Attack on Secularism, and Resistance Through Unity
Savera
AS the 79th Independence Day approaches, India stands at crossroads. On one side are powerful forces that are bent upon subverting the Constitution which enshrines the legacy of freedom struggle. These are the RSS, its political wing BJP, and numerous other associated organisations, collectively called the Sangh Parivar. Controlling the central government and several state governments for the past 11 years, these forces have been zealously working to erode the three pillars of the Constitution – Secularism, Democracy and Federalism – and replace it with a fascistic Hindu Rashtra based on a dark, medieval vision of society. The power provided by being in government has been deployed by the BJP/RSS to make wholesale changes to laws and policies which are geared towards building a Hindu supremacist architecture, marginalising religious minorities, strengthening the brutal caste system, and suppressing democracy. Outside of the government, the Sangh Parivar organisations, like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, etc., have undertaken naked violence and intimidation to push this agenda.
But, on the other side, there is a growing tide of opposition to this. The biggest expression of this resistance was seen recently in the July 9 General Strike called for by trade unions and farmers’ organisations and supported by dozens of other peoples’ organisations and movements. The strike was not only for various economic and democratic demands but also an assertion of the unity of India’s people against divisions fanned by religious bigotry, caste oppression and other regressive ideologies. Earlier, during the 2024 General Elections too, this battle was reflected in the wave of opposition to the BJP’s drive for winning over 400 Lok Sabha seats (‘abki bar char sau paar’) which was correctly seen as paving the way for changing the Constitution. This coupled with the anger at the ruinous economic policies that have condemned millions to low wage drudgery and joblessness in order that a super-rich sliver of India becomes even richer led to the BJP losing its majority in Lok Sabha and becoming dependent on various opportunist parties to continue its rule.
The battle is thus joined. But it has to yet travel through a long, arduous path to stamp out the poison of hatred, fanatic blindness and jingoism that has been imbued in large sections of people. It is necessary to recognise the depth of this corrosion, to fight it better.
MODI GOVERNMENT HAS ABANDONED SECULARISM
Although there was never any doubt that a government led by an RSS pracharak would never espouse secularism, even the pretense of the diluted version of secularism – tolerance towards and equality of all faiths – has been dropped by the Modi government and his party’s state governments. Through a series of measures – legislative and policy based – it has systematically marginalised and repressed the Muslim community and tried to foist a Hindu supremacist polity on the country.
The BJP pretends to make half-hearted attempts at talking about advancing the “interests” of Muslims on some issues like triple talaq or waqf properties, but in reality these are well orchestrated plans to whittle down laws that govern Muslim community. It is part of the larger vision of having only one law – the Hindu law – for all.
Saffronisation of Education: The National Education Policy brought in by the Modi government is imbued with the talk of values, and nationalism which reek of the same stale Hindutva ideas. More importantly, through the government, BJP is ensuring a wholesale rewriting of history as taught to school and university students. School text books have removed or restricted study of Mughal period and oriented it to the fictional RSS view that the whole period was nothing but Hindu slavery. Rewriting history has been a major preoccupation of the RSS and with Modi in power, it is doing so with a vengeance. Appointments for various academic posts at all levels of education are being managed to ensure that Sangh Parivar supporters get in. This is long term capture of institutions facilitated by the BJP government, in order not just to appease its supporters but to ensure that their ideology is propagated at every level, in every classroom.
Disenfranchisement: The Modi government passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in 2019 allowing fast track citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants from neighbouring countries, and tried to combine it with making a National Register of Citizens (NRC), which would have had led to loss of citizenship and disenfranchisement to Muslims. The public upsurge against this caused the government to backtrack from the NRC. Recently, the Election Commission has launched a Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar which sought all kinds of documents from common people to establish their valid citizenship. The target was so-called Bangladeshi infiltrators. Bengal is thought to be the next target for this exercise. Spurred by the Sangh Parivar’s machinery, there has been countrywide targeting of Bengali Muslim migrants in the name of throwing out infiltrators.
Changes in Laws: The BJP raised the issue of Uniform Civil Code (UCC) during the 2024 Lok Sabha election campaign and promised to implement it. Various BJP led state governments too announced preliminary steps to do so. The government of Uttarakhand even passed a UCC of sorts for the state with outlandish provisions, including some against live-in relationships. The UCC issue is a long-standing RSS demand (along with scrapping of Art 370 for Kashmir and the building of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya) and a tool for targeting the Muslim community’s rights. It serves the purpose of whipping up hatred against the Muslim community along with various other related myths like the one about Muslim population overtaking Hindu population, and others.
