntly stated that “Hindutva is the identity of India and it has the capacity to swallow other identities. We just need to restore those capacities.”  In  Cuttack, he asserted that India is a Hindu state and "citizens of Hindustan should be known as Hindus".  Sadhvi Prachi, a central minister, Members of Parliament Sakshi Maharaj and Adityanath are among those urging measures to check Muslims, including encouraging Hindu women to have from four to ten children each. In Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and other states, the terror, physical violence and social ostracising of Dalit and Tribal Christians, in particular, continues.

But India was not meant to be, and  cannot be, a homogenised nation-state, the sort of “one nation, one people, one culture” that the Sangh parivar speaks about.  A common allegiance to the Constitution and its guarantees of religious and cultural freedom is the basic ingredient for lasting peace, and therefore an environment in which all communities can prosper.

The government and  state structures must communicate with religious, ethnic and cultural minorities, address their fears of threats to their identity and security and economic progress.

And the Hindu majority community should not have any fear of a demographic threat from Muslims and Christians. That is the sort of paranoia that religious nationalism and its proponents seek to propagate for their ulterior ends. As the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, which has set up a helpline for Christians in distress or facing violence, says:  “We love India. It is our motherland. All we seek are rights of a citizen of India, including  those of security, expression, association and Faith.” Hopefully, Mr. Modi is listening. Even if Mr Rajnath Singh, Mr. Mohan Bhagwat and sundry Sadhvis and Sants, in government,  the BJP, or elsewhere, are not.

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No beef-burgers please, We are Indians

Food, faith and politics

JOHN DAYAL

“Congratulations Maharashtra: It is now safer to be cow than a woman, Dalit or Muslim in the state”, a Tweet by anonymous but popular commentator @RushieExplains went viral on social media when the President of India, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, signed into law a twenty-year old legislation banning the slaughter of cows, bulls bullocks in that state, making it the 23^rd state to criminalize the production or eating of beef and beef products, in fact the possession of the meat, a serious offence inciting a five year prison term. The irony was because the current punishments under Indian law 2 years for drunken driving, the sort indulged in by film stars and billionaires, 2 years for manslaughter, three years for theft, 5 years for cow slaughter, 7 years for conversions by priests, specially if involving Tribals and Dalits to Christianity. Indian law has no punishment for marital rape.

The cow as the holy animal of Hindus has always been a disputed belief. Prof D N Jha in his book 'The Myth of the Holy Cow' explains this misrepresentation of cow's holiness. Rigveda has references of cow being one of the most commonly consumed food item among the Brahmins. The practice of cow slaughter was an integral part of the Aryan cult. Jha writes cow and bull meat was one of the favourite delicacies of the Hindu deity Indra. Swami Vivekananda, whose name is now a chant in the corridors of power said: ‘You will be astonished if I tell you that, according to old ceremonials, he is not a good Hindu who does not eat beef. On certain occasions he must sacrifice a bull and eat it.’ [Vivekananda speaking at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, USA (2 February 1900) on the theme of ‘Buddhist India’, cited in Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol 3, (Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1997), p. 536].  Further research sponsored by the Ramakrishna Mission established that “Vedic Aryans, including the Brahmanas, ate fish, meat and even beef. A distinguished guest was honoured with beef served at a meal. Although the Vedic Aryans ate beef, milch cows were not killed. [C. Kunhan Raja, ‘Vedic Culture’, cited in the series, Suniti Kumar Chatterji and others (eds.), The Cultural Heritage of India, Vol 1 (Calcutta: The Ramakrishna Mission, 1993), p. 217].

Not many Indians, even if they are non-vegetarians, can really afford meat of any kind in the manner that it is consumed in the rest of the world where the flesh of animals, birds or fish is the main staple, and  starch, grain or potato, and vegetables the accompaniment. In South Asia, the starch is the staple, and the protein  whether flesh or from pulses, the  condiment to make it palatable or moist. This has to do  with the purchasing capacity of the people, rather than any dietary preferences. And unlike the West where prime cuts of quality  beef can be really expensive,  the meat of the buffalo, the  old and exhausted cow and bulls and bullocks of no further use to the farmer or tradesman are butchered, is about the cheapest protein consumed by religions and ethnic minorities and the Dalits. But even then, the consumption figures are low.

The decision to curtail or ban the meat of the cow, then, is a matter not so much of faith, or economics, as of practical politics, even though the governments  claim that bovines enrich the soil and the environment by helping farmers on synthetic fertilizers. The argument is easily countered by critics who point out that marginal farmers can hardly afford to take care of cattle no longer useful as milch or draught animals who then are turned out to die miserably of starvation.

