India : Between Hubris , Hope & Hate

 

BY R.K.MISRA

Both canine-catchers and politicians reward to punish. They entice to ensnare then shackle to stun.

Six months locked down in Donald Trump’s America and  18 months of freedom thereafter in Narendra Modi’s India were not enough to change ones mind on the entrapping agility of either.

 Journalism is more like a jealous lover than a committed wife . The one wants more and more of you with time, and the other less and less. Half a century  locked in the embrace of words, news and sentences  while alluringly addictive   can turn torturously toxic. Thus a short break to Trump-land in February 2020 was a delicious delight which united my family  by pure happenstance even if it divided the world into watertight containers. While humans shrivelled to touch we were happily cocooned in the isolation of a countryside dwelling. Returning to home shores one found a nation united in hate, polarized in mind prisons and divided against itself.

The unfolding  irony of it all is  that those armed with a record mandate  were passively complicit  at the nibbling away of the secular national fabric as their representatives presided over cleaving chants  to threats of a repeat of  Gujarat 2002 and much more. The eloquent hate testimonials enshrined in media archives on U-tube and the news report of attacks on places of worship should fill in the blanks.

While in the US , one had watched with dismay as maverick  Trump meddled with science and scientific advice during the pandemic- often with disastrous results. A subsequent report by a coronavirus-crisis sub-committee within the US House of Representatives documented 47 instances in which government scientists had been sidelined or their recommendations altered, with the frequency of meddling increasing in the run-up to the Presidential elections in November  2021. In India that time is still to come.

When the Washington  Post  Fact Checker team first started cataloguing President Donald trump’s false or misleading claims, it recorded 492 suspect claims in the first 100 days of his Presidency. On November 2 alone, the day before  the 2020 vote, Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he barnstormed across the country in a desperate effort  to win  a re-election.

A report by Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly states that by the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during  his Presidency-averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day.

India may be lagging behind  the USA on most  parameters-including this one- but  never for want of trying. Though he rarely meets the media, the Indian Prime Minister has been fairly garrulous in his claims serving them  with a quaint mix of fact-fiction-even fantasy to rather telling effect. The less than a dozen fact checkers led by the likes of FactChecker and Alt News  may lack the financial heft to undertake a Washington Post style study ,but make up for it  with tiger-like tenacity leading to  threats from right wing fundamentalists and even false criminal cases.

For a sample take the ten half- truths and whole lies- ten times PM Modi misled the nation in 2017- that Alt News brought out into the public domain. These ranged  from the trivial to the insidious and from the banal to the bizarre . The trivial was  that former prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee travelled by the first ever metro service when the Delhi metro was flagged off in 2002.

The insidious was the insinuation that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, former vice-president Hamid Ansari and former Army chief Deepak Kapoor had gathered at the residence of  Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyer  with the Pakistan High Commissioner in India to collude with Pakistan over the 2017 Gujarat elections and for making Ahmed Patel, the party’s muslim chief minister if it wins. This insinuation coming from such a highly placed politician in power marked a new low in the Indian political narrative and one that will be a continuing phenomenon in the times to come irrespective of  the political dispensation in power. For an encore, watch the unfolding UP polls 2022 campaign.

After milking the sensation in the Gujarat elections 2017 , the government  sought to retrieve the situation with a statement by the then finance minister Arun Jaitley in Parliament that “ the perception that PM Modi had insinuated a collusion between Manmohan Singh and Pakistani officials was “ erroneous”. The PM in his speeches did’nt question, nor meant to question the commitment to this nation of either former PM Singh or former VP Hamid Ansari. Any such perception is erroneous. We hold these leaders in high esteem, as well as their commitment to India”, Jaitley said. The damage, nevertheless, was done…. The things that politicians will do to win an election !

The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s chant at a Houston rally on September 22,2019…aabki baar Trump Sarkar…remains a clarion call for Indian-Americans to vote for an acknowledged white supremacist. In hindsight, they did not heed him or that was the accumulated response of that country. The Indian Prime Minister’s return gift congregation “Namaste Trump “ at Ahmedabad on February 24,2020 may have been a return of favour to the US President but ended up with the self-goal of a corona outbreak in the city  as over a lakh strong crowd had been requisitioned from all over the state   to fill the newly constructed stadium named after the Prime Minister himself.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) website clearly mentions that on January 30,2020 following the recommendations of the Emergency Committee, the WHO Director General declared that the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern(PHEIC).On January 16, the Pan American Health Organisation issued its first epidemiological alert on the ‘novel ‘ corona virus including recommendations  covering international travellers and on January 21 the first confirmed case was reported in the US. By the second week of  February, it had already spread from China to 20 other countries as India went about hosting Trump at the end of the third week.

