ASSAULT ON SECULARISM AND RESISTANCE THROUGH UNITY

ASSAULT ON SECULARISM AND RESISTANCE THROUGH UNITY

9-AUG-ENG 27

RAJIV NAYAN AGRAWAL

ARA-------------------As the 79th Independence Day approaches, India is at a crossroads. Our Constitution embodies the legacy of the freedom struggle. But on one side are powerful forces bent on destroying it. These are the RSS, its political wing the BJP and several other affiliate organisations, collectively known as the Sangh Parivar. Controlling the central government and several state governments for the past 11 years, these forces have been working tooth and nail to undermine the three pillars of the Constitution – secularism, democracy and federalism – and replace them with a fascist Hindu Rashtra based on a dark, medieval vision of society. The power they have gained from being in power has been used by the BJP/RSS to make sweeping changes to laws and policies aimed at building a Hindu supremacist framework, marginalising religious minorities, strengthening the brutal caste system and suppressing democracy. Outside the government, Sangh Parivar organisations like Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal etc. have resorted to open violence and intimidation to pursue this agenda.

But on the other hand, there is a rising wave of opposition. The biggest manifestation of this resistance was seen in the recent general strike of 9 July, called by trade unions and farmers’ organisations and supported by dozens of other mass organisations and movements. The strike was not only for various economic and democratic demands but also symbolised the unity of the people of India against the divisions inflicted by religious fanaticism, caste oppression and other regressive ideologies. Earlier, during the 2024 general elections too, this fight was reflected in the wave of opposition to the BJP’s campaign to win more than 400 Lok Sabha seats (‘Abki Baar Char Sau Paar’), which was rightly seen as paving the way for constitutional amendment. At the same time, the resentment against its disastrous economic policies led to the BJP losing its majority in the Lok Sabha and having to rely on various opportunist parties to continue its rule. These policies have forced millions of people into low-wage hard labour and unemployment so that a super-rich class in India can become even richer.

Thus, the fight has begun. But the struggle has a long and hard way to go to eradicate the poison of hate, hysterical blindness and jingoism that has spread among a large section of the general public. It is important to recognise the depth of this erosion and fight it better.

While there was no doubt that a government led by an RSS pracharak would never support secularism, the Modi government and his party’s state governments have abandoned even the pretence of demonstrating a watered-down version of secularism — tolerance and equality towards all religions. Through a series of legislative and policy measures, it has systematically marginalised and suppressed the Muslim community and sought to impose a Hindu supremacist politics on the country.

While the BJP pretends to advance the “interests” of Muslims on certain issues like triple talaq or waqf properties, these are in fact deliberate plans to weaken laws pertaining to the Muslim community. This is part of a larger vision of having one law for all – Hindu law.

The National Education Policy brought by the Modi government is steeped in the same values and nationalism that smacks of worn-out Hindutva ideas. More importantly, the BJP, through its government, is ensuring a massive rewriting of the history taught to school and university students. The study of the Mughal period has been removed or limited from school textbooks and adapted to suit the RSS’s imaginary view that the entire period was nothing but Hindu slavery. Rewriting history has been a major task of the RSS and after Modi came to power, it is doing it with a vengeance. Appointments to various academic posts at all levels of education are being made in such a way that supporters of the Sangh Parivar can be appointed in it. This is a long-term capture of institutions by the BJP government, aimed not only to please its supporters but also to ensure that its ideology is propagated at every level, in every classroom.

The Modi government has passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in 2019, allowing fast-track citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants from neighboring countries. There was an attempt to link it with the creation of a National Register of Citizens (NRC), which would have deprived Muslims of citizenship and disenfranchised them. Due to public outrage against this, the government had to retreat from the NRC. Recently, the Election Commission has launched a special intensive revision campaign of the voter list in Bihar, demanding all kinds of documents from the common people to establish the validity of their citizenship. The target was the so-called Bangladeshi infiltrators. Bengal is believed to be the next target of this exercise. Driven by the Sangh Parivar machinery, Bengali Muslim immigrants have been targeted nationwide in the name of weeding out infiltrators.

The BJP has raised the issue of equal civil rights during its 2024 Lok Sabha election campaign. The BJP had raised the issue of the Unlawful Conversion of Muslims (UCC) and promised to implement it. Various BJP-led state governments have also announced preliminary steps towards it. The Uttarakhand government has even passed a kind of UCC for the state, which includes some bizarre provisions, including some against live-in relationships. The UCC issue is a long-standing demand of the RSS and (along with the removal of Article 370 from Kashmir and the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya) is a weapon to target the rights of the Muslim community. This weapon serves to spread hatred against the Muslim community as well as promote many other related myths, such as the Muslim population outnumbering Hindus.

