By Ananya Guha
The murder of 16 year old Junaid was out of sheer spite against a boy whom the criminals understood to be someone not of their religious moorings. Hasn’t North India been used to Eid celebrations, and the muezzin’s call at a mosque? Is Islamic religion something new to the people there? The answer is obviously no, but the question is why are feelings such as these whipped up day after day? Why are similar happenings taking place in Uttar Pradesh, a bastion of conglomerate cultures? If we say it is done by politicians then it is necessary to examine how and to what extent politics and life are interwoven in India. If again it is a mad rush of hatred on some pretext of the ‘ other’ for a community that people have an inveterate hatred or dislike for then such brazen killings are done, because the perpetrators know that there is some support somewhere. And if this support comes from those who rule the country and their henchmen there will be of course, a free for all. And this free for all, a rampant display of right, might and hateful viciousness is the order of the day, even when in a country people are pleading for protection of diversity.
The ‘ Not In My Name’ protest held spontaneously across the country and abroad on 28th June 2017 is not an argument of rhetoric, but a plea for sanity, in a land whose people are becoming insane, stripped of logic and looking out for faces and habits of people not of their kind. That this difference is spilling blood and spouting the worst kind of diatribes, is also hallmark of a nation in regress and wallowing in darkness and benighted upholstery.
What has gone wrong? Was it always there and now since political dispensations have changed, there is a tacit understanding between people and power that this can, should and will happen. Or is it an inversion of history? We are no longer the infidels, they are! They called us so once upon a time. So the interplay of us and them, the other has been entangled in furious web of malice. But then, should this lead to killings? Yes when it is mob lynching. But mobs constitute each individual, and such individuals find time to gather and connect; which shows that their feelings of hatred for someone is at sync, with one another in an autodidact way. This is really dangerous, the instinctive presupposition that we hate ‘ them ‘ and must lynch.
The ‘NotInMyName’ protest is to be seen as a build up of an argument for anonymity in terms of caste, religion or race. If the teeming millions of India do not have a name in terms of such references then the India of a monolith will give way to that of quintessence.
It is also interesting to see how at this time there are other strange if not bizarre happenings, which show the class/caste upper hand eating into societal systems in the most obnoxious of ways. The recent episode in a Delhi club, asking a lady to leave because her dress ( the jainsem) was not in proper decorum smacks of abysmal ignorance of the culture of others( a term now used in profusion, in present day contexts), high handedness smacking of elitism divested of all realities. Again using the word ” servant ” and then likening it to ” Nepalis” is the worst and profane kind of negativism, and flaunting of self righteousness of upper classes and their misplaced prudery. Are all Nepalis ‘ servants’? So a ‘ servant’ cannot enter your hallowed precincts!
Caste, class and religious obnoxiousness are working in devilish ways into Indian society as never before. The animosity towards the lower working class, the ‘ un ‘ religious and Dalits, are sure signs of a regressive atavistic society. ‘ NotInMyName’ will or should obliterate all these, because the name tag is doing or undoing all rights. The name tag is a dismal admission of votaries of misplaced power and bellicosity. I am citing these two disparate incidents to show that indeed, there is a method in ( their) madness. The country is ruled from one end, conveniently stops at one or two more where alignment is complete in ‘ cultural’ terms. No, certainly not in my blessed name, nor in THOSE names also.
My point is the ruthless chicanery, the troubled practices, the prevarication of Indian history and religion, intolerance of ‘ lower castes’ and Dalits, the obtrusive similes ( or metaphors) between religion and myth, the falsification of history that are taking place today, wrapped in the garb of secularism. The hatred for the ‘ other ‘ ( not me!) is poured with vitriol. Above all the voiceless do not have a place in this spectrum of darkness. Only noises in shape of pro- poor policies exist. What happened to the rich with their tainted money? How much ‘ black ‘ money was retrieved? The poor are getting poorer, the ‘ black’ blacker! It is the noveau-riche and the plutocrats playing these inauspicious games and flaunting love for a New India.