In what appears to be a case of religious intolerance and discrimination, two Muslim students from Glocal University hired by a private company were fired within a month for allegedly offering Friday prayers in the office premise.
Representation Image
Mohammed Kashif and Shamsher, two students from B.Tech (Civil) were hired as trainees on February 15 by Spatial Geotech Private Limited (SGPL) at their Noida office. Speaking with Twocircles.net, Kashif, 22, said, “When we both joined, there were two more Muslims who were working in the company. We asked them where they offered Friday prayers, and they said no. So, all four of us went to our boss, Annu Gupta, and asked her if we could take some time off on Friday afternoons to offer the Jumma Prayers. She flatly refused the idea despite us saying that we would compensate for the time.”
After they were denied permission to visit a Mosque, the four decided to offer Zuhr prayers within the office premises. In the first week of March, according to Kashif, the four were called by Gupta and warned to not ‘disrupt the office environment’. “At that time, I did not know she was talking about us offering prayers,” he said. Subsequently, when they did the same in the following week, the two were again called to Gupta’s office and were shown a video of them performing the prayers. “We were told to wait in the office, and by evening we came to know through our college placement cell that the two of us (Kashif and Shamsher) had been terminated from our jobs. I am pretty sure that this was due to our offering prayers in the office, as the same was told to us by Gupta when we were in her office,” says Kashif. The two were not even given a termination letter and when they asked for a No-Objection Certificate from the company, even that was denied.
A member of the Glocal University placement office confirmed to Twocircles.net that these two had been terminated, but said that the reason was cited as performance and not the religious prayers. “In the telephonic conversation, however, the issue of offering prayers did come up, and Annu Gupta and the recruiting consultant Arjun Mishra did point out that this was not conducive to the office environment.”
He added, “The issue of performance is difficult to believe since they had been there only for three weeks, and clearly, the offering of prayer did not go down well with the company,” he said.
When Twocircles.net contacted Annu Gupta for comments, she said that the company’s response had been conveyed to the University and refused to add anything to the same. The recruitment agent flatly denied any case of religious discrimination and said, “The two were performing below par and that is why we asked the placement division to send more students.” He also said that the placement team had been told thrice about their incompetence, a charge which was denied by the placement officer. “I have no such written communication from them, and this was not pointed to us earlier. Yes, they had asked for more students, but that was not because these two were not performing well.”
But what is even more startling is that the letter sent by Mishra to the placement division complained of these students being “intoxicated” at work. “Unfortunately, even after the counselling and ample duration of time to learn and improve yourself, there has been no change in their performance. Their performance was still unsatisfactory and they were often found intoxicated at work, to the extent that they were so impaired that they were unfit to be entrusted with the employment duties.”
Kashif denied the claims, saying that he had never touched alcohol and that it was an insult to him and his faith. “This is the first time I have heard this (about the contents of the mail). I am shocked beyond imagination and hurt at their allegations…I wanted some time to offer prayers, and instead, they accuse me of being drunk?”
The two students, who have been under immense stress since this incident, are currently looking for other jobs, but they say that they have been left mentally scarred by the event. “I hope nothing like this happens ever again to another person,” said a cousin of Kashif. “He was just practising his faith. Since when has that become an issue?” he asked.
Statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein on International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (March 21) is an annual reminder to us all to do more to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, hate speech and hate crimes.
But 21 March needs to be more than a reminder. People of African descent continue to be victims of racist hate crimes and racism in all areas of life. Anti-Semitism continues to rear its ugly head from the US to Europe to the Middle East and beyond. Muslim women wearing headscarves face increasing verbal, and even physical, abuse in a number of countries. In Latin America, indigenous peoples continue to endure stigmatization, including in the media.
The dangers of demonising particular groups are evident across the world. Xenophobic riots and violence targeting immigrants have recently flared again in South Africa. In South Sudan, polarised ethnic identities – stoked by hate speech – have brought the country to the brink of all-out ethnic war. In Myanmar, the Rohingya Muslim community, long denigrated as “illegal immigrants,” have suffered appalling violations.
Across the world, the politics of division and the rhetoric of intolerance are targeting racial, ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, and migrants and refugees. Words of fear and loathing can, and do, have real consequences.
And across the world, the politics of division and the rhetoric of intolerance are targeting racial, ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, and migrants and refugees. Words of fear and loathing can, and do, have real consequences.
UK government statistics showed a sharp increase in reported hate crime in the weeks following the 23 June 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, in which immigration was a dominant issue.
FBI figures indicated a rise in hate crimes nationwide in 2015, a year when the US presidential election campaign – a campaign that often focused on the supposed threats posed by migrants, Hispanics and Muslims – began in earnest. Data collected by the Southern Poverty Law Center indicates that migrants, African-Americans and Muslims were the most affected by hate crimes in the immediate aftermath of the election, although full data for 2016 is not yet available.
In Germany in 2016, there were approximately 10 attacks a day on migrants and refugees, a rise of 42 per cent on 2015. Cases of reported hate crimes increased more than three-fold in Spain from 2012, reaching 1,328 in 2015. Italy saw reported hate crimes rise from 71 to 555 in 2015; Finland experienced a doubling of reported hate crimes from 2014 to 2015, when 1,704 incidents were reported.
Many States do not collect data on racist hate crimes, leaving the true extent of the problem obscured.
These figures paint a partial picture of the situation in the respective countries but there are many States that do not collect data on racist hate crimes, leaving the true extent of the problem obscured. Tackling racism and xenophobia begins with understanding the scope of the problem. I encourage States to do more to collect disaggregated data, including on the basis of race and ethnicity, so they can monitor trends, understand causes and design and implement targeted action to bring about real change.
This day reminds us that States have no excuse for allowing racism and xenophobia to fester, much less flourish. They have the legal obligation to prohibit and eliminate racial discrimination, to guarantee the right of everyone, no matter their race, colour, national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law.
States should adopt legislation expressly prohibiting racist hate speech, including the dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination, and threats or incitement to violence.
States should adopt legislation expressly prohibiting racist hate speech, including the dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination, and threats or incitement to violence. It is not an attack on free speech or the silencing of controversial ideas or criticism, but a recognition that the right to freedom of expression carries with it special duties and responsibilities.
We face a world where discriminatory practices are still widespread. But it is not the time for despair.