The Congress was the first to poeticize the cow, so to say, and Mahatma Gandhi and his peers in the early 20^th century used it to full measure. It would be remembered that the electoral symbol of the cow for years was a pair of bullocks under yoke, succeeded later by a cow and calf. The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has hijacked the iconography and the political symbolism. The general elections, and the elections to the state assemblies, some of which the BJP won, culminated in the humiliating drubbing in the Delhi polls. The one cheerful strain through the last  year has been the fact that the core vote share of the BJP has remained at just over 30 percent, or a third of the voting public. It is this core that the BJP has to preserve as it cobbles coalitions and economic arguments to win in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. It desperately needs to win big in these two mammoth states which send a good number of members to the Rajya Sabha where the BJP government is in a minority and has been defeated on the Vote of Thanks to the Address of the President. With UP and Bihar in its fold, it can in the next two years get a majority in the two houses of Parliament and be able to enact ay law it wants to. The emotional appeal of the cow will be very useful, even if the misogynist statements of some RSS luminaries put off a section of the people now supporting the party.

But is Mr. Modi listening?

Raj Dharma in 2015  -- President Pranab Mukherjee imparts Mr. Narendra Modi a lesson in development and its relationship with Freedom of Faith and Human rights. So does a visitor

JOHN DAYAL

Mr. Narendra Modi, India’s larger than life Prime Minister, has a huge ego. The people of Gujarat have known that for much of the new Century when he was their Chief Minister. The nation has got to know of this after he took office in May 2014. They had a closer look at the man when he went to the United States and spoke at Madison Gardens hall. But the closest look of all was when he shook hands at Rashtrapati Bhawan with visiting US President Barak Obama,  or “my friend Barack with whom I do gup-shup [make small talk]” as he prefers to call the first Afro-American in White House.

The cameras focused on Mr. Modi’s blue-grey pinstripe formal suit. It was patently a bespoke piece of apparel. The close up lens then showed the world that the pin-stripes were his full name “narendradamodardasmodi” in capital letters woven in golden thread into the woolen warp and weft. Investigative journalism traced it to an artisan mill in the United Kingdom, and a bespoke tailor in London’s Seville Row. The estimated cost was placed at more than 10,000 Pound Sterling, or in Indian rupee terms, at least 10 Lakh.

But this is not about expensive suits. Mr. Modi has a taste for good things, turbans, writing instruments and studded watches worthy of the pockets and wrists of some of his billionaire friends. And he has right to wear them if he as declared them to the Income tax department, the government, and the Election Commission. Even some reporters and editors wear such stuff. As indeed do most – but not all – politicians and even clerics of most religions.

In fact, this is not about his arrogance either, or that he administers India through a powerful Prime Minister’s Office that has made the Cabinet system of Constitutional governance all but redundant. Or that he does not like to be told that there is something that he, his government, his political party or the cadres of his old group, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh have done wrong.

But suit and watches notwithstanding, in two days around Republic Day, the powerful Mr. Modi got two extraordinary lessons in Raj Dharma that even the great Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister those days, could not really give him in 2002.

Mr. Modi was politely reminded in rather sharp language that India’s religious minorities, particularly, were uncomfortable, and their plight would seriously impact the promise of development on which he rode to power last years.

United States President Barack Obama hogged the international headlines with his “Town hall” speech in New Delhi, as he concluded his three day visit to India for its Republic Day, with a rather sharp lesson on what makes a country great – not economic progress or military might, but the unity of the people brought about by a shared destiny, the hope of progress in the most marginalised, and the sense of security among its religious minorities.

But it was the Indian President, the 79-year old soft-spoken Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, who from a State platform, delivered a homily that is the strongest caution yet on the threat posed to the unity and progress of India from the religious nationalism of the RSS. Mr. Mukherjee did not name the RSS, or its many associates in the Sangh Parivar family, but his address to the nation on the eve of Republic Day on 26^th January – which marks the promulgation of the Constitution in 1950 – dwelt at some length on the issue.

President Mukherjee in his address said “In an international environment where so many countries are sinking into the morass of theocratic violence … We have always reposed our trust in faith-equality where every faith is equal before the law and every culture blends into another to create a positive dynamic.  The violence of the tongue cuts and wounds people's hearts. The Indian Constitution is the holy book of democracy. It is a lodestar for the socio-economic transformation of an India whose civilization has celebrated pluralism, advocated tolerance and promoted goodwill between diverse communities. These values, however, need to be preserved with utmost care and vigilance.”

