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Friday March 29, 2024

Revenge of the fringe – from Israel to India

By Aijaz Zaka Syed
December 25, 2015

 Dubai eye

The writer is a Middle East based columnist.

Veteran Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery makes an interesting argument in his recent column. Commenting on the new wave of violence and terror tactics against Palestinians by Jewish settlers, Avnery notes that the settlers – once seen as an extremist fringe of the Jewish society – have taken control of the Israeli state, government and all institutions.

Recalling the example of Germany’s evolution as an empire and how its borderland regions subsumed the centre to grow into an entity and force of their own, Avnery argues that something similar is happening in Israel. What was once peripheral has become the core of Israel.

With the settlers’ rise to power – they are part of the coalition led by Netanyahu with key ministries being in their control – they are practically setting the governance agenda of the Zionist state. The takeover of Israel, founded on stolen Palestinian land, by the fringe is complete.

Of course, the lunacy of Israeli leadership represented in fanatics like Netanyahu and his predecessors such as Ariel Sharon is hardly a new phenomenon. The persecution and subjugation of Palestinians remains the core state policy no matter who is in power. Never, however, in the entire history of Israel have perhaps so many bigots been thrown together in one government.

In Netanyahu’s previous government, a figure like Lieberman held the foreign ministry portfolio even as he championed the destruction of Iran, execution of Arab members of Knesset and demanded a loyalty oath from Arab citizens of Israel.

Reading Avnery, it struck me that something similar has been happening in the world’s largest democracy as well. The Hindutva fringe that was viewed with hate and revulsion not long ago for its role in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and in recurring communal violence since Independence today finds itself in charge of the republic nurtured with great love and care by the greats of the Independence movement.

Unlike the leading lights of the RSS, most of the founding fathers of independent India spent long years in prison and gave all they had to win freedom for India. Post Independence, they invested all their energy in building a vibrant, liberal democracy with strong institutions and rule of law. No wonder that, for all its inherent flaws, poverty and inequities, India for decades remained a role model as a secular, vibrant multicultural democracy.

Of course, recurring violence against minorities and other dispossessed groups has always been there. However, it wasn’t sanctioned by the state and governing elites, as had been the case in Gujarat 2002, which saw the BJP and its saffron cousins lead the mass slaughter of Muslims or the 1984 pogrom against the Sikhs in which many leaders of the ‘secular, liberal’ Congress took part following the assassination of Indira Gandhi at the hands of her Sikh guards.

Today, Narendra Modi, who was rather charitably compared to Nero by the Supreme Court for his role in 2002, sits in parliament where Nehru, the redoubtable architect of modern India known for his lifelong preoccupation with secularism and pluralism sat. The irony does not end there.

With the BJP capturing power in Delhi and Modi replacing Manmohan Singh, it has not been merely a change of guard; India itself seems to have shifted on its axis 360 degrees. It has been a complete change of system and way of life with the RSS, inspired by European fascists and repeatedly banned for its subversive activities, taking over the reins of state institutions and ideological and political infrastructure.

The recent broadcast of the RSS chief’s annual Dussehra address by the state-run Doordarshan with Mohan Bhagwat making no attempt to hide the ambitions of the organisations to paint India saffron is only one sign of the dramatic transformation India has undergone during the past year and half.

The sudden surge in hate speech and violence against religious minorities, forcing India’s finest writers and artists to return state honours and awards, across the country is another sign that the prime minister’s Hindutva allies and friends feel their Raj and time has finally arrived.

No wonder the VHP, another Hindutva outfit, is furiously preparing to start work on the Ram temple at the site of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. With stones and other construction material arriving in Ayodhya amid much fanfare, things have started to heat up in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous Hindi heartland state which incidentally goes to polls in 2017.

While anguished pundits and editorial eggheads urge the prime minister to “rein in the fringe elements”, they conveniently ignore the fact that his very comforting presence at the helm encourages and emboldens the fringe, most of whom happen to be his old comrades.

The fringe has gone mainstream. The PM has even rewarded many of them – like Sanjeev Baliyan, indicted for his role in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, and motor-mouth Giriraj Singh who threatened to send Modi critics to Pakistan – with ministries in his government.

Indeed, as Srinivasan Jain of NDTV notes, there has been a marked jump in the past year and a half in the extraordinary number of instances of high-level functionaries of the ruling establishment – from the chief executive himself, to cabinet ministers, to ruling party MPs, governors, party bosses, chief ministers and MLAs – speaking in a language that covers the full spectrum of majoritarianism, from outright bigotry to soft communalism. In the recent Bihar polls Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah were seen repeatedly pandering to the baser instincts of the voters, from raising issues like cow slaughter to accusing chief minister Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav of carving an imagined quota for Muslims out of reservations for Dalits and backward communities. Shah even warned of crackers going off in Pakistan if the BJP lost in Bihar. So after all this, it is rather rich of the PM to sing hosannas to India’s fabled tolerance and religious diversity in parliament or invoking Gandhi and Buddha in London.

Unfortunately, no party appears to be in a position to call Modi’s bluff and challenge the duplicity and politics of hate that his party thrives on. The Congress, once the natural party of governance thanks to its role in the freedom struggle and its broad-based nature mirroring the diversity of the country, has been fast losing its base and appeal.

Thanks to its dynastic politics, toady culture and crass opportunism over the years trying to be all things to all people, including flirting with soft Hindutva, the grand old party has made itself spectacularly irrelevant. In fact, the BJP’s growth has been directly at the expense of the Congress. For the first time in India’s history, an alarming number of states have fallen in the lap of the party whose ultimate goal is the Hindu Rashtra in which minorities would have as many rights as the Jews in Hitler’s Germany.

Unless the Congress reinvents itself or secular parties like the Janata Dal (U) of Nitish Kumar or the Aam Aadmi Party of Kejriwal assume a national presence, the country appears to be stuck with the fringe for the foreseeable future. Unless of course India chooses to fight back and ordinary Indians, the so-called ‘aam aadmi’, known for their famous common sense, take matters into their hands to reclaim their country.

Email: aijaz.syed@hotmail.com