By Sushil Kutty
A bunch of Brooklyn ‘witches’ are set to hex newly confirmed US Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, make “life hell for him”, because Kavanaugh has become the symbol of the “rape culture”. ‘Hex’ is to “cast a magic spell” and though there is a “wish to do harm”, there will be “no actual harm” done. Attendance at the witches’ council will cost $10 per person and some people are asking, what if actual harm is done?
In India, civil conversations across enemy lines ground to a stop within months of the NDA government taking charge. Unlike the Atal Bihari Vajpayee dispensation, which was a far more evenly spread coalition, the Narendra Modi-led regime started off with a comfortable majority of its own in the Lok Sabha and but for the Rajya Sabha it would have gone all-out Hindu-nationalistic.
But the RSS and its other affiliates could not and would not wait. It was as if the genie was out of the bottle and wishes were horses, such that even beggars could ride. The ‘Bhaktification of India’ and a right assertiveness took hold. Successive electoral victories in several states and the Congress-mukt war cry emboldened hardliners. It was also a dread feeling of ‘now’ or ‘never’.
Result: Bizarre became the new normal. Ministers such as Dr Satyapal Singh went off the bend. Charles Darwin lost his pedestal when Singh pronounced that his great-great-great grandmother never met an ape! Millions of Indians who went through school and were taught otherwise were in shock. Modi and Amit Shah sat on the tip of a mountain of bunkum and hocus-pocus.
Doon School secular-types lost patience and exclaimed angrily ‘Wah Taj!’ but the Chaiwala and ‘Tadipar’ were not done. The “cowification of Bharat” found urgent agency. The debate over tolerance and intolerance was altercation not conversation; the cow vigilante on late night missions took scalps on the highway and in states like Jharkhand. The picture of the Muslim pleading for life surrounded by the brainwashed spoke volumes of the descent of Man.
It was not the fault of the cattle-class. Decades of giving literacy a lead over education had raised a standing army of the ignorant ready to be converted with raw emotion. For the Hindutva forces there was no dearth of human guinea pigs to sow dissent and test discontent. There was never any doubt on the Hindutva’s expertise in setting up laboratories. It was in the resume, if not in the genes.
The ‘mob’ is not a Whatsapp creation, or aggregation. The messaging app came handy, that is all. What is a mob? Four people congregating or 10 or 20, a 100? A mob is by definition lawless. A score or even less men with grim faces and menacing looks coming at you is a mob. The mob is not orderly. Shouting and screaming is its lexicon. God save the crowd from a mob!
Akhlaq was killed by a mob. So too Pehlu Khan and Junaid. The young Muslim in Jharkhand with pleading eyes and folded hands. God save the lone helpless from a mob! Sometimes even the staunchest Modi-fan wondered why this globe-trotting Prime Minister with a hug for leaders did not get it that a single word from him could have stopped the mob in its tracks, saved lives. Silence is not golden; it is saffron stained blood red.
Millions of Indians have a beef with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and it has nothing to do with ideology, fuel prices or the shameless slide of the rupee. Maybe a reverse Mann Ki Baat aimed at Modi’s ears is the messaging app required to disaggregate the mob. Unfortunately, the daily prattle on mainstream TV media brings out only more poisonous rattlers out of the holes.
The recent mob attacks on Bihari migrants reminded one of the 2002 mobs, including the one which burned the train in Godhra. India has in the last four and a half years settled into Hindutva enclaves, the ghetto being historically and solely Muslim. The Hindutva mob is no different from the mobs that necklaced Sikhs in 1984. The “outsider” is clearly identified, and David-starred for the kill!
That said, mobs fashioning ideology and indulging in violence are not made in India. Right now, the left in the United States is rattled by POTUS Donald Trump calling Democrats a party of the mob and the media, “enemy of the people”. A Democrat leader paraphrasing Michelle Obama and substituting “when they go low, we go high” with “when they go low, we kick ‘em” hasn’t helped.
It is electoral politics and the grab for power, as in an India with approaching general elections. The mob mentality switches side every election cycle. Which brings us the question: Is protesting a ruling of a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court mob violence? Does the fact that the protests are non-violent make the spontaneous and peaceful uprising any less mob violence?
That calls for an explanation of “faith” and there are lessons in the explanation for Modi and Shah. Maybe the two should fast and head for Sabarimala. That will also clear the way for Trupti Desai her right to pray. The plus point is Modi is celibate though he and Shah could do with some hexing from witches, harmless magic spell! (IPA Service)