Equality bodies and national human rights institutions in many countries work to prevent and combat discrimination. Some law enforcement agencies are incorporating human rights standards into their actions, not just because they are legally obliged to, but because it leads to more effective policing. Similarly, education and healthcare professionals, as well as good employers, are tackling the racial, ethnic and religious prejudices and profiling that exist in their sectors. Progress here needs to continue, including through affirmative action, training and representation of ethnic and racial minorities.
My Office, the UN Human Rights Office, is asking people around the world to"Stand Up for Someone's Rights Today". And, around the world, that is exactly what many people are doing. Taking a stand against discrimination, no matter where it happens.
*TheInternational Day for the Elimination of Racial Discriminationwas established in remembrance of the 69 unarmed and peaceful South African protestors who were killed in Sharpeville, South Africa on 21 March 1960 — an event which inspired people around the world to act to end the racist apartheid regime.
The UN Human Rights Office is running a global campaign called “Stand Up for Someone’s Rights Today. The campaign aims to galvanize everyone – private sector, governments, individuals, civil society – to play an active role in standing up to defend the human rights of all, at a time when these hard-won rights and freedoms are facing increasing pressures across the world.
The state is aware that free press means more accountability and their fear of being monitored, exposed, or held accountable indicates how fragile and insecure they are.
Protest in front of journalists' syndicate in Cairo on 2 January 2017. NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved. “Listen only to me” – Even if he had tried, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi could not have described his authoritarian military reign better. Exactly one year since he demanded the people not believe the “enemies of the nation”, the margin for freedom of speech and expression has progressively shrunk to absurd levels.
On 17 March 2017, government sponsored candidate Abdel-Mohsen Salama became the head of the journalists' syndicate. Salama is the managing editor of state owned Al-Ahram newspaper, and at the top of his list of supporters is former National Security officer Ahmed Mousa, a notorious mouthpiece for the regime who was supposedly intentionally planted in Al-Ahram. This recent development forecasts even darker times for an already gloomy era.
The militarization of politics as well as authoritarianism are suffocating the people of Egypt. Public spaces are slowly but surely being securitized as the media is coopted. The economy is being divided like a pie to a select few, as a number of business tycoons and regime loyalists strategically buy out firms and distribute them among military men and their associates.
Falling in line with this clampdown, assets of Mostafa Sakr, owner of Daily News Egypt, Egypt's only English independent daily print newspaper, and Arabic financial newspaper Al Borsa, were frozen.
Sakr has been accused of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization. Although handed out abundantly, the accusation was even more ridiculous this time, as the regime had previously used the newspaper to seek out investors for its mega projects. It seems hypocritical, to say the least, to then accuse the owner of the very same newspaper of being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. “President Sisi to Daily News Egypt” read the front page of an August 2014 issue.
The freeze order coincided with parliament passing a media "regulations" bill, which gives the government total control over both state and private owned media outlets. The new law stipulates the formation of three regulatory bodies to oversee all of Egypt’s media outlets, be it public or private. Heads of these bodies are appointed by none other than the president himself, according to Article 32.
“The new law opens the door for the executive authority to dominate media,” Yehia El Qallash, ex-head of the Press Syndicate, told me. The state is refraining from building trust, he added, asserting that the current situation does not champion freedom of expression, and that of the press.
However, Qallash has more to worry about than the new law.
Qallash informed me that the syndicate had presented the Amnesties Council with a list of 29 imprisoned journalists, and 18 other journalists not imprisoned but under threat. Qallash is of those 18 individuals under threat as well as the head of the syndicate’s Freedoms Committee, Khaled El Balshy.
Never has the syndicate head been tried and handed an imprisonment sentence in its 75 year history. Never has the syndicate also been stormed before, but both catastrophes took place under the Sisi regime.
Qallash and El Balshy are accused of “harboring fugitives”, namely journalists Amr Badr (also editor-in-chief of Bawabet Yanayer) and Mahmoud Al Sakka. Both journalists were arrested the night the syndicate headquarters were attacked in May 2016. They had been outspoken against the selling of the two Red Sea Islands to Saudi Arabia, and skeptical about official narratives of the murder of Giulio Regeni, pointing fingers at the state.
“Authorities were also bothered by the website’s coverage,” Badr said, disclosing that during the investigation, the journalists were questioned about the stories they had published. They were put behind bars over stating their opinions, adding to their 63 jailed colleagues.
“Freedom of expression in Egypt is a big zero,” Badr believes.
Disbelief clouded those in the profession, as journalists were banned from attending the funeral held for the victims of a recent church explosion, considered one of the biggest terror attacks during Sisi’s reign of power. The journalists were kept in a separate room, and were handed official photographs on their way out.
Openly expressing dissent with policies in Egypt, the contracts of correspondent AlBaraa Abdullah and TV anchor Lilian Dawood with OnTV were both terminated after the channel was acquired by pro-state businessman Abu Hashima.
Abu Hashima now also owns Al Youm Al Sabe’, Ain, and Sawt Al Omma newspapers, as well as the Dot Masr online website. One only has to take a look at these outlet’s amateur headlines to know what kind of messages they are conveying.
Sisi’s loyal clan deny the obvious militarization of Egypt and it will be interesting to see their justification for the appointment of former military spokesman Mohammed Samir as head of Al-Asema TV Channel.
The internet is no exception to the state’s control attempts. While the digital age provides massive room for freedom of expression, the Egyptian State is going out of its way to curb this space. Using its ‘digital armies’ and paid social media trolls, it floods the internet with messages that influence the less informed, threatening opposition, and constructing an illusion of a public opinion supportive of the state.
As the state took away more human rights, it shunned its criticizers in the name of economic and security stability. But as the value of the Egyptian Pound sinks lower, it has become harder to mute critical voices. Prices have increased, while wages remain stagnant. The economic crisis has started biting the middle class as it depletes the poor.
Although militant attacks in northern Sinai have not ceased, with an Egyptian general assassinated in October, the church explosion exposed the security apparatus. In the following months, the situation crumbled until hundreds of Copts fled Al-Arish City, fearing increased threats, killings, and attacks by militants. Security is why Sisi came to power, and its lax at a time of economic turmoil is threatening his reign day after day.
With every decision the government makes, the volume of criticism gets louder, and the state grows more paranoid. The state is aware that free press means more accountability and their fear of being monitored, exposed, or held accountable indicates how fragile and insecure they are.
