Fifth column
The anti-Muslim hatred in India is now conveniently mainstreamed. Once restricted to remote and rural areas or Hindu religious gatherings in urbanised towns, it has permeated deep inside the comfy urban bubbles where apparently urbane and educated Indians who once celebrated their freedom and secularism are now more vehement in their desire to see a new Hindu India more than their lesser educated rural cousins.
In doing so, they are drawing inspiration from the ‘glorious’ Hindu past that, according to the unrestrained but now popular Hindu imagination, possessed extra-terrestrial space ships and celestial voyage vehicles. In new India – which is in thrall to its fictional medieval glory – racist and brutal medieval approaches such as mass murder, ethnic cleansing and eviction of populations to settle political issues is becoming a new normal.
As the million-strong army aided by legal cover and unending supply of deadly munitions fails to subvert the will of the Kashmiris for freedom, the Hindu extremist government of Narendra Modi is increasingly looking to criminalise Kashmiri Muslims in order to encourage and unleash non-state actors, mainly Hindutva terrorism to combat the Kashmiri spirit of freedom.
The Indian desperation on Kashmir and the new mindset about possible solutions can be gauged by a recent tweet from Subramaniam Swami, a senior BJP leader: “Solution to Kashmir valley revolt is to depopulate …. For a few years keep them in refugee camps in TN” [Tamil Nadu]. Swami’s open call for eviction of Kashmiris to concentration camps did not evoke any credible public disapproval.
In fact, there are more public calls for mob violence against Muslims and justification for such violence as a prescription of choice. In a chilling display of anti-Muslim hate, a Times of India columnist Harbir Singh sought to justify the anti-Muslim mob violence by Hindutva extremists. In one of his Facebook entries, he wrote: “These people [Muslims] cannot be stopped by our laws. Our state is weak. And the people know it and feel it in their guts. … This is our reality and we had [sic] better resolve ourselves to the knowledge that if India takes on the Islamists in its midst, mob violence against Muslims will be a major tool of assault”.
Since the current BJP government took over in India, the ethnic cleansing of Muslims has been initiated – albeit in a slow pace. In Jammu, the winter capital of Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Indian security agencies have been provoking Hindu extremist groups to launch violent attacks against the Muslim minority in connivance with the pliable bureaucracy, majority of whom are Hindus and supportive of Hindu extremists and their violent tactics. During the past one year, hundreds of Muslim families have been attacked, forcing thousands to flee to Kashmir and other places. This forms part of a strategy where the Hindu extremists want the Jammu area to be free from any Muslim presence.
Historically, Jammu was a Muslim-majority area but in 1947, the Indian army in collaboration with the Hindu extremists murdered up to 200,000 Muslims and pushed half a million to migrate to Pakistan, turning the region into a Hindu-dominated area that now supports the Indian army and its genocide against Kashmiri Muslims. In a recent incident, dozens of Hindu extremists attacked a nomad family destroying their belongings and beating them. According to reports, several family members are missing after the attack.
In a push towards a ‘Muslim-free’ Jammu region, Hindutva groups launched a campaign earlier this month against the Rohingya Muslim refugees who had temporarily settled in the area. According to the official data, about 5,000 Rohingya lived in the occupied state, employed in menial jobs and working as unskilled labour.
The Hindutva terror has reached such a level of acceptance that even Hindu traders have started issuing public death threats against Muslim minorities. In early April, Rakesh Gupta, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Jammu called the government to identify Rohingya and Bangladeshi Muslims in order to expel them. He threatened that if the government failed to take action, the Chamber would identify and kill these people. He also called them as “possible human bombs and harbourers to be used by militant organisations”. The Kashmir Economic Alliance (KEA), a traders’ body representing Kashmiri businessman, termed these threats part of a conspiracy for the “systemic genocide of Muslims”.
As usual, the government failed to take any action against Gupta. Soon afterwards, hoardings across the Jammu city propped up calling for Rohingya and Bangladeshis to leave. The posters threatened them with violence should they fail to heed the counsel. It is no more ironic that the hoardings were put up by the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers’ Party, headed by Prof Bhim Singh, a former legislator and a senior Supreme Court lawyer.
Postscript: Not satisfied with the calls of violence from the urbane elite, the Hindustan Times wrote a story about the tribal youth from the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh (MP). A group of youth from the Bhil tribe had offered to take on the stone-pelting Kashmiri youth with Gofan, a local variant of a slingshot, the traditional weapon of the Bhil.
The newspaper described the youth as ‘patriotic’ who were “infuriated by the videos of helpless security forces” fighting in Kashmir. The report even quoted a local police officer praising the tribal youth for their “deadly and accurate” slingshot skills. One of the youth quoted by the newspaper said: “We have fought valiantly against the British under the legendary tribal leader Tantiya Bhil, and we can serve the country once again”.
Appendage: In yet another display of medieval behaviour, the Indian government banned the internet and 16 social networking services and instant messaging applications including Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, YouTube, Instagram, WeChat, Tumbler and Google+ in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir. The government gag invoked the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 to “take possession of licensed telegraphs and order stoppage of transmission or interception or detention of messages”.
Justifying the ban, the official order, “felt that continued misuse of social networking sites and instant messaging services is likely to be detrimental to the interests of peace and tranquillity in the State”. Shamelessly, the decree blamed the ‘extensive misuse’ of “social media sites and instant messaging services for vitiating peace and instigating violence” – effectively absolving its military and paramilitary forces of any wrongdoing.
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