Various state governments led by BJP have passed fresh laws against conversion although laws prohibiting forcible conversion already exist. These new laws contain vague definitions and allow any person to file complaints against others for suspected conversion attempts. This has led to a spate of attacks on religious gatherings or even individuals led by Sangh Parivar outfits acting with local police. Christians have especially been targeted in these attacks.
Illegal Demolitions: The Yogi Adityanath led BJP government of Uttar Pradesh has been a trailblazer in hounding and terrorising the Muslim community of the state. After passing a law providing for punitive fines on persons found to be involved in damaging public property during protests, it turned it into a weapon for targeting Muslim families, especially after the anti-CAA protests. Another measure it unleashed was demolition of homes of those alleged to have been involved in crimes, including rioting. This was used to again target Muslim families. Later several BJP led governments like those in Madhya Pradesh copied the modus operandi. Several dozen homes have been demolished in the process. The Supreme Court again had to lay down strict guidelines for any demolition including notice, hearings, etc.
Conducting Rituals: The prime minister himself has openly taken to doing Hindu rituals for various occasions, with the ever-present cameras of TV channels broadcasting everything live. This included the inauguration of the new Parliament building, then the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, and visits to various temples in different parts of the country as well as abroad. The whole organisation of Mahakumbh in Allahabad/Prayagraj earlier this year was done by the BJP led Uttar Pradesh state government, with huge hoardings of the prime minister and other BJP bigwigs adorning the area.
Hate Speeches: The prime minister and the central ministers, and the state level counterparts have unleashed a flood of hate speeches during successive election campaigns. Openly targeting the Muslim community and espousing the cause of Hindutva, these hate speeches clearly violate the laws but neither the Election Commission nor the police has held them to account. It is a travesty that persons holding the highest offices in the country are going about openly abusing and intimidating members of a minority community, or calling upon the majority community to take up cudgels against them in the name of various fictional transgressions labelled love jihad, land jihad, etc.
Protecting Criminals: The central and state governments have been openly shielding criminals who have been accused or even convicted of heinous crimes including murder, rape and arson during communal attacks, and those involved in bomb blasts. The Gujarat government led by BJP released 11 convicts who were involved in the Bilkis Bano case, in which a mob had attacked her family in the 2002 anti-Muslim carnage, and raped her, also killing her three-year-old daughter. The Supreme Court stepped in and ordered that all the released convicts should go back to jail. In Odisha, the newly elected BJP government facilitated the ease of one of the convicts in the Graham Staines murder case while stopping short of releasing the main accused Dara Singh after a public outcry. There have been numerous cases of cow vigilantes getting released on bail or the criminal cases against them floundering because of deficient prosecution. In many cases BJP or Sangh Parivar leaders have garlanded these ‘heroes’ after their release. The most recent example of accused being acquitted is that of the Malegaon blasts case where accused group of Hindutva activists, including former MP Pragya Singh, were acquitted because the prosecution did not present enough evidence. All this has lent a strong sense of impunity to the storm troopers of the Sangh Parivar who have been indulging in violence in the name of cow protection, festival processions, attacks on mosques, and other egregious acts against the Muslim community. The central and state governments have openly sided with the Hindutva brigade throwing away all commitment to the Constitutional directive of equality before law.
Social Damage
The above was a brief description of the way in which BJP has weaponised laws and government policies/decisions to target the Muslim and Christian community. This has been supplemented, indeed magnified, by the Sangh Parivar in society at large with deadly consequences. All the fictional slogans created by the Sangh Parivar – love jihad, cow protection, hijab, land jihad, so called Bangladeshi immigrants, etc. – and all the lies vilifying the minority communities have been taken up by various vigilantes and organisations linked to the Sangh Parivar. Most often, there have been violent attacks, provocations, and creation of riot like situations in innumerable places across the country. Data from NCRB – which is just the tip of the iceberg – shows that there were 6067 communal incidents involving casualties of over 10,000 persons in the first eight years of Modi’s rule (2014-22). This period also saw over 80 incidents of mob lynching of Muslims and dalits, mostly in the name of cow protection.
Apart from this, the full panoply of lies and myths about Muslims and other minorities are propagated day and night through the Sangh Parivar social media machinery. This constant barrage of hate and poison has had an effect on gullible people in a time where fake news has become ubiquitous and even most mainstream TV channels propagate it.
It is a dire situation but that is why the importance of united struggles, like the recent general strike, cannot be underestimated. Equally, the countering of Sangh Parivar’s ideological onslaught through alternative media, and through the platform provided by struggles of people will also play an important role.