“Dictatorships fear the truth,” El Balshy told me, narrating how the media had a big role in exposing toppled President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, and overturning Mohamed Morsi’s.
Between killing and imprisoning journalists, a syndicate report stated that more than 782 violations were carried out in 2015 alone. The Committee to Protect Journalists named Egypt the third country in the world with the highest number of jailed journalists in 2016.
The sad truth remains that if you are not a government mouthpiece, you are in danger. While the state punishes journalists for doing their job, many behind bars are being granted international awards, including Ismail Alexandrani and Mahmoud Shawkan. Until shackles are broken, those holding dearly to the essence of their profession will have to continue shouting “journalism is not a crime”.
Aya Nader is an independent journalist based in Egypt, writing for Daily News Egypt, Al-Ahram Weekly, and BECAUSE among others. She is an MA candidate in International Relations at the American University in Cairo. Tweets @AyaNaderM
The parties in the Opposition have long abandoned any real commitment to secular values, or even the defence of the country’s minorities.
The masks have been thrown to the winds. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his most trusted aide and Bhartiya Janata Party President Amit Shah have audaciously signalled to both national and global public opinion that they feel no need for masks and fig-leafs any longer. So many commentators in the mainstream media had wasted reams to persuade us that the emphatic vote for the BJP in the spring elections of 2017 in Uttar Pradesh represented not a hard communal consolidation of the Hindu voter against the perceived Muslim “other”. It was instead, they argued, a cross-caste, cross-community vote for sab ka vikas – development for all – and Modi was the new Indira Gandhi, the combative leader for building a better life for the poor.
Many Hindu voters read the election results quite differently. They saw it just the way many voters saw the election of Donald Trump in the United States a few months earlier, as a vote for majoritarian triumphalism, a vote against Muslims and minorities, a vote that legitimised prejudice and hatred. I saw a Facebook post of a notice pasted in villages of Gorakhpur district in Uttar Pradesh.
It starts with the rallying slogan of the Ram Janam Bhumi movement – Jai Shri Ram. It goes on to give notice to the Muslims of the village that they must leave the village by the end of the year. It warns them that if they do not comply, then they themselves will be responsible for the consequences. It goes on to warn them that they will be treated in the way that they are being treated in Trump’s America, because a BJP government will be installed in Uttar Pradesh. Decide quickly, the notice says, because you do not deserve to live in the village. It is signed by the Hindus of the village, whose sanrakshak or patron is said to be Yogi Adityanath, Member of Parliament from Gorakhpur.
But by selecting Adityanath, one of its most belligerent anti-Muslim campaigners, given to unapologetically coarse hate speech and skirmishes, as chief minister of the country’s largest state in terms of population, Modi and Shah have gestured unambiguously and brazenly their frank and unashamed resort to hard-line Hindutva as the calling card of their party.
Hate speeches
The election speeches of Modi and Shah already signalled the direction the party has chosen. Adityanath’s hate speeches are in-the-face and dangerously toxic. Ever since he was hand-picked by Modi and Shah as chief minister, the social media is full of his pronouncements. I rely here on only one such compilation.
His intent is unambiguous: “I will not stop till I turn UP and India into a Hindu rashtra”. He blames Muslims for communal violence: “In places where there are 10 to 20% minorities, stray communal incidents take place. Where there are 20 to 35% of them, serious communal riots take place and where they are more than 35%, there is no place for non-Muslims”.
Despite numerous reports that deny the claim of the “exodus of Hindus from Kairana”, he still claims in the spirit of “post-truth” that “the population of Hindus which was once 68% has come down to 8% there”. He blames this on alleged policies of “pseudo-secularism and appeasement” followed by successive governments in Uttar Pradesh, which “speak against the majority community in the name of secularism”.
A falsehood that even Prime Minister Modi was to echo was that “governments in UP give land for kabristans (graveyards) but not for shamshanghats (cremation grounds)“. “Issues like the exodus of Hindus from Kairana, love jihad and women’s safety”, he claims are threatening to turn “western Uttar Pradesh … into another Kashmir”.
Even more sinister are his open threats to Muslims. “Every time a Hindu visits the Vishwanath temple, the Gyanvapi mosque taunts us. If given a chance, we will install statues of Goddess Gauri, Ganesh and Nandi in every mosque”. The Ram Mandir is high on his agenda. “When they could not stop karsevaks from demolishing the Babri Masjid, how will they be able to stop us from carrying out the construction of the mandir?”
Yogi Adityanath. Image: Hindustan Times
Any of these declarations amount to gravely provocative and culpable criminal hate speech. Adityanath has a number of hate crimes lodged against him. These are not the utterances of an outrageous fringe rabble-rouser. He is the man chosen by the country’s prime minister to lead the country’s largest state in terms of population, which if it were a separate country, would be the world’s fifth most populous country of over 200 million people. Among these, a fifth or around 40 million are people of Muslim faith. It is a frightening time to be a Muslim in Uttar Pradesh today. It was bad enough that the election results reflected the unification of most Hindu caste and class groups against the Muslims and that the BJP found it unnecessary to field even one Muslim candidate from a fifth of the state’s population and that the prime minister and, even more, his party chief and other candidates openly resorted to a communally charged discourse. But if some among them were still hoping that with such a large majority, at least after the elections, there would be a move to more responsible governance in the state, the choice of Adityanath as their chosen leader leaves no ambiguity about their status.
The Muslims in UP, it seems, must learn the same lesson that Muslims in Gujarat have been forced to learn so painfully since 2002. This is that they would be “permitted” to live in the state, but only as second class citizens, if they accept the political, cultural, economic and social superiority and dominance of their Hindu neighbours. It is the further fruition of the vision for India of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, less than a hundred years since it was constituted in 1925.
Secular culpability
This is indeed a victory for the RSS, its ideology and cadres and for Modi’s muscular and crushing leadership. But the victory of a brawny politics of communal hectoring and name-calling, hate and division and the defeat of the constitutional values of fraternity and equality, cannot be laid only at their door. Equal credit, or culpability, lies with the parties of the opposition, which have long abandoned any real commitment to secular values, or even the defence of the country’s minorities.