Mr. Mukherjee touched a point that has worried many among even those who voted for Mr. Modi hoping he would bring abut a change from the corruption and economic coma in which the country had found itself in the last years of the Congress regime led by Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. This was the increasing cacophony of many in the BJP, including some Ministers and Members of Parliament, who were supporting a demand that India mark itself out as a Hindu Rashtra or Nation, and stop appeasing Muslims, and Christians, both seen as enemies of the nation and the majority community. And some among them were quite stridently asking that the Constitution be scrapped and replaced by a more “nationalistic” one rooted not in western concepts but in India’s Hindu tradition.

Industrialists, bankers and businessmen hoping that the new regime would be able to attract international investors and partners, specially from the United States, found the response turning tepid, despite Mr. Modi’s much touted visits to Washington, new York, Beijing and Tokyo. Investors were hesitant not just because economic reforms were not taking place at the speed that had been promised, but the country’s human rights environment had, if anything, sharply deteriorated.

The so called Ghar Wapsi, or Home coming, that the Sangh Parivar had launched soon after the general elections to forcibly convert Dalit and Tribal Christians and Muslims to Hinduism had been put on hold for the week ahead of President Obama’s State visit, but it was never in doubt that it, and violence targetting religious groups, would be resumed. And so it did, a day after Mr. Obama left India. Recent data shows almost 150 recorded cases of violence against Christians last year, and several in recent days. The violence against Muslims is feared to be several times more.

The hate campaign has, meanwhile, been whipped into a frenzy with inspired leaks from the government that the Muslim population has soared in the 2011 population. [Indian Currents covered in an earlier issue]. The official desegregated data of religious populations is among the last to be made public, but there is always an argument that the Muslims breed at a rate that would make them overtake the Hindu population within the 21st Century. The leaked data does show that there is an increase in the Muslim population. Even though the growth rate of the Muslim population has slowed from 29% to 24% between 1991 and 2001, it is still higher than the national average of 18% for the decade. According to reports in the Times of India, the most rapid rise in the share of Muslims in the total population was witnessed in Assam, which borders Bangladesh from where large numbers of Muslims are said to have infiltrated in recent decades.

It is not just fringe elements or political mavericks who suggest solutions that would be deemed anti-democratic even in military dictatorships – including disenfranchisement of religious groups, or asking Hindu women to produce ten or even more children to maintain a demographic superiority. There is a raging controversy now on a series of media advertisements by the national government that has illustrations of the illustrated Preamble of the Constitution without two crucial words “Secular” and “socialist”. These words were not there in the document that was signed on 26^th January 1950, but were introduced in an amendment passed by parliament in the 1970s. Many of the social legislation that was passed in the closing decades of the last century, including employment for rural poor, and scholarships for Muslim youth in particular, were born of those two words.

The noted lawyer and currently Union Minister for Information technology, Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad, is among those who seem to endorse the debate on this issue. In a way, this is in line with the argument that had been advanced when Mr. Vajpayee was the Prime Minister at the head of the first National Democratic Alliance of the BJP, that the Constitution needed a comprehensive review. In the event, the Justice Venkatachelliah commission he had appointed did not suggest deletion of the words Secular and Socialism even if they had been adopted by parliament in the years if the State of Emergency.

The talk in the highest quarter that the Constitution is better off without socialism and secularism has understandably sent shock waves among the rural poor, Tribals, Dalits, as well as Muslims and Christians. There is therefore a growing demand that the Modi government heed the President Mukherjee’s caution and stop political discourse becoming a competition in hysteria that is abhorrent to traditional ethos and Constitutional values.  In the words of the United Christian Forum for Human Rights president, Dr. Michael Williams, “It is significant that the Hon’ble President of India has stressed the sanctity of the Constitution.  He is concerned at what he sees happening in India – the hate campaigns, the coercion and the violence against religious minorities,  Dalits, Tribals and women.”

President Barack Obama’s parting, and cutting, remarks are evidence that the world is watching India as it stakes its claim to be a member of  the elite global economic and strategic clubs. As Mr. Obama said, “Our nations are strongest when we see that we are all God’s children -- all equal in His eyes and worthy of His love… Our freedom of religion is written into our founding documents.  It’s part of America’s very first amendment.  Your Article 25 says that all people are “equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.”  In both our countries -- in all countries -- upholding this fundamental freedom is the responsibility of government, but it's also the responsibility of every person. … Every person has the right to practice their faith how they choose, or to practice no faith at all, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination.”

The issue of targetted hate and even targetted government action against minorities is illustrated in the curious case of Mr. C Umashankar, an officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre of the Indian Administrative Series – the most powerful branch of the civil services -- who is accused of preaching and propagating his religion in public. Tamil Nadu is ruled by the all India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, AIADMK, an ally of Mr. Modi.

