By Baldev Padam

As reported, India’s popular poets, writers and authors have made beeline to return their awards that authorities in the past gave them for making India’s literature richer and rational.

They were pained by the increasing attacks on weaker sections of society and minorities as also because tolerance and acceptance of dissent was waning fast ever since Narendra Modi took over as India’s PM. The recent lynching of a Muslim in Dadri based on a beef-eating rumor was the proverbial last straw and the enlightened ones resolved to return their awards under protest. They belonged to various faiths and beliefs and even were atheists. But they are all against hardliners who were issuing orders with threats about what to wear, eat, see or read. They penned down their thoughts and ideas in Hindi, English and various regional languages and their protest was to draw people’s attention to the efforts being made to push India from the 21st century back to the middle ages and beyond.

PM’s silence and inaction

PM’s silence and him rather looking the other way amid communal disturbances was considered a signal by overzealous to take law into their own hands and implement Hindutva program. They raised issue of ‘Love Jihad’ that was followed by forcible conversion of Muslims called ‘Ghar Vapsi’ (Homecoming). Recently they have adopted a new action plan of blackening the faces of their opponents to terrorize and humiliate them in public. Shiv Sena, BJP’s ruling ally, has precisely done that to some prominent people in Mumbai as well as in the capital city of Delhi. Instead of bringing the culprits to book, PM Modi and Arun Jaitly his Finance handed over some polite counseling to them. Such attitudes from those in power was bound to isolate minorities further and encourage majority community’s mischief makers.

As the public opinion against government’s silence over such developments mounted, PM broke his Maun-Vrat (vow to stay silent) and what he said thereafter demonstrated more of his political weakness than the strength and dexterity he is known for. He washed his hands off Dadri episode and by implication, from all similar earlier tragedies, saying that the issue of law and order was the ‘state subject’ and doesn’t fall under preview of his Federal Government. He directed protesting intellectuals and others to knock the doors of concerned provinces. To add insult to injury one of his rookie ministers advised writers — better to stop writing than to return awards!

Instead of ensuring protection or consoling victims of the Dadri tragedy, Modi came up with a general advise to both Hindus and Muslims to jointly fight the poverty and not against each other. That was true, but brushing aside the real issue of punishment to the guilty wasn’t!

PM ‘s words remind us of a line from ‘Tempest’, a famous drama written by William Shakespeare, that is as below:

“My Lord Sebastian, The truth you speak, lacks both gentleness and time to speak it in. You rub

the sore, when you should bring the plaster.”

PM or an RSS volunteer

Sometimes back, media reported that PM Modi and his BJP cabinet colleagues met Mohan Bhagwat, chief of RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh —ultra right Hindu organization) and placed his government’s report cards before him. Denying that PM told that he was an RSS Swayamsevak (Volunteer) and along with others met Bhagwat only in that capacity. Later Rajnath Singh India ‘s Home Minister clarified that he too was a Swayamsevak and being so shouldn’t cause concern to anybody.

Yes! there is nothing wrong for anyone to be a member of any social political or cultural body if its aims and objects don’t clash with Constitution of India.

Here lies predicament; BJP and its allies are running the governments under an oath to keep India as a Secular Socialist and Democratic Republic but RSS, their patron is determined to make it a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation). Any way When Swayamsevaks like Modi and others were at helm of country’s affairs, it was the best time for Zealots to start working on that.

Their killing spree at places like Muzaffarnagar or in Dadri got support from BJP top brass. ML Khattar, Haryana Chief Minister Sanjeev Balyan Sakshi maharaj, Som Nath and Minister Mahesh Sharma and others issued provocative statements against Muslims for their beef eating habit. As per media reports Amit Shah, BJP President called their meeting to convey PM’s displeasure over that but those involved denied and called their meeting with party president just a matter of routine.

An RSS volunteer Modi who romped home last federal poll in India on the slogan of development to become India’s PM is in quandary. Caught between proverbial devil and the deep blue seas, one day he will have to choose between RSS agenda of Hindutva and growth of secular India – sooner he does that, better it would be for him and for the nation.

In the end

Not only the Muslims but secularists & progressive in society too invited wrath of Hindu Right Wing activists. Sometimes ago, rationalist and Communist Party’s leader Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar were shot dead in BJP ruled Provinces. Santana Prabhat, a rightist Hindu newspaper had rubbed the wounds by writing that Dabholkar had grown old and his killing spared him old-age related ailments.

Fundamentalists’ latest victim is Tamil superstar Rajinikanth, who has been told not to play Tipu Sultan in a film as “ Tipu was an aggressor, who committed atrocities against the Hindus.”

But fundamentalism is not the monopoly of Hindu chauvinists. It is fast spreading its tentacles elsewhere too. Recently, a little known Raza Academy has issued a “fatwa” against Bollywood Music Director AR Rahman who brought laurels to India internationally for his musical scores, for composing music in an Iranian film, “Muhammad: Messenger of God”. It was the honor that has been turned into unwarranted controversy.

It’s quite relevant here to talk little about a leading Pakistani feminist and poetess, Fahmida Riaz, who wonders whether to laugh or cry over recent events of intolerance across India. Riaz, who once took refuge in India when she was hounded by right-wing elements in General Zia-ul Haq’s time, now says India has “turned out like us” — not just intolerant, but to such a degree that it has started looking like the Pakistan that India would not like to be. Her famous lines on the subject are given below:

‘Tum bilkul hum jaisey nikley, ab tak kahan chhupe the bhai Woh moorkhta, Woh ghaawarapan, jis mein hum ne sadi ganwai Aakhir pahunchi dwaar tumhaarey, arre badhai bohot badhai’

“So it turned out you were just like us/Where were you hiding all this time, buddy?/That stupidity, that ignorance we wallowed in for a century/Look, it arrived at your shores too!”