I will illustrate their multiple failures with their role, or the lack of it, in Muzaffarnagar in Western Uttar Pradesh, which I observed closely in the course of our work with the survivors of the mass communal violence of 2013.
We must begin with the pernicious role of the BJP, and the cadres of the RSS, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, in stirring the communal cauldron in these regions which had an unbroken history so far of communal amity, even during the Partition riots and the turbulent movement for the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
It is proved beyond doubt that BJP MLA Sangeet Som circulated a fake video of two youth being lynched by a crowd of Muslims. He claimed mischievously and dangerously that the lynch mob was of Muslims of the region, and the men who were brutally killed were two Jat brothers who were trying to defend the honour of their sister from the sexual harassment of a Muslim youth. It mattered little in the post-truth world of command prejudice led right from the top, that all of these assertions were falsehoods, that the video was of a lynching in Pakistan, and that the Jat brothers and Muslim youth killed each other not because of any sexual predation but following a skirmish stemming from a motor-cycle accident. These falsehoods resulted in the largest episode of communal violence in a decade (along with the attack on Christians in Kandhamal).
Between 70,000 to 1,00,000 Muslims fled from their villages in terror after their neighbours of generations suddenly turned against them, burning and looting their homes, raping women of their village, killing even elders and children. The role of the RSS was not different from what it has been since the Partition riots – fomenting communal hatred and violence through hate propaganda and rumours. But the role of the Samajwadi Party government led by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, and other parties that claim to be secular, requires much closer interrogation.
I found the character, the part played and the attitude of the state administration in Uttar Pradesh hardly different in most ways from that of the state administration in Gujarat in 2002. It could have prevented the scale of hate attacks on Muslims if it had been firm and steadfast in not permitting the mahapanchayats in which hate speeches were made against Muslims based on the RSS-created rumours. It was a mahapanchayat that led directly to massive crowds being mobilised and provoked and incited to inflict hate violence against their Muslim neighbours.
The soft-pedalling by the administration did not just suggest criminal administrative incompetence: if it was just this, it would be bad enough. The real doubt was that it secretly believed that it would benefit along with the BJP from the polarisation between Muslims and Hindus in a communal riot, a harvest that both parties hoped to reap in the 2014 general elections.
Muzaffarnagar baqi hai
Payments to stay away
Even more shameful was the neglect, and even hostility, of the Uttar Pradesh state administration to the refugees from hate violence in camps. I visited the camps on many occasions and found them little different from the relief camps I had seen in Gujarat in 2002. In both, the state administration refused to establish and run relief camps for those displaced from their homes by hate violence.
It left this mainly to the battered community itself, as though the responsibility for taking care of these hate refugees was not of the state but of organisations of Muslim people. With nowhere to go, people endured the winter cold, the hot dusty summers and the rains under plastics, with reports of children dying, but the state administration remained unmoved. As in Gujarat in 2002, we found little presence of the state in these camps: it did not organise sanitation, health care, child care or police outposts to record people’s complaints.
The only real departure of the practice of the Uttar Pradesh administration from that of the Gujarat administration 11 years earlier was in the payment of five lakh rupees as compensation to those persons who undertook that they would not return to their original villages. This policy had no precedent in India. For people displaced by hate violence, the duty of the state administration was recognised to be to create conditions that were conducive to enabling people to return to their original homes. This required the administration to take the lead in attempting to rebuild social bonds between the estranged communities, and to ensure the security of those who returned.
Far from doing this, the action of the Uttar Pradesh state government in effect accepted that Muslim and Hindu populations would no longer live together peacefully, and even incentivised their separation. In earlier large episodes of rural communal violence, as in Bhagalpur and Gujarat, we found that social fractures tend to be enduring, and Muslims are ejected from mixed settlements. The state should have fought and resisted this, promoting the restoration of mixed habitations, rather than for the first time actually incentivising separate living on religious lines. This was an utterly bankrupt state policy adopted by the Akhilesh government, with communal underpinnings, one that has no precedents in past communal riots.
Camp at the village of Jaula in Muzaffarnagar District on April 10, 2014Image: AFP PHOTO/Prakash SINGH
Premature closing of camps
Just three months after the carnage, the state government officially terminated all relief camps, again as happened in Gujarat, even though several thousand displaced persons were still in fear and dread, and unwilling to return home because they continued to feel unsafe. Whereas displaced persons in camps should be officially assisted and supported to return to their original homes by promoting reconciliation and security, to force them to do so by premature closure of camps resulted only in thousands being left without even the meagre food and health support which the government had extended in the camps.
The sense of fear and alienation of the survivors was enhanced by distressing reports of organised social and economic boycott of Muslims after the mass violence, once again just as in Gujarat. Many men testified that if they went back to their villages, they were told they should cut their beards off if they wished to live in their village. People also reported similar hate exchanges in buses and public spaces. Survivors recounted intimidation and boycott in employment as farm labour, or economic activities like pheris¸ or selling cloth and other goods from house to house.
The Akhilesh Yadav-led state government did little to create conditions in which survivors felt safe to return to the villages of their birth. Without any public remorse by their attackers, any official or community initiatives for reconciliation, and any attempts at justice, these hapless people were unable to return to the villages of their birth. Sometimes with small grants from government or NGOs, but mainly with usurious loans from private moneylenders, they bought house-plots in hastily laid out colonies in Muslim majority villages on what were cultivated fields. Seizing the opportunity to make windfall profits, local large farmers and real estate developers sold these plots at exorbitant rates to these luckless displaced persons.
Living Apart
The indifference of the state government was reflected also in the fact that there was no official record of these mostly self-settled colonies, let alone official plans to ensure that they were able to access basic public goods and citizenship entitlements. In a survey undertaken by Aman Biradari and Afkar India Foundation, we discovered as many as 65 refugee colonies, 28 in Muzaffarnagar and 37 in Shamli, housing 29,328 residents, described in Living Apart: Communal Violence and Forced Displacement in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli, a book about the conditions of the survivors, written jointly by my colleagues Akram Akhtar Chaudhary, Zafar Eqbal and Rajanya Bose, and me.
