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Sunday, November 17, 2024

Clash of the Titans and the Doomed Modi Sarkar

Hindutva is not a political issue. It's a matter of faith and culture. If BJP feels that they are the proprietors of Hindutva then they are mistaken. Fighting elections, winning or losing are not certifications of Hindutva. Savarkar was the biggest champion of Hindutva. But his Hindu Mahasabha never got success in electoral politics

Maharashtra in turmoil is a harbinger of the fall of the Narendra Modi government. The tit for tat is ominous because the skies rumble and then the lighting shines in the dark clouds that the ordinary mortals on the earth see in the sky. The sparring begins in a fierce manner first with the murder of some sadhus and the blame was thrown on the minority Muslims on the border of Maharashtra and Gujarat. This continued for some more time. But the onset of election in UP where the divider-in-chief has fielded another who is a mounting attack on his rivals in opposition.

Yogi is no less than his boss. The audience is waiting with bated breath for the result. In one way there is the selection of the fittest, in a Darwinian sense, is exposing the truth that it has enfeebled the party in power at Delhi. This is not an amateurish assessment but apprehension when giants fight the lesser creatures or breeds take to their heels to avoid being caught in the resulting violence. Sanjay Raut “Shiv Sena pramukh had told us about Hindutva. We wanted power for Hindutva. What we are seeing now, the Hindutva that is practiced by these people (BJP), is only a pretense. Their Hindutva is for power. They are only wearing the fake skin of Hindutva.

Read more: Aafia Siddiqui and Pakistan’s common destiny

People ask us whether we have left Hindutva

But we have left BJP and not Hindutva. BJP does not mean Hindutva”. Once upon a time the Supreme court had intervened and accepted that all this amounted to only Hindus of the country. But now there is the moment when those who went to a long sleep in the caves are waking up from it.

“Hindutva is not a political issue. It’s a matter of faith and culture. If BJP feels that they are the proprietors of Hindutva then they are mistaken.” Fighting elections, winning or losing are not certifications of Hindutva. Savarkar was the biggest champion of Hindutva. But his Hindu Mahasabha never got success in electoral politics. Yet his thoughts on Hindutva continue to shine,” (Sanjay Raut is not a court jester.).

Raut and former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis preen on having changed names of towns and cities in their rivalry and both appear to be paper tigers emulating Bal Thackeray of yore. But there is another wind blowing in another direction. “Devendra forgot that he was also the CM. Why didn’t he change the name of Aurangabad then? We will do it. We have already passed a resolution in the legislature. It requires permission from the Centre. Devendra should check where the file is stuck?”

Read more: Remaking of India in the image of PM Narendra Modi

He who divides most gets votes

The clue who gets most after a riot is a tell-tale of the guilty. Muzaffarnagar 2013 riots that evolved into pogroms were well planned. Twelve days after a road accident in which three were killed, the Jats called a mammoth meeting which was not permitted by the police. Inflammatory speeches by the BJP leaders exhorted the crowd to not only save their daughters from marrying Muslims but make Muslim girls their daughters-in-law.

The Jat girl who reportedly was teased and whose two brothers were killed by the people in retaliation for the death of Shahenawaz sparked more violence and the crowd returning from the maha panchayat attacked Muslims. A girl from the region rang up her uncle and ATS chief Krish Pal Raghuvanshi of Maharashtra to delay the army departure from Delhi to Muzaffarnagar showing the well-planned move as well as the reach of the Jats and Hindu extremists.

When Akhlesh Yadav became the chief minister earlier, in UP, an atmosphere of communal violence was created. The Hindu extremists consider the third front parties as to the worst enemy of Hindutva. “Every week we would get reports of communal tension from some district headquarters. It started in western UP, but spread to central and eastern UP,” observed a senior UP police officer. Such was the extent of the conspiracy. The road to Delhi passes through Lucknow and anyone who wants to win an election and become PM has to win UP’s 84 members for Parliament.

Read more: Understanding terrorism of bondage to past

Without communalizing the situation and sparking tension into riots it would not be possible for the Hindu party BJP to win the election. Those who took the leading role in the riots and were accused and even arrested were rewarded with tickets to fight the 2014 election. Most of them won and what is even more remarkable some of them were also given ministerial posts by Modi.

The most radical divider, Bal Thackeray

That Bal Thackeray was the most virulent radical that inspired bloody retaliation caused more deaths of Muslims than the natural confrontation led to in January 1993. As the Srikrishna commission report says:

“One common link between the riots of December 1992 and January 1993 and bomb blasts of 12th March 1993 appears to be that the former appears to have been a causative factor for the latter. There does appear to be a cause-and-effect relationship between the two riots and the serial bomb blasts.”

Read more: Fake terror attack on Indian Parliament?

But the gravamen of the matter is that when Modi went to Mumbai after 2002 pogroms, Bal Thackeray claimed that it was he who had done the spadework for Modi, in other words: carried out the dry run in 2001 Malegaon riots! This is a Machiavellian reference to the use of white powder in burning Muslim houses and mosques in Malegaon October 25-28-.

 

Mustafa Khan holds a Ph.D. on Mark Twain. He lives in Malegaon Maharashtra, India. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.