An Open Letter to Fellow Indians
Beware! Enemies of the nation on
the loose
By Dr Akhileshwari Ramagoud,
Journalist and Academic
Dear Fellow Indians,
Am I the only one who is terrified
at the turn things have taken in our country? Am I right in seeing a conspiracy
by the BJP and its mother the RSS, to destroy the idea of India as we and our
ancestors several generations away have always known it as? Am I being harsh in
dismissing as stupidly naïve those who are confident that India is too ancient
and strong to be rocked by the present trends of intimidation, terrorising, and
putting an entire community on the defensive? Am I being excessively
pessimistic when I begin to think that perhaps after all, our country is not as
inclusive, generous, expansive, tolerant as we believed it to be? If it was
indeed all that, then how could Indians elect Narendar Modi and BJP, who are
anti-thesis of what India stands for? And that too with an unbeatable majority
in the Parliament? This strength is precisely that brought out the neo-Nazis of
the RSS out of the woodwork. This confidence of unshakeable majority in the
Parliament for the next four years has emboldened the RSS and its myriad
offshoots and avatars across India, to take up its agenda of ‘purifying’ India,
of restoring the voice of the Hindus that was ‘stolen’ by ‘pseudo secularists’ and
handed over to the minorities to ‘appease’ them. According to them, India had
been mortagaged to the minorities ever since Independence by Congress in return
for their votes. The Hindus were given the short shrift and hence, they who are
in majority, are the aggrieved ones. Therefore, the time has come to do ‘justice’
to Hindus by restoring their rightful position to them, restore their
‘glorious’ history to them, and importantly, restore to them theirpride that
had taken a beating not only by several generations of Muslim rule but also by
Congress in post-independence times. An integral part of the RSS/BJP agenda is
to purge the country of all ‘foreign’ influences and culture either by force (as in demonising
jeans and beating up of young girls in pubs)
or enforcing submission through
violence, threats, and other insidious ways of exclusion of the ‘other’. The
RSS ideologues believe that this agenda can and will be implemented, nay,
imposed through the tyranny of the numerical
advantage that the Hindus have.
A pattern has emerged in the last one year of
Narender Modi and BJP being in power in taking forward the agenda of RSS of
intimidating and making the minorities and anti-Hindutva forces in India fall
in line or fall silent: like the lone wolf attacks, target and eliminate one
person. As in the instance of Dadri murder of Mohammed Akhlaq. As in the instance
of the murder of M M Kalburgi, of the public humiliation and beating up of a
Muslim man in Karnataka for being in the company of a Hindu girl, as in the
defacement of the statue of Mary in Delhi, in the rape of a nun, as in the filing of cases over
comments on Facebook in Kerala recently and in Mumbai, as in the killing of
journalists, as in the serving of legal notices to media houses...The list
is long.
The idea is
that no longer RSS has to prove the ‘machismo’ of the Hindu, who they believe
is seen, especially Muslim minorities as weak, whose meek nature is interpreted
as incapable of being aggressive and whose espousal of ahimsa hides the
incapacity of the Hindu to defend both
the faith and fellow Hindus. This belief RSS propagates as the reasons for the
defeat of Hindu rulers at the hands of the Muslim invaders and the reasons for
the Muslim rule for several generations. The Hindus proved such perceptions as
wrong in 2002 in Gujarat (as Congress proved it in 1984). But 2002 proved very
costly since the mass scale massacre of Muslims brought international disrepute
and proved to be tough stain to be washed away. Therefore, this strategy of
‘death by one thousand cuts’. According to this ancient Chinese method of
torture called lingchi that was
reserved for the worst crimes, a person was executed by inflicting several cuts
on the person till the person died from pain and loss of blood. An
interpretation of this phrase is that while one small cut may not kill a
person, a thousand small cuts will do the job. Since the RSS considers not just
Muslims and Christians as the enemy but all Hindu secularists, Hindu
rationalists and declared Hindu atheists, they too are being targeted, one by
one. The goal is to terrorise into submission and eliminate if possible, all
those opposed to Hindutva.
My dear
fellow Indians, we clamoured for Modi to break his silence over the Dadri
murder, we asked why he could find time to message Navjot Singh Siddhu over his
illness but not for either the family of Akhlaq or the citizens who are feeling
horrified or nervous over the turn of events? Well, he did break his silence apparently indirectly prompted by the
President Pranab Mukherjee who spoke about the ‘core values’ of Indian
civilisation of diversity, plurality and tolerance being ‘wasted’. And what did
Modi say? “..Hindus should decide
whether to fight Muslims or poverty. Muslims have to decide whether to fight
Hindus or poverty. Both need to fight poverty together. The country has to stay
united, only communal harmony and brotherhood will take the nation forward.
People should ignore controversial statements made by politicians, as they are
doing so for political gains.”
This is what I
would call a political sleight of hand. He neither expresses sorrow at the
gruesome and senseless death of Akhlaq
nor does he condemn violence let loose by his fellow Hindutva travellers.
Instead he twists the message and puts the blame on politicians for making ‘controversial statements’ for
‘polical gains.’ He also misleads people by stating rhetorically Hindus and
Muslims should decide whether they will fight each other or poverty. Really?
The decision was made FOR us in our names, Hindus and respectively, by communal
organisations in one of which Modi was schooled. No Hindu or Muslim is
interested in fighting each other as a majority of us have a bigger fight, an
existential one, on our hand.
My dear fellow Indians, we are being taken for a
ride yet again by minimising the danger facing this country’s social fabric
woven over hundreds of years of harmonious, pluralistic co-existence with
people of different faiths, languages and races. We are being told that ‘fringe elements’ of Hindutva are the
ones guilty of the excesses in the past one year, whether it was
love jihad or attacking college
students fraternising with their friends belonging to a different religion. Let
us not spare media here. The media is the main culprit in labelling the
law-breakers as ‘fringe elements’. Can I say that they are no more fringe than you and I? They represent the
mainstream Hindutva beliefs of hatred for the ‘other’ and imposing their will
through violence and intimidation. They represent the mainstream Hindutva
belief that India should be a “Hindu Rashtra” where the minorities live either
at the mercy of Hindus or all the
minorities should adopt Hinduism. Surely, they have not taken upon themselves
voluntarily to kill or assault people; there is a deliberate strategy to send
out the message to the people that Hindutva is here to stay for the nextfour
years. It is clear that with Modi at the
head of the government, this is the time for the Hindutva ideology to
consolidate itself. That is why, my dear
fellow Indians, I am terrified at the prospect of this looming disaster. I fear that Hindutvawadis are bent on dividing
our country, perhaps not physically like it happened in 1947, but certainly, create such a cleavage between
us, that we no longer will remain ourselves. I do hope you agree that we need
to stand together and steadfastly fight the enemy that has been set loose in
our country.
Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Akhileshwari Ramagoud