In hellish slum-like settlements, these internal refugees are bravely building their lives anew. Perhaps our most striking survey finding was the almost complete absence of the state from these efforts to begin a new life of the refugees. Apart from a 5 lakh rupee grant given only to households directly hit by the violence (and none to the much larger number who escaped their villages because of fear of attacks), the state took no responsibility for helping them resettle in any way. The displaced were forced to either abandon or sell their properties at distress prices in their villages of origin, and the state compensation for the loss of their moveable assets was negligible. The colonies were settled substantially with the self-help efforts of the impoverished and battered refugees themselves. This again mirrors the story of the violence-affected people of Gujarat.
Muzaffarnagar, after the riots. September 9, 2013. Image: AFP PHOTO/STR STRDEL / AFP
No justice
The confidence of survivors to return to homes was further shaken because of the very low numbers of arrests and convictions of the men accused of murder, rape, arson and looting. Without justice, as we have learned from survivors in many sites of communal violence, neither do wounds heal nor can fresh violence be deterred.
Police and even the judiciary in Uttar Pradesh often displayed communal biases similar to their Gujarati counterparts. Of 6,400 persons accused of crimes in 534 FIRs, charges were ultimately pursued against only 1,540 persons. Most of the cases of murder were closed without a charge-sheet or trial claiming the accused were “unknown persons”. Even a year after the carnage, only 800 people were arrested, and most of those who were arrested were quickly released on bail. One reason given for low numbers of arrests by the police administration was that large numbers of women blocked the entrance to the village entry whenever police vehicles drove there for arrests, or farmers parked tractors to thwart police passage.
Survivors on the other hand believed that police themselves informally tipped off the villagers before arriving to make arrests, otherwise how would so many assemble at short notice to blockade village roads? This allegation was difficult to independently verify, but no self-respecting police administration could accept this kind of public blockades to persist when it came in the way of their fulfilling their official duties.
Only three of the 25 men accused in six cases of gang-rape were held. In one rape case, all the accused men have been acquitted. In another, after three years no one has been arrested. And in the other rape cases, all the accused men are out on bail. There was enormous pressure on the witnesses to rescind on their statements, and a large number of witnesses have turned hostile in court.
Although Indian criminal law does not permit “compromise” in heinous offences, this remains a routine practice after mass communal violence. Since the accused freely roam the same villages, either evading arrest or on bail, they are free to intimidate the complainants and victims. It does not help that the majority of the complainants are impoverished farm workers or brick kiln labour, critically dependent economically on the large Jat landowners for work and loans.
The police was particularly soft in acting against politicians who were allegedly directly involved in the rioting. They have at best been booked in very minor sections like Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code. Most of them did not even see the inside of a jail. There were also other distressing signs of judicial bias, because most arrested persons have been granted bail almost the next day or soon after their arrests. This ignored the gravity of hate crimes, and the susceptibility of the survivors to intimidation because of their vulnerable situation after mass targeted violence has spurred large-scale fear, destruction of livelihoods and habitats and migration.
Absent political parties
When the carnage unfolded, and in the crucial months that followed, the Congress Party headed the United Progressive Alliance government in the centre. But it never directed or advised the state government in Uttar Pradesh to fulfil its constitutional duties to the violence affected people more responsibly or compassionately, nor did it reach out to them directly in any way.
As a party, I found Congress workers completely absent from the relief camps, in Muzaffarnagar as much as in the Gujarat camps a decade earlier. This is where the Congress Sewa Dal (does it even exist?) should have been visible, extending discernible solidarity and service to the people displaced by hate violence.
Equally, Mayawati never once reached out to the hapless violence-hit people. She mostly maintained her imperious silence, indicating indifference. What credibility would she carry when years later, she reached out for an alliance with the Muslims of the state, as she did before the Assembly elections?
The only political party that did reach out in any way to the violence-hit people of Muzafffarnagar was the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which helped establish a resettlement colony. But even this assistance was much smaller and less visible than the role that the Communist Party played in the early communal riots after Independence.
No credible alternative
The lesson, then, is that the runaway electoral victory of the BJP in the elections to the Uttar Pradesh assembly in the spring of 2017 is as much due to the BJP’s polarising campaign and Modi’s charismatic but divisive leadership, as it is due to the failure of any authentic and credible secular alternative.
Secularism is not treating Muslim minorities as a hapless, powerless, dependent client population whose votes can be taken for granted at election time and forgotten for the rest. Secularism is not a selective, opportunistic policy, to be played with a continuous timid eye fixed on not upsetting majoritarian communal sentiment. It is an article of faith, which rises above all immediate electoral considerations.
The enormous tragedy of India’s secular majority, as much as of India’s minorities, is that India today lacks an authentically secular political opposition. This emboldens a resurgent and triumphalist political right, led by Modi and Amit Shah, to display their communal fangs with the selection of communal firebrand Yogi Adityanath as the leader of Uttar Pradesh.
It is ordinary people who must act as the opposition. Our large so-called secular political opposition has betrayed us profoundly, and the people if India are paying the cost. The hot winds of communal hatred of the past three years can be expected to grow now into a blinding sandstorm.
What is necessary is an all-inclusive and broad-based campaign to “Save the Constitution”, on the one hand, and, on the other, radical politics of mobilisation and involvement of peasantry, youth, and the working classes.
Even while politicians and pundits are engaged in analysing the sweeping victory of the BJP at the polls in UP and are still discovering the lessons to be drawn , Hindutva forces have sent a ringing message, a warning, to the entire country.
It is not so much what was stated at the elite conclave by the supreme leader. It is not the latest slogan of “New India” laced with the gross rhetoric of everything having gone wrong in the last seven decades. Nor is it the oratorical flourish to start afresh a movement to reconstruct India from a scratch, as it were. This style which seeks to substitute substance is now familiar. But it assumes a new and sinister meaning when juxtaposed with the real-politick of the choice of CM for UP.
All the feints (or was it simply wishful thinking of the media) of floating names of different candidates for that important constitutional office soon came abruptly to an end. And the choice rested on the name which is most remembered for its authorship of or association with a bunch of crude and uncouth statements bordering on or amounting to incitement to communal disharmony. And even worse, for involvement in cases of communal rioting.
Not long ago, the 'liberal' chatterati and the self- confessed protagonists of neo-liberalism were trying hard to convince themselves and others that the dispensation in New Delhi was distancing itself from the stray elements within its fold, whose staple diet was raw communalism and whose project was to push India into pre-modern medieval times. And many political novices were hoping against hope that this was so in reality. Growing evidence that it could be quite a different ball game was being ignored. Genuine apprehensions were being dismissed as political prejudice or helpless groans of the disgruntled elements of the earlier regime now out of power.