Various BJP-led state governments have passed new laws against conversions, although laws prohibiting forced conversions already exist. The definitions of these new laws are vague and allow any individual to file complaints against others for suspected conversion attempts. This has led to a spate of attacks on religious gatherings or even individuals, conducted by Sangh Parivar organisations in connivance with the local police. Christians have been particularly targeted in these attacks.

The Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government of Uttar Pradesh has been at the forefront of harassing and terrorising the Muslim community of the state. After passing a law providing for punitive fines on individuals found to be involved in damaging public property during protests, it has used it as a weapon to target Muslim families, especially after the anti-CAA protests. Another measure it introduced was the demolition of houses of those allegedly involved in crimes including rioting. This was again used to target Muslim families. Later, several BJP-ruled governments like Madhya Pradesh copied the same modus operandi. In the process, several dozen houses were demolished. Under these circumstances, the Supreme Court has again had to lay down strict guidelines for any demolitions, including notices, hearings, etc.

The Prime Minister himself has been openly performing Hindu rituals on various occasions and TV channel cameras have been broadcasting them live every moment. This includes the inauguration of the new Parliament building, then the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and visits to various temples in different parts of the country as well as abroad. The Maha Kumbh in Allahabad/Prayagraj earlier this year was completely organised by the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government, with huge hoardings of the Prime Minister and other BJP leaders put up all over the region.

The Prime Minister and Union Ministers, and state-level counterparts have continuously unleashed a flood of hate speeches during election campaigns. Openly targeting the Muslim community and championing Hindutva, these hate speeches clearly violate the laws, but neither the Election Commission nor the police have held them accountable. It is an irony that persons occupying the highest positions in the country are openly abusing and threatening members of the minority community, or calling on the majority community to open a front against them in the name of various imaginary crimes like love jihad, land jihad, etc.

The central and state governments are openly protecting criminals accused or convicted of heinous crimes such as murder, rape and arson during communal attacks and those involved in bomb blasts. The BJP-led Gujarat government released 11 convicts involved in the Bilkis Bano case, in which her family was attacked, raped and her three-year-old daughter killed by a mob during the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom. This prompted the Supreme Court to intervene and order that all the released convicts be sent back to jail. In Odisha, the newly elected BJP government easily released a convict in the Graham Staines murder case but was forced not to release the main accused, Dara Singh, following public outrage. There have been many cases where cow protectors have been released on bail or criminal cases against them have been languishing due to inadequate prosecution. In many cases, BJP or Sangh Parivar leaders have garlanded these criminals as ‘heroes’ after their release. The most recent example of acquittal of the accused is the Malegaon blast case where a group of Hindutva activists including former MP Pragya Singh were acquitted due to lack of sufficient evidence by the prosecution. All this has given a strong sense of impunity to the goons of the Sangh Parivar who have been involved in violence in the name of cow protection, festival processions, attacks on mosques and other heinous acts against the Muslim community. The Central and State Governments have openly supported the Hindutva brigade by setting aside all their commitments to the Constitutional directive of equality before law.

The above briefly describes how the BJP has weaponised laws and government policies/decisions to target the Muslim and Christian communities. The Sangh Parivar has furthered this in the society with disastrous consequences. All the fictions concocted by the Sangh Parivar have been used to target the Muslim and Christian communities. Nick slogans — love jihad, cow protection, hijab, land jihad, so-called Bangladeshi migrants, etc. — and all the lies propagated to defame minority communities have been adopted by various vigilante groups and affiliates of the Sangh Parivar. Often, violent attacks, provocations and riot-like situations have occurred in countless places across the country. NCRB data shows that in the first eight years of Modi’s rule (2014-22), there were 6067 communal incidents in which more than 10,000 people were killed. There were more than 80 incidents of mob lynching of Muslims and Dalits during this period, most of them in the name of cow protection. These figures are just the tip of the iceberg.

In addition, a whole web of lies and myths about Muslims and other minorities is spread day and night through the social media machinery of the Sangh Parivar. At a time when fake news has become ubiquitous and even most mainstream TV channels propagate it, this constant barrage of hate and venom has had an impact on the naïve masses.

This is a frightening situation, but that is why the importance of united struggles like the recent general strike cannot be underestimated. Also, countering the ideological onslaught of the Sangh Parivar through the platforms provided by alternative media and people’s struggles will also play an important role.