Modi silent on genocide call

IT IS little less than a month since a congregation of Hindu clergy from the holy city of Haridwar, located on the banks of the river Ganges, gave a bizarre call to the faithful to unleash genocide against the 300 million Muslims of the country. Shockingly, the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet maintained a studied silence. Not a single fire-spewing member of the clergy – all very influential – has been arrested for hate speech, making many wonder what the hell is happening in the country.

The worry for a vast majority of those who swear by the secular and inclusive constitution is how this call for genocide based on a flawed reading of history will play out in a country that has seen a horrific partition based on religion 74 years ago. Millions perished in this bloody event from which India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have still to recover. India and Pakistan are nuclear armed and continue to keep their respective populations in a state of continuous conflict.

The minorities feared the return of the holocaust that left millions dead, maimed and homeless. Globally the demand to “stop the genocide of Muslims in India” trended on Twitter. Pakistan’s government summoned the Indian diplomat in Islamabad and demanded that the government in Delhi should take action.

Retired defence chiefs, management graduates, lawyers of the Supreme Court and scores of opposition leaders sought PM Modi’s urgent attention on this compelling issue. They reminded him that the call for genocide could engulf the country into hellish religious fires and lower the defence preparedness of the country at a time when there is threat from its hostile neighbours, China and Pakistan. Modi did not respond to these urgent entreaties asking his government to invoke harsh provisions of law against those trying to destroy the social fabric of a plural society.

Angry activists took to Twitter to highlight the inherent bias built into government action when young Muslims and other dissenters were incarcerated without trial for protesting against the divisive Citizen Amendment Act. Maintaining a sphinx-like silence on this issue, Modi seemed more intent on, and engaged with, mounting a major election campaign in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and four more states. UP is the most populous state in India.

For Modi and his party, a win in UP is important for the stability of his government in Delhi and re-election in the 2024 parliamentary elections.

It’s a state in which nestle all the symbols that give meaning to the BJP’S version of religious nationalism. This is premised on lending primacy to Hinduism and the exclusion of Muslim domination from national politics and cultural life. UP has Ayodhaya, Kashi and Varanasi – three cities that have structures contested by both Hindus and Muslims. The Hindu zealots believe that in relation to civilisation, India will become a formidable nation if these structures are cleansed of the Muslims presence.

The BJP came to power on the shoulders of a movement that is opposed to India’s secular constitution that endeavoured to rise above the scarred legacy of the partition. First in 1998, and later in 2014, this was on the promise to build the temple to Lord Rama on the detritus of Babri Mosque, which was demolished by rampaging mobs on December 6, 1992.

Viewed from this perspective, the silence of the government and Modi was not really unexpected. The police filed a FIR slapping charges, which were bailable, only after a journalist Saket Gokhale filed a complaint against the participants of the conference. A video that leaked to social media revealed the saffron-robed monks chuckling at how loyal the police were to the cause of the majority community and unlikely to take any action against them.

In these circumstances, when a section of the ruling party and police were allegedly complicit in the events in Haridwar and how they played out, it was again left to an incensed journalist, Qurban Ali, and a retired judge to approach the country’s apex court for its intervention. The petitioners rued the lethargy of the police in taking action on hate-filled utterances, which had the potential to undo the gains of a secular constitution and law-based society. The Supreme Court has sent out notices to the state government where the event took place last December. With the country in the throes of a medley of feverish happenings, including the onset of the third wave of Covid-19, which is climaxing at the time of bitterly fought state elections, there is little likelihood the courts will try to make an example of the noisy religious men.