Now it should be easy to put two and two together even for the sympathisers of the New Delhi regime. Starting with Muzaffarnagar riots on the eve of the 2014 general elections; reaching a new high in the adroit decision of not finding even a single Muslim candidate deserving a BJP ticket for the 2017 assembly elections in the very state which has the largest Muslim population; and peaking in the crude, communalising innuendoes of Kabristan vs Samshan and Ramzan vs Diwali : communal polarisation has been and continues to be the overarching political theme and the strategy. The choice of CM says it all. And says it without any gloss or ambiguity.
This is an audacious extension of the Gujarat model of politics developed successfully by the Hindutva forces. Administering 'Shock and Awe' was the essence of the Gujarat strategy. The state machinery there connived at it, and turned its eyes away from mob crimes. That strategy effectively subdued the 9 percent strong minority of Gujarat.
One always thought that this strategy may not be expedient in a state like UP with its Ganga-Jamni tehzib, with little ghettoisation of its minority community, and above all, with the huge size of its minority and its close and enduring intertwining with the majority community. But ideologues of state power seem to be in a different mood. A point sought to be driven home is that subduing of the minority is possible in UP, ergo across the whole country. This cynical and sinister mood is rooted in the hubris of being in power at the Centre, on the one hand, and the popular appeal of the supreme leader, as re-vindicated in the UP assembly polls, on the other.
For this subduing to be achieved, what is necessary is not so much the actual communal conflagration, although the fear of the same erupting any moment must always be kept alive and real. What is essential is the generation of a feeling of hopelessness and acceptance in the minority community at large, particularly in affairs political. Equally important for the strategy to be successful is the co-generation in the majority community of the fear of the “enemy within”, so essential for the sustenance of the distorted and imported concept of “nationalism” cherished by the Hindutva legions. And the right moment for this seems to have arrived in the imagination of the Hindutva forces.
The history of Indian Republic is at the crossroads. The electoral majorities and adroit communal strategies are geared to make history take a decisive regressive turn. But it will never be a one-sided affair. The response has to come and will come from those who are sworn to the IDEA OF INDIA which is enshrined in our Constitution. Which itself was the product of a long and valiant freedom struggle against colonialism, a struggle which built an inclusive political platform seeking to overcome divisions and injustices which characterised the subjugated polity and society of the subcontinent.
The political response has to come primarily from the majority community believing in the Idea of India. And mere waving of the secular flag is not going to cut much ice either with the majority or minority community. What is necessary is an all-inclusive and broad-based campaign to “Save the Constitution”, on the one hand, and, on the other, radical politics of mobilisation and involvement of peasantry, youth, and the working classes on the minimum alternative agenda of agrarian reorganisation, right to work and provision of basic economic, social and personal security to all.
Nothing short of such a response will be adequate to meet the unfolding challenge to the Idea of India.
Times are difficult. The challenge is serious. But, as Lenin said in a different context, “We shall not lose heart, no matter which turn history takes. But we shall not allow history to take any turn without our participation, without the active intervention of the working class.”
(SP Shukla is former Finance Secretary to the Government of India. He is a retired bureaucrat who has spent his life working for the marginalised in India)
The BJP leader and his Hindu Yuva Vahini face multiple cases for creating communal tension in the state.
Image: PTI
Eighteen years ago, on February 10, 1999, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Yogi Adityanath and his armed supporters tried to capture a graveyard in Muslim-dominated Panchrukhiya village in Maharajganj district of Uttar Pradesh. But the police acted swiftly, and they had to flee.
On the way, however, they fired at a group of Samajwadi Party workers who had gathered on the main road close to the village for a routine demonstration against the then BJP government in the state. In the attack, at least four persons were injured. One of them, Head Constable Satyaprakash Yadav, who was the personal security guard of the Samajwadi Party leader leading the demonstration, Talat Aziz, later succumbed to bullet injuries.
A first information report filed by the police that same evening at the Kotwali thana in Maharajganj turned out to be the first in a series of such legal entries triggered by incidents involving Adityanath, directly or indirectly, in the years that followed. Many of these FIRs against Adityanath, now the chief minister of the recently formed BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, are still being investigated by the Crime Branch-Crime Investigation Department, the investigation and intelligence wing of the state police.
The FIR in the Panchrukhiya case names Adityanath and “24 other identified persons” for attempt to murder, rioting, carrying deadly weapons, defiling a place of worship, trespassing on a Muslim graveyard, and promoting enmity between two religious groups. The case was significant partly because it was the first clear hint of the extent to which Adityanath was ready to go to manufacture a riot, and partly because the revelation came merely a year after he joined active politics, becoming a member of Parliament for the first time from the state’s Gorakhpur seat in 1998.
Riot record
For some time after he was named in the FIR, the Gorakhpur MP lay low. But once he formed his personal anti-minority outfit, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, in 2002, within weeks of the Godhra incident in Gujarat that year – when the death of 59 kar sevaks in a fire on the Sabarmati Express set off Hindu-Muslim riots that killed over 2,000 people in Gujarat – the outburst of communal riots became unusually frequent in Gorakhpur and its neighbourhood.
The region witnessed at least six major riots in the very first year since the group’s formation – at Mohan Mundera village in Kushinagar district, Nathua village in Gorakhpur district, and Turkmanpur locality in Gorakhpur city in June, at Narkataha village in Maharajganj in August, and at Bhedahi village in Maharajganj, and the Dhanghata locality of Sant Kabirnagar in September.
Most of these cases started off as criminal incidents that turned communal after Adityanath or other leaders of the Hindu Yuva Vahini jumped in. In all, between 2002 and 2007, when Adityanath was arrested and kept in lock-up, Gorakhpur and its neighbouring districts witnessed at least 22 major riots, most involving him or his henchmen.
These arrests, in fact, were the only time the police showed some spine in dealing with him and his outfit. The crackdown was in response to Hindu-Muslim riots that had erupted in and around Gorakhpur, caused primarily by a toxic campaign of communal politics by Adityanath and his group in the run-up to the Assembly elections in 2007. Two persons were killed, property worth crores was burnt, and the area remained under curfew for several days during that January-February period.