The very government which was in denial of the PHEIC up to the Trump-Modi Ahmedabad rally,

did a dramatic about turn exactly a month later locking down a nation of 138 crores at four hours

notice. ”The total lockdown was to save India, to save its citizens, your family”’ said Prime

Minister Modi in  an address to the nation.

 

On March 24, 2020, the day of the lockdown, it had confirmed just 519 cases and 9  deaths. As on February1, 2022(05:05 GMT) the figure for coronavirus cases in India stood at 41,469.499 with 4,96, 268 deaths and  39,230,198 recoveries, according to Worldometer, one of the world’s most viewed global websites of the coronavirus. All this as the virus mutates from  alpha to delta and is now upon us with Omicron !

 

In the intervening period, media worldwide, was dotted with horrific tales of millions of migrant workers trudging their way over  hundreds of kms, perishing enroute ,the killing oxygen shortage and the burning pyres. Sights of floating corpses disposed off in flowing rivers only brought retributory police action on reporting journalists. On April  25, 2021,The New York Times carried a report from Delhi quoting India’s government ordering Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to take down dozens of social media posts critical of its handling of the pandemic. The order was aimed at about 100 posts that carried critiques from opposition leaders and calls for the Prime Minister’s resignation. The government plea was that the posts would incite panic and hinder its response to the pandemic. The companies complied in part making the posts invisible in India. It was like shutting eyes on our state while the world watched us sans a stitch !

 

Before the pandemic hit, the headlines were being hogged by the government agenda to re-do the country’s citizenship laws. The first  move was the  new Citizenship Amendment Act(CAA) enacted in December11, 2019 to facilitate fast-track citizenship for non-muslim residents of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who came to India on or before December 31,2014.The second related to the proposal to conduct an all -India NRC(National Register of Citizens) to establish the antecedents of those who live in India and claim Indian citizenship.” Leaving jews and muslims out of the six religions granted special privileges only made official, a discriminatory policy against Islam and Judaism The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2016 breaks with India’s legacy of emphasizing secularism over religion nationally”, points out  the Columbia University Libraries ,Global Studies blog by Gary Hausman, posted on December 10,2020.

 

 Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement in Parliament on December 9, 2019 that a nationwide NRC is on the cards, days before the CAA was enacted and the insecurity it generated, particularly amongst the muslims leading to nationwide protests-Shaheenbaug, Jamia-millia-JNU and many more- is a subject of archival studies that will interpret the impact of the Modi years of BJP rule on the multi-faceted fabric of India. However, it is the contradictions that confound.

 

Riding to power on the back of a politics of protests after the ignominy of being reduced to a mere two Lok Sabha seats in 1984, the BJP, now frowns on any form of opposition. The response of the Modi government to any voice of  dissent or protest oscillates between slapping   sedition, terming you a terrorist or labelling its own countrymen anti-national. You are either  with us or against  us, is the credo .  Opposition is the new enemy .

 

“The sole act of protesting” cannot be used as “a weapon to  justify the incarceration” of those who exercise this right, ruled Justice Subramonium Prasad of the Delhi High Court while granting bail to five persons in September last year. Furkan, Arif, Shadab Ahmed, Suvaleen and Tabassum, a mother of two had spent from 11 to 17 months in jail after they were picked up by the Delhi police on February  24,2020 for being part of an anti-CAA protest during which a head constable sustained fatal injuries .”It is the constitutional duty of the court to ensure that there is no arbitrary deprivation of personal liberty in the face of excess of state power”, the court ruled.

