Within a fortnight of the call for a genocide against Muslims – at a Dharam Sansad, of all places – photos of over 100 prominent Muslim women journalists, activists and scholars were uploaded on the Internet to be ‘auctioned’ in a most degrading manner. For both activities – the genocide call and the ‘auction’ – this is the second episode in six months, leaving little room for doubt that they are not unrelated incidents but carefully strategised hate crimes. It is also clear that the demonisation, humiliation and victimisation of Muslims, and now of Christians, is being encouraged by the present regime and tolerated by the authorities.
The million-dollar question is whether the Supreme Court – which has shown some spine of late – sees it that way. This week, thousands of activists, intellectuals, lawyers and concerned citizens urged Chief Justice of India N V Ramana in an open letter to intervene to safeguard the constitutional rights of minority communities and restore public faith in constitutional systems. Incidentally, an SC lawyer, who is also an office-bearer of the BJP, was part of both the events where the call for a genocide were made.
This is not the first time that intellectuals have pointed out the colossal failure of the state machinery in responding to instances of hate crimes in the country. Who can forget the liquidation of some outspoken Hindutva critics between 2013 and 2017; Dr Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M M Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh. In 2015, several writers returned their Sahitya Academy awards to protest the rising intolerance against freedom of speech and expression in the country. They were derided as the award ‘Wapasi’ gang.
In 2016, Kanhaiya Kumar and other left leaning students of the JNU were arrested on trumped-up charges based on fake videos and dubbed the ‘Tukde Tukde’ gang. Four years later, a mob armed with iron rods and acid bulbs ran riot in the JNU campus while the cops waited at the gates. What’s the difference between them and Turkic invader Bakhtiar Khalji who razed Nalanda university eight centuries ago?
In 2019, a group of writers, filmmakers and historians wrote to the PM over the spate of lynching of Muslims, Dalits and other minorities. They were trolled as ‘sickulars’, ‘libtards’, ‘librandus’ and ‘presstitutes’. Much later, a polite term was added, ‘Urban Naxals’.
Hindu supremacists have not spared even Gandhi and Nehru, spreading all sorts of canards about them. Even scholarly pieces on Gandhi elicit scorn. On October 1, 2020, Gandhian scholar Rajni Bakshi wrote in the Indian Express how Gandhi transcended hurt and resentment, channeling the energy into a higher purpose. This was enough to set off an avalanche of abuse. The next day, Gandhi Jayanti, ‘Godse zindabad’ was trending on Twitter.
Women journalists critical of the government routinely face vile abuses and even rape threats. Barkha Dutt and eight other journalists were accused of being part of an ‘anti-India conspiracy’ in a YouTube video that even called for their ‘hanging’. A recent WhatsApp forward, presumably from the BJP’s hate factory, names six Indian BBC journalists and calls them ‘moneygrabbing traitors’, for maligning India’s image with their ‘negative’ reports. This is reminiscent of the UP government’s hoardings to name and shame anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protesters in 2020.
The political discourse in our country is as full of hate as Delhi’s air is of aerosols. The PM himself has used terms such as ‘pachaas crore ki girlrfriend’ while referring to Shashi Tharoor’s wife. The way he mocked Mamata Banerjee at election rallies was downright distasteful. The opposition too is guilty of calling the PM a ‘chaiwalla’, ‘neech’, ‘Gangu teli’, ‘gandi naali ka keeda’…
However, the PM ought to lead by example. His ‘andolanjeevi’ diatribe at the height of the farm agitation where he said that India must protect itself from this ‘parasitic species which lives off agitations’ was nothing but a disguised hate speech implying that those who support people's movements – citizenship rights, workers’ struggles, Dalit agitations, human rights – are conspiring against the nation.
Modi reinforced the familiar pseudo-patriotic appeal saying that we have to protect ourselves from the new FDI which is Foreign Destructive Ideology (alluding to singer Rihanna’s and teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg’s tweets supporting the farmers’ agitation). Read with the ‘andolan jeevi’ slur, this clearly was a dog whistle.
Recently, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval went so far as to say that civil society was the new threat to the nation. He was addressing newly-minted civil servants, IPS officers at that. Meanwhile, those who proclaim ‘Goli maaro saalon ko’ are rewarded with cabinet berths. The mainstream media as well as the judiciary choose to ignore the irony.
On the rare occasion that the SC has taken cognisance of such an incident, it is merely to make the right noises. It watched an 84-year-old Jesuit priest suffering from Parkinson’s disease die in judicial custody. He was accused of conspiring to kill Modi. When it comes to itself, the SC is hyper-sensitive; slapping contempt charges on human rights activist Prashant Bhushan for his tweets taking potshots at it. The 108- page judgment had lines which said: “Such malice should be dealt with an iron hand in the larger public interest”; “When a ‘scheme’ was on to damage public confidence in the judiciary, those interested in fearless justice should stand firmly”; “… had the effect of attempting to destabilise Indian democracy”.
Urging the SC to intervene in the Haridwar hate speech case, lawyer Dushyant Dave says the apex court must reassert its role as the protector of citizens’ fundamental rights. Recalling the SC judgment in the Pravasi Bhalai Sangathan versus Union of India case, he noted that it had observed: “Hate speech lays the groundwork for later, broad attacks on the vulnerable that can range from discrimination to ostracism, segregation, deportation, violence and, in the most extreme cases, to genocide.”
The open letter by activists to CJI Ramana in the wake of the Bulli Bai case rightly says that the ‘auctions’ were an attempt to “degrade, dehumanise, vilify and demean” Muslim women and that the community was systematically being denied the opportunity to participate freely in public life through a systematic hate campaign, which was unchecked.
Radio jockey Sayema, one of those ‘auctioned’, termed it a “reflection of India’s broken justice system”. Former journalist Hima Beg Tweeted: “I have censored myself, I hardly speak here anymore, but still, I am being sold online, I’m being made ‘deals’ out of. How many online deals will it take for us to see action?”