Mr. Umashankar, according to information, was born in the Dalit community, and is an ardent speaker in meetings organised by church groups in his home state.

He has been served a notice to stop his activities, and runs the risk of police action under India’s own blasphemy laws. Civil society has not missed the irony that the officer  is being hounded by a state government which thinks nothing of idolizing a convicted political personality, former chief minister Ms. J Jayalalitha, or supporting religious leaders with a criminal past.

His case poses some crucial questions concerning his rights as a citizen of India, the limits of the code of conduct for a government servant or a government person under the law, which includes people like ministers and public functionaries drawing their salaries from the Consolidated fund of India, and on the definition of proselytizing, conversions and issues like public order

Umashankar has every right to profess his faith as a Christian, new or old. He has every right to profess, practice and propagate it in his personal time even if he is a government servant. Most Indians if a certain age would have seen photographs of presidents and prime ministers – from the first President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad to the current one, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee -- going to temples bare bodied, and in public, not private, audience under the glare of television lights.  So have prime ministers from Mr. Gulzari Lal Nanda to Mr. Narendra Modi been seen professing their relgion in public, giving religious statements, and because they are on national TV while praising their own relgion and its past, they are also propagating it to all those who can hear and see them.

Most police stations and many government offices have idols, calendars and pictures, garlanded and often with incense sticks burning before them, in police stations, government offices, court compounds. A very large percentage of government officials, all the way to the Supreme court, sport religious symbols publicly on their bodies. Justice Chandru, retired judge of Madras high court, wrote that while it may very well be correct to expect civil servants to not publicly propagate a religion, the practice of Indian secularism has never meant strong separation from religion. There are Vinayaka temples inside court campuses. Saraswati pooja is performed in the court. Some Muslim judges go for prayers during working hours on Fridays. There is a separate place for Muslims to pray in high court campus. The government funds the Kailash trip and Haj. And a non-Hindu can't be made chairman of HR & CE board. If none of these is a problem then why should Umashankar's preaching be one, asks Justice Chandru and wonders if such things get noticed only when the concerned person is from a minority community . When the government has no consistent policy on religious issues, nor does it have specific conduct rules, denying the right to preach or propagate a particular religion is not correct. 

Umashankar, by all evidence, has never mixed his official and individual identities. There has been no fault found in his official conduct. He believes in his faith, his divinity, his Holy book. He has also taken an oath to protect the condition as an officer of the union of India in an All-India civil service. The charge is that he is converting. He is not a pastor or priest. He is a preacher. If someone asks him to pray for healing, he does so. He does not claim he is a god man. This is a matter of faith, not justiciable. This is not creating a law and order problem. He is not a charlatan, a magic man or a voodoo  or magic medicine seller. He is not a quack. And on the issue of law and order, it is the fundamentalist Hindutva activists who are the ones who are really guilty, who are creating the law and order crisis. One would wonder why the state government and the local police are not taking action against them. It remains to be seen how this case will play out in courts and administrative tribunals in coming days.

Remedies against communalism, and steps to strengthen secularism, would have to be found within the country. It will not do for the west, and specially the United States, to presume they can arm-twist India to improve its human rights record. This can be counter-productive, feeding into the paranoia of the Sangh Parivar in the short run.

But a continuing international dialogue on Human rights is a good thing.  With China, the US has integrated tis dialogue in the dialogue on economic cooperation and trade. There has been a move by Members of the Democratic party in the US Congress – their lower house of Parliament – to introduce such a content in the economic discourse with India.  The resolution Number 417 was introduced on 18 November 2013, but is yet to collect the required number of signatures to make it effective.

The resolution calls for religious freedom and related human rights to be included in the United States-India Strategic Dialogue and for such issues to be raised directly with federal and state Indian government officials. It refers to the 2002 anti Muslim violence in Gujarat and says the state government has not adequately pursued justice for the victims of religious violence in 2002 and expresses concern regarding reports about the complicity of local officials.

The resolution also calls on Gujarat and other Indian states with anti-conversion laws to repeal such legislation and ensure freedom to practice, propagate, and profess religion as enshrined in the Indian constitution. It urges all political parties and religious organizations to publicly oppose the exploitation of religious differences and denounce harassment and violence against religious minorities. An important suggestion is the establishment of an impartial body of interfaith religious leaders, human rights advocates, legal experts, and government officials to discuss and recommend actions to promote religious tolerance and understanding. 

There is no indication that the US or India referred to this resolution in the bilateral talks this Republic Day. But they are part of the civil society discourse. And a major target of the Sangh Parivar trolls in social media.

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