 

Earlier on September 3 the same year discharging former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain’s brother and two others in a North-east Delhi riots case, additional sessions judge Vinod Yadav said ”the investigation tried to merely pull wool over the court’s eyes” and this case is a “colossal wastage of the hard earned money of tax  payers without there being real intent of investigating the matter. Hussain’s brother Shah Alam, Rashid Saifi and Shadab had been charged in a case related to alleged loot and vandalization of a shop during the February 2020 riots in Chandbagh area of Delhi and had spent extended time behind bars. ”Of the 750 riot cases,150 cases have been received by this court for trial . So far charges have been framed only in 35 cases. A large number of accused persons who had been languishing in jail for the last about one and a half years merely on account of the fact that the trial in their cases are not being initiated”, the court said adding “when history will look back at the worst communal riots since partition, the failure of the investigating agency to conduct  a proper investigation…will surely torment the sentinels of democracy.

 

The plight of  Devangana Kalita , an MPhil student of the Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU) who was arrested three times in ten days or Natasha Narwal(JNU) and Asif Iqbal Tanha of Jamia Millia Islamia, is telling. The three  anti-CAA protestors were slapped with all manner of charges and multiple arrests between December 2019 and May 2020 . These ranged from rioting with a deadly weapon to  attempt to murder,  criminal conspiracy . Soon after the late February riots in Delhi, a fresh FIR of rioting followed on the three on March 6 with terrorism and sedition  under the Unlawful Activities(prevention) Act, UAPA being added on April 19.

 

 In separate orders granting bail  to the three in June 2021, a Delhi High Court bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Anup J. Bhambhani  observed that the gravity of the offence alleged would beget the length of the sentence, as may be awarded on conclusion of trial; but an assertion as to the gravity of the offence cannot thwart the grant of bail. In the kalita-Narwal cases ,it said,” We are constrained to say, that it appeared, that in its anxiety to suppress dissent and in the morbid fear that matters may get out of hand, the state has blurred the line between the constitutionally guaranteed ‘right to protest’ and ‘terrorist activity’. If such blurring gains traction, democracy would be in peril” . The Delhi police rushed to the Supreme Court  against the bail order but it  refused to cancel it.

 

 Former Supreme Court judge Madan B. Lokur  in a detailed article on June 22,2021 termed as “appalling”, the manner in which the proceedings against the three, have been conducted and

are being conducted by the police and prosecution, till now .

 

In contrast was the case of  BJP leader Kapil Mishra. According to published reports,  Mishra

made provocative speeches near the area ,allegedly with the objective of dislodging the anti-CAA protests, following which communal violence spread across large parts of north-east Delhi in which 53  people lost their lives and hundreds were injured. And yet the Delhi Police  has been avoiding taking action against him despite numerous complaints. After the Delhi Police failed to move in the matter, social activist Harsh Mander moved the High Court to direct the police to file an Action Taken Report(ATR). Metropolitan Magistrate sought the ATR from the DCP concerned. Mander had sought arrest  and prosecution of Mishra for instigating mob violence against anti-CAA-NRC-NPR protestors and engaging in criminal activities designed to provoke and cause a riot. The Delhi Minorities Commission is on record stating “Delhi riots began with Kapil Mishra’s speech, yet no case(was filed) against him”. The report also said that the investigation into the Delhi riots case is  discriminatory. It read,”… in most cases charge—sheets have been filed by the police first against muslim accused and the entire narrative has been changed to one of violence on both sides rather than a pogrom that was in fact carried out”.

 

When Police plays footsie at the prod of political power , the  Supreme Court remains the

last distress call for all capsizing ships. Approached by riot victims ,the Supreme Court, on December 17,2021 asked the Delhi High Court to decide, preferably within three months, a writ petition for an FIR to be registered and investigation to be started against BJP leaders who allegedly made comments capable of inciting crowds ahead of the 2020 Delhi riots. The order came from a bench of justice L.Nageshwara Rao and B.R.Gavai on a writ petition filed by three riot victims who alleged that the Delhi High Court is not hearing their case against BJPs Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma . Thakur, a minister in the Modi government who was barred by the Election Commission from campaigning for his incendiary remarks in the last Delhi  elections, post the poll was political piety personified.  “strict action should be taken against those involved in the riots(Delhi). The strength of our country is that people of various faiths co-exist and live unitedly contributing towards nation building”, he said at a media interaction.

 

Matters languish and it is now nearing  two years from when - in February 2020-  Mr Justice S.Murlidhar of the Delhi High Court had slammed the Delhi Police for failing to register FIRs against alleged hate speeches by three BJP leaders, before he was transferred out to Punjab.

