I regularly travel by trains hopping between Delhi and my home in Ranchi in between semesters. Over the past four years since train travel turned a regular feature of my life, I’ve had multiple lively conversations with fellow passengers.
Most of the times it would be the obvious – on how Ranchi’s weather has deteriorated over the past decades. Once undivided Bihar’s summer capital known far and wide for its pleasant summers and gorgeous waterfalls, it is now swamped with apartments and malls. Most people I meet rue the breakneck pace of urbanisation in and around Ranchi.
A New, Divisive Rhetoric
At other times I’ve had serious conversations on a range of topics from Jharkhand’s endemic issues of Naxalism and the sensitive anti-land grab CNT act that prevents large industrial houses and other powerful private entities from grabbing Adivasi land.
Regardless of whether I would agree with the other person or not, all such discussions would end amicably with the two of us learning something from the other; that’s why I always relished boarding a train.
Recently on a train to Delhi, I realised that things have changed faster than I had imagined. A young man was trumpeting how the new Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was ushering in a new era across India’s most populous state although he chose not to give details of what this “new era” actually is.
A fellow co-passenger retorted by listing the growing problems of lawlessness across UP: The absurd logic behind Adityanath’s pet project – the anti-romeo squads that ostensibly aims to discipline eve-teasers but often ends up raking negative publicity, etc. As the two engaged in an argumentative exchange, there were moments where I wanted to put my point across but controlled myself each time.
Because the past three years I’ve seen the popular discourse turn increasingly aggressive. The line between what constitutes the nation and the government has blurred to the point that even mild criticism of the regime can get you a free pass to Pakistan.
As someone with a Muslim name, I’ve always known I had little space to manoeuvre the conversation when engaging with people on political issues. There are those who’d always invoke your extra-national loyalties as if I had one, gauging you on the metrics of eating habits, appearance and the ultimate loyalty test reserved for Muslims – an India-Pakistan cricket match.
It isn’t as if these things didn’t exist before the present majoritarian BJP government came to power, riding high on the near impotency of the UPA-II in handling sensational corruption cases.
A subtle distrust of those who don’t conform to the standards of the majority is a binding feature of societies across the world.
In this respect the Indian nation is no different given its history of sectarian conflicts; those in the minority, particularly India’s nearly 180 million strong Muslim population has always been a subject of distrust and seen as a potential internal security threat for a state that’s nominally secular but has always shown majoritarian proclivities.
Let’s Not Pretend We Were Ever an Egalitarian Society
Over the past seven decades most of us have become inured to the flaws of the Indian State. We know that the chances of India’s marginalised – Adivasis, Dalits and Muslims – climbing up the ladder of social mobility is hamstrung by the near hierarchical order of the Indian society.
The unfortunates never break free of the economic and social traps that bog them down over multiple generations.
Let’s not pretend that we’ve ever been an egalitarian society; even Nehru’s grand socialist scheme reeked of Brahmanism.
As for Mahatma Gandhi, almost all his life he believed the emancipation of the Dalits can only come at the hands of the Savarna. If people like Gandhi and Nehru had a hard time freeing themselves of a feudal mentality, others like SP Mukherjee and Deendayal Upadhayaya – the “guiding lights” of the ruling BJP – remained firm on the ideas of varna-vyavastha as a key element of Indian society.
The recent caste violence between Dalits and Thakurs in Saharanpur is a standard lesson on how to discipline the unruly lot among the Dalits who won’t easily fall in line following the BJP’s resounding victory in the UP elections.
The intermittent caste and communal violence directed against Dalits and Muslims is a calculated attempt at showing them their place.
A Spectre is Haunting India – the Spectre of Communalism
The spectre of cow vigilantism continues to grow – less for the love of gau-mata and more for obvious prejudices against Muslims, often stereotyped as uncouth beef-eaters.
Probably, these stereotypes are the reason why the gruesome murders of Akhlaq, Pehlu Khan, Junaid and Alimuddin won’t appal the collective conscience of the nation. We’re often told to brush off such incidents, that they’re merely stray occurrences in a nation that takes pride in its diversity.
How do we then, explain the continuous erosion of India’s syncretism? How do we allay the fears of those who now believe that India has begun to mirror its western neighbor; Pakistan?
Lynch mobs call the shots across borders from Haryana to Jharkhand, knowing well that the police and administration are on their side. They run amok knowing that the present ruling dispensation is the fountainhead of their ideological moorings. In the run-in to the 2014 Lok Sabha election, it was Modi himself who had harped on beef and accused the ruling Congress party of promoting cow slaughter and beef export.
His divisive rhetoric during the Bihar and UP elections is unprecedented for a prime minister.
It took him nearly two years to condemn gau rakshaks; that too euphemistically, after multiple instances of Muslims being butchered across North India in the name of the holy cow. That the marginalised communities in India are increasingly feeling restless isn’t some hyperbole – it’s the stark reality of the times we live in.
(The writer is a student at the University of Delhi. He can be reached @harisahm16. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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