The blinkers that threaten our unity

Walking in Lodi Gardens, I am reminded every morning of P.V. Narasimha Rao telling a Singapore audience that India internalised every foreign conqueror except the last. The Afghan Lodis replaced the Sayyid dynasty and ruled the Delhi sultanate from 1451 to 1526 until Babar defeated Ibrahim Lodi and established the Mughal empire. No one thinks of these waves of rulers as foreign. A host of saddening current controversies warn of the potentially dangerous disappearance of the eclecticism which enriched and integrated Indian life through the centuries.

The spirit of intolerance that is sweeping our country disturbs other nations as well. The egregious Donald Trump has threatened two abominations if American voters send him to the White House. He will impose a blanket ban on Muslim immigration and not only build a wall along the 3,201-km US-Mexico border but make Mexicans pay for it. Nigel Farage of the UK Independent Party boasts of being responsible for Britain’s vote to leave the European Union: he fanned the irrational fear of foreigners that is latent in all societies. Despite German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s brave decision, thousands of battered Syrian refugees are marooned in Greece because so many European borders are closed against them.

Man is retreating everywhere into the dark and airless security of primeval caves. Loyalty has become a sectarian attribute. Narrow-minded politicians are allowed to define patriotism. The vital difference between nation and state, between country and government, is being deliberately obliterated. Several recent incidents warn us that India is moving away from the grand universalism of its past into a ghetto of the mind. The glibness with which anyone who questions any official decision involving Muslims or Pakistan is ordered to go and live in Pakistan implies the affirmation of a single-identity majoritarian state. There are dread shades in it of the old American saying that the only good (Red) Indian is a dead Indian.

The blinkers that threaten national unity are not only communal. The incident at the Central University of Haryana in Mahendragarh when Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activists objected to a discussion of the Army’s human rights record after a dramatised version of one of Mahasweta Devi’s short stories had been staged illustrated that patriotism is seen as the monopoly of a single dominant ideology. If you say Pakistani actors are not terrorists, you are a Pakistani stooge. If you seek evidence of the September 29 strikes, you are casting aspersions on our brave jawans. Do the politicians who trot out the second charge really not understand that it is their veracity — not the military’s — that might be questioned A loyal party functionary like Manohar Gopalkrishna Prabhu Parrikar is not synonymous with the Indian Army even if he is defence minister.

I can understand the Centre fearing that public respect for the military, especially in states labouring under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, might suffer if the National Human Rights Commission investigates human rights abuse allegations against the Army. But this is colonial logic. A democratically elected contemporary government should have nothing to hide. It should also have alternative means of assuring the public that the guardians of the peace are not its violators. Telling the Supreme Court that the NHRC cannot investigate charges because it is only a recommendatory body is hiding behind a technicality.

The Ravin Sisodia case is too tragic for discussion in a newspaper column, yet some of its implications reflect on the body politic and the nature of the Indian State. The apparent violation of the Flag Code 2002 and the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act 1971 don’t concern me most. What does is the sectarian intolerance and religious bigotry that exploded in Mohammad Akhlaq’s murder and his son Danish being injured because the Hindu inhabitants of Uttar Pradesh’s Bisada village suspected them of slaughtering a cow or eating beef.

The unfortunate Sisodia was one of 18 persons accused of the crime. How he came to die in a Delhi hospital certainly demands a full investigation. Anyone found responsible must be punished. But the understandable grief of bereaved relatives doesn’t automatically make him a martyr; others are clearly exploiting the tragedy for political reasons. It’s not surprising that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Sadhvi Prachi should fish in troubled waters. But a modicum of responsible behaviour is expected even from a man like Mahesh Sharma since he holds Cabinet rank in the Union government.

By paying his respects to Sisodia, the culture minister called him a martyr. His action seemed to condone Akhlaq’s murder, the assault of his son, and the violation of the Flag Code 2002 and the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act 1971. It pre-empted the proceedings pending against the 18 accused.

It’s unfortunate having to argue a public principle where private grief is involved. But the point is that all the individual implications of Mr Sharma’s action add up to promoting a single-culture India which ruthlessly stamps out dissenting positions. This is a total and absolute denial of the universal view of Mahatma Gandhi’s “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”

If this is the India that Narendra Modi and his colleagues are shaping, they will bequeath a legacy of bitter conflict to future generations. The discredited and rejected notion of a “Hindu Pakistan” would not only be an inglorious end to the lofty vision of our founding fathers; it will be Aurangzeb’s strife-torn India in reverse.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author