 

The reticence of the Delhi Police  should not surprise for it’s boss , the Union Ministry of Home Affairs has noted in its ‘Year End Review 2020’ that the February violence in  north-east Delhi which killed 53 people was a spontaneous one thus negating, by implication,  the role of incitement by right-wing leaders. This resonates with echoes of the Nanavaty-Mehta Judicial Inquiry Commission set up by chief minister Narendra Modi which termed the Gujarat  2002 communal riots in which  about a thousand people- mostly muslims- perished as spontaneous and  gave a  clean chit, to the state government, chief minister Modi , the ruling BJP and  even the RSS run VHP and Bajrang Dal. Incidentally the Commission report was tabled in the Gujarat Assembly in  December 2019, around the time the CAA protests were underway in Delhi and  five years after the report was submitted to the Anandiben Patel government in 2014.

 

The contrast of  official attitude and approach bodes ill and is at the core of the current tilt in the

national political narrative that was nibbling at the fringes and is now set to corrode the core. The government is always right.. and when it is wrong…it is still right. Take another example.

 

As the Covid pandemic raged and the economy was grappling against odds, the Modi government promulgated three ordinances on June 5,2020 making fundamental changes in the existing agricultural regulatory framework without involving state governments in the process. By September 14,2020 these Ordinances were brought to Parliament as legislative bills – The Indian agriculture Acts of 2020 also referred to as farm bills. The Lok Sabha approved the bills on September 17, the Rajya Sabha on September 20 and the Presidential assent was received on September 27,2020 .

 

Over a year  later  the Prime Minister announced  scrapping of the laws  and on November 29, 2021, Parliament passed the farm laws repeal bill without any discussion. The Presidential assent came on December 1, 2021. According to farm leaders, the stir cost  them 750 of their lives, the amnesic government, off course has no figures. BJP  big-wigs termed the PM’s decision as an example of responsible  and responsive governance. Their reactions during the course of the year had ranged from calling the farm protestors khalistanis and Maoists, unwanted elements, extremists, parts of tukde-tukde gang, guinea pigs of anarchist designs, sinister and Pakistan-China propped up protests. Those who made these comments included, union ministers, chief ministers, party leaders MPs and the like.

 

The repeal was forced by the longest running farmers’ protest launched by a platform of 40 farm unions banded together under the Samyukt Kisan Morcha(SKM). One of the key reasons was the widening geography of dissent. According to the National Crime Records Bureau(NCRB) there were 2188 incidents of agriculture related protests in 2020 despite the raging pandemic, which was  38 per cent higher than the 1579 such protests in 2019. This despite the fact that the NCRB data falls short. In 2020 farmers in Assam, Goa ,Kerala, Manipur, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tripura, Telangana and West Bengal protested against the new farm laws but the NCRB report shows zero incidences, points out a Down to Earth report. According to the  State of India’s Environment ,2021 report by the Delhi based non-profit ,Centre for Science and Environment, farmers from at least 22 states/union territories had come forward to support the agitation, proving beyond doubt that the stir was gathering steam.

 

The impending elections in the  five states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur was the last straw that  broke the camel’s back. Those of us who have closely followed the fortunes of Modi from his RSS days know what a difficult choice for this one- man decision making machine it must have been. Modi is the party, Modi is the government  and everything else constitute mere pawns on a political chessboard. . The loss of Uttar Pradesh in 2022 would spell disaster for his third time comeback bid in 2024 and must be won at all cost , therefore the step back.

 

For Modi, every election is a battle. And all is fair in battles and wars  for no price is steep enough for  victory. So came the war cry of a Congress-free India (Congress- mukt Bharat) ,no issues if it ended up creating a Congress-‘Yukt’-BJP . Ever since Modi first tasted success in Gujarat through communal polarization in the aftermath of the 2002 Godhra train carnage and subsequent communal riots winning a steamroller majority of 127 seats in a house of 182, majoritarianism has become the hallmark of BJP poll politics, getting engraved deeper and deeper Two decades later, the party is  yet to evolve a more unitary alternative nor seems inclined .

 

The irony cannot be more striking. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel united  a gaggle of feuding principalities and a caste-riddled society into a sovereign democratic republic. Prime Minister Modi has built the tallest memorial in the world for  the Sardar but the secular tapestry the iron man  wove  is under strain  today as never before !