Adityanath and over a dozen leaders of the Hindu Yuva Vahini were arrested while they were marching towards the troubled areas of Gorakhpur on January 28, 2007, a day after he made an inflammatory speech aimed at turning a small criminal incident into a communal riot. The arrest was timed so as to prevent the group from carrying out its threat of burning the tazia – a replica of Imam Husain’s mausoleum in Iraq – that Muslim residents were to take out as part of a Muharram procession on January 29. Adityanath remained in lock-up till February 7, when he managed to get bail.
The arrest so unnerved Adityanath that on March 12, he broke down, his eyes welling up, on the floor of the Lok Sabha as he explained to Speaker Somnath Chatterjee what he called a “political conspiracy” to kill him.
Rabble rouser to chief minister
The shock apparently turned Adityanath wiser – or more political – as he refrained from personally leading mobs and participating in attacks on Muslims in the manner he used to earlier. He has since restricted himself to making inflammatory speeches and participating in token action, while letting his Hindu Yuva Vahini do the rest.
Most of the FIRs against him from that time are still alive, though their fate has become uncertain now that Adityanath has assumed power in the state. From the chief minister’s office, he can do a modest amount of good, and he can also do immense harm.
The Modi Government continues to be non-responsive to queries put on expenses of the government and its ministers on the tax payers money, public queries and audits on budgetary allocations, all made through Right to Information Applications. As many as 9.76 lakh applications were received by registered public authorities in 2015-2016, showing a 3.8 per cent increase over the previous year.
Shockingly, according to the CIC, the highest proportion of RTI applications was rejected not under the permissible exemptions under the RTI Act such as Sections 8, 9, 11 or 24 but under the mysterious category of "others". At 43% rejections recorded under this category, more than 4 out of every 10 RTI applications rejected were for reasons other than those permitted by the RTI Act. The Prime Minister's Office is one of the PAs that employed this device very frequently (see ministry-wise findings here).
The Central Information Commission(CIC)’s Annual Report on the implementation of TheRight to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) may be read on its website.
RTI Trends of select constitutional authorities and Ministries The Excel sheet prepared by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative for the tabulated data from 2005 to 2016 for these select constitutional authorities and Ministries reveals the following trends:
1) While the President's Secretariat received only 123 more RTIs in 2015-16 as compared to the previous year the proportion of rejection plummeted from 9.30% to 1.2% in 2015-16. This appears to be a very significant positive trend indicating higher proportion of information disclosure.
2) In 2015-16 the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) reported a rejection rate of 20.10% of the RTIs received. This is a significant drop from 22.10% in 2014-15. However only 7 RTI applications were rejected by the PMO invoking Section 8. A whopping 2,227 RTIs were rejected in the "Others" category. However rejections in this category were much higher at 2,781 in 2014-15. This declining but nevertheless worrisome trend requires a more in-depth study.
3) The proportion of rejection of RTIs by the Supreme Court fell to 21.1% in 2015-16 while it received only 6 more RTIs as compared to the previous year. The proportion of rejections by the Delhi High Court also registered a fall of more than 1% in 2015-16 even tough the number of RTI received went up by 127.
4) While the number of RTIs received by the Comptroller and Auditor General fell to 716 in 2015-16 from 796 the previous year, the proportion of rejection zoomed to 17.2% from 6.3% reported the previous year. This alarming increase requires in-depth study.
5) The proportion of rejection of RTIs by the Election Commission of India has remained at steady state at 0.1% despite receiving 539 fewer RTIs in 2015-16.
6) The Cabinet Secretariat also witnessed a jump in the proportion of rejections from 4.30% to 6.65% in 2015-16 although it received only 73 more RTIs.
7) The Ministry of Personnel and Training reported a significant decline in the proportion of rejections at 3.4% in 2015-16 as compared to 9.4% during the previous year even though it reported receiving 9,000 more RTIs in 2015-16. This appears to be a positive trend.
8) Although Delhi Police received 648 more RTIs in 2015-16, the proportion of rejection fell slightly by 0.4% in 2015-16.
9) Among key Ministries, the proportion of rejection in the Ministry of Defence fell significantly to 11.5% in 2015-16 as compared to 15.90% the previous year. In the Ministry of Finance which has 212 PAs reporting (banks and tax authorities), the proportion of rejection fell to 18.30% in 2015-16 as compared with the 20.20% rejection rate the previous year. The Ministry of External Affairs also reported a fall in the proportion of rejection at 5.74% in 2015-16 as compared to the 7% rejection rate reported the previous year. However, the proportion of rejection in the Home Ministry increased slightly by 0.1% in 2015-16 even though it received 1,143 more RTIs in 2015-16.
7) The CIC reports that it imposed penalties to the tune of Rs. 10.52 lakhs out of which Rs. 9.41 lakhs was paid up by the PIOs. Penalties worth Rs. 1.25 lakhs imposed in various cases have been stayed by various High Courts.
8) The CIC has reported that the amount of fees and penalties reported by the PAs has increased by 12.31% in 2015-16. However if the amount of penalty imposed is reduced from this figure, the amount of fees collected by various PAs has actually come down from Rs. 1.14 crores in 2014-15 to Rs. 1.07 crores in 2016-17. This trend seems to be at variance with the reduction in the proportion of rejections. This is because, if more people received information then logic dictates that the proportion of fees collected ought to have gone up. This would have to be the case unless the PAs have started the practice of giving information free of charge to RTI applicants. This new trend requires deeper examination.
9) The number of Public Authorities registering with the CIC for submitting their RTI statistics is 1,903 – much lower than the highest figure of 2,333 registered in 2012-13. More than 400 public authorities did not register with the CIC despite its perseverant efforts in 2015-16. However, the AR states that reporting compliance from amongst the registered public authorities is the highest during the last 12 years at more than 94%. This is a good sign. However, the report does not throw light on the names of public authorities that did not register with the CIC. This could have been done by comparing with the data from 2012-13.
10) The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation and Ministry Overseas Indian Affairs have not reported their RTI statistics despite registering with the CIC. Only 33% of the public authorities from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways reported their RTI Stats to the CIC. However compliance has been between 60-100% in a large number of Ministries and Departments that have registered with the CIC.
