Forces of darkness stalk the land

Dubai eye

The writer is a Middle East based
columnist.

Even as our world becomes smaller and more interconnected by the day, with time and space becoming largely irrelevant, we seem to be further withdrawing ourselves into our own, little tiny shells.

Look at the absurdity of Britain’s EU referendum. The country is on the verge of walking out of European Union, renouncing all that the world’s most powerful economic and political grouping has given it all these years.

By the time you read this, the little island that once ruled the world will have decided one way or another. Whichever way the UK eventually goes, the fact that both the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ campaigns have been nearly even goes to demonstrate how perilously close this whole gamble has been.

And for all their elaborate arguments against the EU and passionate calls to ‘take back Britain’, as if it had been occupied by a foreign power, this whole circus has little to do with the ‘tyranny’ of bureaucrats in Brussels or the so-called United States of Europe.

It is the absurd fear and loathing of Muslims and the paranoia about the refugees from the Middle East and Africa taking over the white, Christian continent that has underpinned the whole hysterical campaign. Unlike Germany and other European nations which have generously opened their doors and hearts to the desperate Syrian refugees, Britain has been reluctant to accept any.

This notwithstanding the country’s not too insignificant role in the current mess in the Middle East, in active partnership with cousins from across the pond of course.

Yet politicians and the UK’s tabloid media have successfully managed to generate unprecedented frenzy, raising the spectre of the country being invaded by hordes of refugees through the EU.

It is this environment of fear that led to the tragic killing of the young and promising Labour MP Jo Cox, known for her humanitarian work in Sudan’s Darfur and courageous support to Syrian refugees. But as Jonathan Freedland says in the Guardian, if you inject enough poison into the political bloodstream, somebody is bound to get sick.

But it’s not just Britain. There has been a marked surge in intolerance and paranoia across the globe, resulting in the rise and rise of bigots and demagogues like Donald Trump.

From the world’s oldest democracy to the largest – and from the US to Australia, fascism has been on the rise. Liberal democracies have been silently watching as the forces of darkness stalk their lands. In Austria last month, nearly half of the electorate voted for the presidential candidate of a party that was set up by former Nazis.

In Germany, France, Greece and even liberal Scandinavian nations like Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, extreme rightwing parties have been fast gathering popularity, riding on a wave of hate and demonisation of the Other.

In the peaceful Asian paradise of Philippines, a brash and vulgar Trump-like figure has been elected president. Former Manila mayor Rodrigo Duterte has taken vigilantism to a whole new level by urging the mild-mannered Filipinos to shoot dead drug dealers and criminals wherever they find them. And this even before he has formally taken charge. Trump seems to have set a very inspiring example for prospective tyrants around the world.

Call it a sign of times or comment on ‘the land of the free’ that one of its two principal parties has all but chosen a divisive and hateful figure like Trump as its candidate for the world’s most powerful office.

But then the US isn’t the first to do so. Another great democracy has already elected a similar figure to the highest office in the land. At least Trump did not coolly preside over a massacre. And let us not forget Hitler came to power quite legitimately, after winning popular electoral mandate.

With his flashy aggression, his image as a successful businessman who gets things done and by unabashedly targeting ethnic and religious minorities, Trump has made racism and bigotry cool for white, middle-class United States of America. But even in this respect, the presumptive Republican nominee is in august company.

With the change of guard in India two years ago and an election that is supposed to have been won in the name of development, the great democracy has been undergoing a similar transformation, a churning if you will. Hate and bigotry have become the order of the day, if not cool. Not a day passes without some Hindutva worthy or the other – many of them central ministers – taking pot-shots at the minorities.

When Mohammed Akhlaq, a 52-year old Muslim farmer was beaten to death by his Hindu neighbours less than 30 kilometres from Delhi on rumours of eating beef last year, the news made it to newspapers around the world. Since then there have been many such beatings but few eyebrows are raised now. This is the new normal of ‘achche din’.

While the Dear Leader tours world capitals, addresses foreign parliaments and sings endless paeans to world peace, it has been business as usual for his Parivar. Bajrang Dal has been openly training young Hindu boys in firearms, preparing them for the coming onslaught of Muslim terrorists.

Textbooks are being rewritten to suit the self-centred worldview of the RSS, the ideological parent of the ruling BJP, whose cadres wear khaki shorts and stage daily drills against imagined enemies. Every state institution is being painted saffron.

And it seems even the law and order machinery and courts cannot resist the new order. From turning the case of the brazen killing of Ishrat Jahan and her three friends at the hands of men in uniform on its head to the NIA rescuing Hindutva groups and pinning the blame for Malegaon and Samjhauta Express blasts on the victims, it has been a familiar game.

Look at the absurd verdict in the infamous 2002 Gulberg massacre case last week. Sixty-four people, including a former member of parliament, are brutally hacked and burnt alive and all that their killers get after the long wait of 14 years is merely 14 years (life sentence!) or seven years in jail?

This after the judge called that fateful February day during the 2002 Gujarat pogrom as the “darkest day” in the nation’s history. Yet he blamed the victims themselves saying it was the alleged firing by Ehsan Jafri, the Congress leader in whose house the terrified Muslims from the neighbourhood had gathered, that infuriated the mob.

This isn’t just a mockery of justice, my lord, it is a travesty of the whole criminal justice system. But then this is the logical, inevitable outcome of the change at the political level.

From the bizarre judgement in the Hashimpura massacre last year that acquitted all policemen involved in the coldblooded killing of 72 Muslims in 1987 to the shocking Gulberg verdict, India’s courts have been increasingly letting down its most vulnerable groups.

Indian judiciary, once known for its fierce independence and integrity, had been the last hope of the minorities and dispossessed all these years. If even that last resort is taken away, where do they turn for help? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards themselves, as Roman poet Juvenal famously asked.

India has had a long history and culture of impunity for communal massacres. Anyone can get away with murder against religious minorities. This tradition was broken after Gujarat 2002 but not quite. And as Harsh Mander writes, this dishonourable reality of our democracy is not a chance outcome. It is built into the communal and anti-minority institutional bias of the criminal justice system that plays out through the police, the prosecution and courts.

Email: aijaz.syed@hotmail.com