My father is a member of a retired Service Officers WhatsApp group on which there was an interesting message some days back. It was about the leeway given by the Hindus to other religions. It suggested that this had been sucking the lifeblood of the country and it was time for Hindus to regain their pride.
Today such kind of messaging is not shocking: we live in an environment of religious resurgence and saffron-hued nationalism. But what cut to my core was that it was being shared among people who have served and sacrificed for their tricolour. Maybe it was done to update the retired folk on the viciousness that is spreading through their country.
The truth is that there is a new demeanour within this country. Its birth was in the proselytising of a ‘eugenicised’ history of this land and it is built on browbeating and instilling fear among fellow citizens who may not be Hindus or who may not kowtow to the philosophy that goes along with this evangelism. This gets strengthened by the governments’ ability to change and make laws that invariably target one community or line of thought.
The early vestige of this saffron-tainted self-righteous mien was when the Right coined the term ‘pseudo-secular’. Then ‘secular’ was morphed to ‘sickular’, and ‘liberal’ to ‘libtard’. Today terms including ‘presstitutes’ and ‘anti-national’ are colloquially used for anyone countering the government and the philosophy it espouses. Thus there is an unwillingness to hear a view contrary to that of this majoritarian sentiment, which is also the government’s view. The Bushism “You are either with us or against us” is alive in India today.
Regaining ‘lost ground’
The ‘I have had enough’ stance that is writ large on many Indians has to do with the belief that the rule of non-Hindu rulers diminished this land. They contend this debasement continues in the present through the so-called privileges given to the minorities, and by those protecting India’s secular ethos.
Many no longer wish to be seen as accommodating nor do they want India to be seen as being amenable. To them this is a sign of weakness and was the cause of this land’s ‘downfall’. They are now hell bent on regaining ‘lost ground’.
So, the question is whether India is getting a new voice and a matching face. Look at what is happening within the government, judiciary, and law-enforcing bodies. Even as BJP politicians demand the death penalty for those who eke out a living from the slaughter of cows, a BJP-ruled State has passed a law that provides for life imprisonment for the same. The Centre has sought to ban the sale of bovines for slaughter at cattle markets and High Court judges have said the cow should be declared as the national animal. Sections of Indian society and the government and its various arms are all shrilly chanting one mantra. History has borne witness to results of such choirs. It has led to repression and atrocities of the most dastardly kind. We learn from the past that through repression and the commission of atrocities, the face for this new voice achieves its glow.
Samir Nazareth is the author of ‘1400 Bananas, 76 Towns & 1 Million People’