A few well-meaning friends with genuine concern about the future of our democratic-secular polity are shocked by the decision of the 315 MLAs of BJP and its allies unanimously choosing Adityanath (original name, Ajay Singh Bisht, Mahant of Gorakhnath Temple, one of the richest in India) as CM of largest State of India. They seem to feel that this decision has been taken out of the blue and the BJP top brass, especially Prime Minister Modi, should not have allowed it as Aditya’s nomination for CM’s office goes against the former’s ruling mantra ‘sab kaa saath-sab kaa vikaas’. Some of these friends have even suggested that Muslims of UP and rest of India should forsake electoral politics so that Hindutva organizations led by RSS have no opportunity to demonize Muslims which they do in the course of elections as they did in the recently concluded UP elections. Interestingly, this demand that Muslims should be disfranchised is often raised by the RSS leaders themselves.
Such responses belittle the seriousness of the danger to democratic, secular India posed by the politics of Hindutva and worse, strengthen the stereotype propagated by many ‘secular’ organisations and individuals that everything is fine with RSS except that it is antithetical to Muslims and Christians. If the former changes its attitude towards these two minorities of India there is no real problem with the RSS vision of India.
The fact is that RSS is not just antithetical to Muslims and Christians but hates the very foundation of democratic-secular India as well. It remains committed to turn India into a Brahmanical Hindu State. The anti-minority rhetoric by RSS/BJP leaders in recently concluded UP elections was an alibi for diverting attention from issues of poverty, unemployment, violence against women, absence of educational and health services. The inciteful hate propaganda was aimed at conveying to the Hindu electorate that Muslims (and Christians) posed greater internal threat than the social and political deprivations of the former.
To rationalise Aditynath’s ascendancy to power to his being the crudest and most poisonous anti-Muslim leader is a small part of the story. It is significant that despite all kinds of Muslim bashing in the run-up to the UP elections the winners could secure only 39.7% of the polled votes. The BSP, SP and Congress together secured more than 50% of the polled votes and at the macro level 60.3% voters of UP voted against the Hindutva dispensation. The whole truth is that RSS/BJP knows well that they cannot fulfil all those promises which it has made to its new and electorally cunning amalgamation of Hindu Castes which voted the former to power.Any sense of this betrayal of its ‘vote-bank’ can only be camouflaged by a higher doze of Hindutva politics.
Mahant Adityanath with his impeccable zeal and commitment to Hindutva is Modi-Shah’s best bet for accomplishing this task. Adityanath combines two most aggressive streams of Hindutva politics, the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS. He combines in him the Savarkarite and Golwalkarite’s hatred for democracy, secularism and an all-inclusive India. He is a born dictator and relishes slogans like ‘Poorvanchal mein rehna hai to Yogi-Yogi kehnaa hogaa’ (To live in Poorvanchal, you must chant Yogi’s name) in tune with the RSS preference for ‘one leader’ as ruler. He personifies opposition to all symbols of all-inclusive India and it was a natural corollary to his nomination as CM of UP by the MLA’s in Lucknow, that only saffron flags which were waved in the capital.
Adityanath’s saffron attire helps RSS in propagating its Casteism laden Hindutva. The role model is BJP winner from Iglas Reserved constituency in UP. Diler a Dalit with family links to RSS while canvassing for the seat, not only sat on the floor but carried his own steel glass for drinking water/tea when he visited homes of upper-caste voters. Diler, a Valmiki, justified his desire to remain shackled in Casteism by saying ‘Main apni maan maryada khatm nahin kar sakta. Zamana chahe badalta rahe.’ (I cannot break away from tradition. Let the world change, I won’t). With Mahant Adityanath as political ruler, Dalits are expected to follow Manusmriti norms and Diler will not be an exception but rule.
Adityanath’s persistent aggressive calls for an India free of Muslims, ban on cow-slaughter (nobody asks him why it continues in many States ruled by RSS/BJP), conversion of Muslims/Christians to Hinduism and demand that Muslims should show their loyalty by chanting ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ (which Hindutva leaders/cadres never chanted against the British rulers) only adds to his aura of a Hindutva zealot. This politics of dangerous ‘other’ will help in reining in the disgruntled Hindus.
Aditya heading the UP State, that shares a long border with Nepal sends a favourable signal to the pro-king (monarchy) elements there. Aditya and his math historically have rendered great support to the Hindu kings of Nepal. According to them, the Nepal king is the king of Hindus of the world. Hindu Mahasabha and RSS both have been demanding restoration of the monarchy in Nepal and its return as a Hindu State. Thus,Aditya’s rule in UP will have international consequences also.
Those who have been shocked by the appointment to chief minister, the Mahant of the Gorakhnath Temple, only manifest their semi-illiteracy about Hindutva’s game-plan for India. This juggernaut has been on a successful roll since the 1967-68 when parties upholding democratic-secular polity joined hands with the RSS in running governments in several states and thereafter, at the Centre. It got further impetus in 1997-8 when Gujarat was turned into ‘laboratory for Hindutva.’ With Modi’s ascendancy and his declaration that he was a ‘Hindu nationalist’ in 2013, this journey completed the proverbial circle.
The problem with most of my ‘shocked’ friends is that they believe that Aditya’s crowning is an aberration and not the ad continuum of Hindutva politics which wants to undo present-day secular democratic India based on the Constitution. Unless we are able to rise up to the challenge in a real sense, the RSS idea of ‘Bharat Mata’ will gain further in ascendancy. This India is but a replication of the degenerate Peshwa State; with this reality, no foreign enemy needs to destroy India, the Hindutva gang are more than capable or up to the task.
We should both reflect and rejoice that, whether in 2014 or 2017, the Hindutva camp has been able to secure only around 30 -40 % of the total votes. Even in UP elections where according to pro-RSS commentators ‘Hindutva aandhi (storm)’ demolished all opposition, the results show that their vote-catch was less than 40%. The sharp rise in Hindutva’s aggression shows that Hindus are not falling for the Hindutva trap. Unfortunately, those opposed to Hindutva fail in challenging the anti-national philosophy and deeds of RSS, due to an absence of political will, poor organisation, even less communication apart from sheer ignorance. Since the RSS/BJP victory in Maharashtra, the RSS has even abandoned its façade of claiming to be a non-political body. Since 2001 (Gujarat) RSS pracharaks are appointed as chief ministers. The real India’s fight against Hindutva and the RSS’ nefarious ideology cannot be delayed any more. Seventy per cent of Indians are our security against this Hindutva juggernaut.
