A strong civilization has an innate ability to overcome its ills and take it along that way which the wise show... Does India need to wake up in matters concerning Facism...?
When the Gujarat election results came through it came as a surprise that Modi came back to power with such numbers. A sense of apprehension naturally arose how could the citizens of a state look away from the hell that broke loose just a few weeks back. Was the Gujarati nation at a loss to read the soft peddled Facism that was used? Have the Gujaratis so drastically shifted from the philosophy that produced the greatest leader of modern India and possibly the world at that time? The answers were not forthcoming...
Besides, reports of efficiency in the state’s administration, effective prosperity… were reflected by most leading papers… Does it mean that India needs a fascist force for inducing prosperity? Does it mean that we need society to be divided on communal lines (or along any other available divide) for prosperity to set in? Does it mean that a fear Psychosis has to be induced for a nation like ours to get on to its feet?
Looking back, it is instructive to note that Germany, under the Fuehrer, rose like a Phoenix from the ashes of the world war I. The achievements were outstanding and prosperity was knocking on German doors… and yet all was not well in Germany… the nature of the system demanded that some small group had to be isolated in the social structure, to be precise it had to be a group at which venom could be easily spat at. The Jews served as the guinea Pigs; and then there were the physically and mentally disabled, the gypsies… and the fear psychosis lay in the fact that some one, anyone, branded by the government authorities as ‘traitor’ would receive the same sentence as these groups that were singled out.
What that group is doesn’t actually matter, what ideology that minority ideology has also only matters in as much as it should aid, or support, or react in due course when the perpetrator is spitting venom.. In effect it is a matter of creating a cold war amongst the citizens of a single nation. Create a majority out of any divide available, and use reckless threat or systematic fascism as a magic wand to create a charged atmosphere for motivated socio-political activity; all under the cloud of mortal fear.
Going by this, it becomes incumbent on the powers-that-be in Gujarat to keep the Muslim Vs Hindu pot boiling. Witch hunt Muslims were ever possible: work with a big brother attitude, sometimes showering mercy, other times pour venom, talk amity sometimes and other times issue warnings against neighboring countries and traitors who oppose death sentences… And in the meanwhile ‘enjoy’ power. The ploy is very simple; take for instance what the Shiv Sainiks affected in Mumbai… sometimes whip out Hindu sentiment by likening the Muslim fraternity to the ‘terror Jihad’ mentality. And other times whip out a Mumbai for Maharastrians sentiment. Or some other times enact a moral police on ‘foreign influence’. The Gujarati nationalism, for instance, is being evoked in the issue of the Sardar Sarovar Project. Any one that speaks for the poor in the hinterland of the dam project is then a natural enemy of the state; he is witch hunted. Is Aamir Khan the real target of the recent developments, hardly, what is really happening is that the fear Psychosis is being pumped up. It is a veiled threat to any one who dares to say anything against the powers that be… If Aamir Khan can be sorted out, then what about the petty salesman who lives next door, the one who has set shop in Gujarat, the industrialist who has his factory there…?
The point is, ‘is this the way forward?’ Is the fear psychosis the way to live? Do Indians want a nation in which individuals must be under constant pressure to ‘belong’, to the ruling elite? Do the citizens really want a nation which wants to bottle up one group or the other so that prosperity may come the nation’s way? That is surely not what the constitution seeks for the nation. And surely Hinduism does not ascribe to this either. Every Indian should breath free in this nation, Hinduism does not brand people on the basis of their affiliations and then prejudge them on the same. A true Hindu nation judges one by his actions… It is his present Karma that should decide his status, his standing, his rewards and his punishments—his label or his badges or his professed beliefs should not decide that…
The Hindu equivalent for rule of law is ‘Dharma’. Every hero of the Hindu pantheon teaches the brave to uphold it… that is the victory of good over evil. When fascist forces pump venom into the system, it is the upholders of dharma that have to give the reply. Can the police force reinforce the constitution in Gujarat? Can the political forces rise up to uphold that which is righteous, that which has been established by law? For a start, can the establishment enforce Faana’s right to be shown in the theaters at Gujarat?
When it all started with the fighters of the Indian struggle of independence, their motivations were far away from what happened at Gujarat. And to blame a peoples for a folly of this kind is akin to blaming the entire German race for the accident of Fascism that happened to them.
To an extent the Gujarat fiasco was also an error of the Congress… The Bible is not wrong after all when it says that the neutral are on the side of the good. But the Gujaratis did not find the good with whom they could associate. It is evident that the Gujarati was given no alternative to Modi. The unfortunate part is that the faith of the Congress in the ideology of its forefathers has become shallow.
When Hitler’s ideas ruled the roost in Germany, nothing organized could stand the force of the crushing system, but many Germans did not fail their consciences; there were instances of heroes that stood up in small ways and defied the fascist forces in whatever small way they could… There were such heroes in Gujarat, even in the Congress, (and in the BJP surely) but the Congress as a system has failed. Where is the courage of conviction—that truth will prevail in the end?
The Congress had the responsibility of standing up for the India of the Ancients, and present that alternative to the people of Gujarat, it had to count on that conviction in it’s founders’ ideals to give the average Gujarat citizen the alternative way forward… but instead it soft peddled a diluted version of Hindutwa: it did not vociferously speak of the alternative; the extent to which its senior leaders campaigned in Gujarat could be equated to a little more than nonexistent.
The Congress has totally succumbed to the ideology of the dividers. It almost seems as if they know that the Hindu sentiment would be hurt if one stood up for righteousness in Gujarat— how ironic. The Gujarat citizen has not been successfully convinced that the brand of Hindutwa that is being projected is just a political tool and not real Hinduism…
And this in turn really raises a major question, have the Indians lost the voice of sanity that can upstage this divide and rule policy?
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