So India continues to stride on a path of ‘self-reliance’ and ‘development.’ This is the new India, under the strong leadership of Narendra Modi. We don’t haggle with terrorists anymore, we do surgical strikes. We don’t negotiate with big brother China, we give them a taste of their own medicine. We don’t come across as a subservient third-world nation in international summits, we stamp our own identity by pledging ridiculous climate goals.
We don’t police corruption, we de-regulate the economy. We don’t just tag intellectuals as mouthpieces of the left, we kill them. We don’t make Dalits scavenge our dirt for us, we simply lynch them. We don’t get drawn into ideological debates with human rights activists on the ground, we simply detain & arrest them on fabricated charges. Welcome to the new, ‘Swacch’ India.
And if you don’t agree with any of these things, you have got to be a Congressi. Or a communist. A heathen amidst a group of patriots. We don’t need your kind. Go to Pakistan.
This is where our political discourse stands at the moment — four years after BJP swept to victory. Here we are, and virtually the entirety of north India — including the north-east, mind you — has willingly joined in the ‘development’ project. Keeping in with rise of right wing populism across the world, we too have caved in to a nativist and brazen understanding of what’s best for our country. There is growing polarization and paranoia, there is the externalization of our deep-rooted insecurity, and there is a consensus — even among those who oppose the Hindutva agenda — that something had to give, and what we are seeing is a natural backlash to years, no, decades of misrule and political gimmickry.
After years of loot, mis-administration and pandering to the same feudal system that India has grappled with for much of its later history under the stewardship of Congress and numerous regional governments, BJP styled itself as a no-nonsense nationalist party which would not flinch from taking tough decisions under a supremely well-crafted media demagogue, Narendra Modi. The Indian PM has a bit of rusticity about him that draws people in, but more than that, it is the tireless and downright polarizing work carried en masse by ground level karyakartas which the RSS is truly benefitting from. He is a front to an entire structure of insecure, confused young men conditioned by heavy-handed extremists who believe in the militant romanticism of one religion, and India’s imagined necessity to embrace it.
But what do we — the urban, educated (at least that’s what we’d like to believe), bar-hopping, Netflix-binging — audience have to do with it? What can we, a cog in the grand wheel that is polity, possibly do about the caste-driven, overtly patriarchal political system of our country? We have our own worries — love, work, family, rent, future, what-have-you — and we can’t take the pressures of being bogged down with the worries of an entire nation. Moreover, it’s not like we are not concerned and don’t do our bit. We argue among friends, post on social media, confront family members about their political opinions on matters ranging from across the spectrum, even take to the streets when it gets really bad — like when a woman is raped on a Delhi bus, or when a man is lynched after meat is found at his home in dubious circumstances — and in some cases, we allow our works to be permeated with our politics. What more can be done?
At most, we can try stopping the BJP Goliath by aligning ourselves with the opposition in 2019 — howsoever distasteful it might be — right? What can we do before that? Even if the BJP lets itself become more draconian, even if a few more Dalit men and women are killed, even if a couple more social activists are slaughtered in urban spaces, even if hundreds of shakhas come up in no time at all, even if rioting and inflammable rhetoric-driven rallies are planned in several cities for the upcoming elections next year, even if sympathy with minorities continues to be billed as appeasement, and even if Adivasis and the poorest of our nation are massacred while India’s global companies ramp up their profits, even as hollow consumerism is gobbling up our youth, what is that we can do except hope that it won’t get worse?
Hold on to that thought, friends, while the BJP and its aligning powers puncture the system in so many ways that at some point of time in the future, regardless of our politics or work, our apolitical lives will come back to haunt us.
The poem by German pastor Martin Niemöller comes to mind.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
The list of misdeeds and outright acts of violence committed against progressive thought under the BJP in only four years is so long and varied that I would need until next year’s election just to list them here. But even as we — the relatively privileged, educated urban elite — continue to turn the other way when news of yet another atrocity or another instance of our government having bypassed common sense comes to mind, it would not take long before we find ourselves first quietened, and then crushed, by the heavy fists of our clearly partisan government.
In the early hours of Tuesday, unbeknownst to most of us, six social and human rights activists, who have worked their entire adult careers imparting education and standing for the rights of the marginalized, were arrested from their homes and offices across India. These include revolutionary activist and poet Varavara Rao, union organizer and human rights activist Sudha Bhardwaj, lawyer and author Arun Ferreira, activist Vernon Gonzalves, father Stan Swamy and civil liberties activist Gautam Navalakha. This spate of arrests follows the early June arrests of fellow human rights activist Rona Wilson, Nagpur University Professor Shoma Sen, advocate Surendra Gadling, cultural activist Sudhir Dhawale and anti-displacement activist Mahesh Raut, whose arrests followed an arbitrary pattern now perfected by our regional police forces.
In a way that completely disregards the constitutional rights of these activists, they are “picked up” by police teams in raids which are unregulated and outright illegal. Because the police suspects of them having done nothing which could be deemed “unlawful,” they are under increasing pressure to fabricate stories and evidence. In what now clearly appears like a meticulous design with these arrests, the personal belongings of activists including their journals, laptops and pen drives are confiscated. In the absence of an iota of supervision, these possessions could easily be tampered with to create “evidence” to present in court, on the basis of which these activists will face trial.
Some of these activists have faced prior arrests, intimidation, and a slew of state-sponsored threats for doing what they do. Arun Ferreira, for example, had been tortured in jail for years after being accused of being a “Maoist,” only to be acquitted in 2012, because, you guessed it, there was no proff. These kind of arbitrary detentions and jail terms seem to be exactly what the BJP is looking for before the 2019 elections.
These activists have been arrested under the Unlawful Acts Prevention Act, or the UAPA — a law so broad and unlawful in itself that almost any arrest — under any circumstances — can be shown to fall under the ambit of its purview. It is a tool which has been used to callously kill dissent by former governments, and the BJP is using it to maximum effect. Even if none of the charges (although there will be efforts at fabrication) are proved, these activists will spend enough time in jail so as not to hurt BJP’s chances.
They are most likely being done with an eye on the 2019 elections. All these activists have worked all their lives working for the marginalized and have not feared state backlash throughout the entirety of their careers. They are unafraid to criticize the ruling government and are often able to mobilize great swarms of people to agree with them. In essence, they are influential people in their respective communities and would’ve likely done a lot to disintegrate the untruthful, money-fueled & propaganda-driven development narrative so meticulously built up by the BJP. Since the activists hail from all parts of India, muzzling them off till until the elections would give the ruling BJP a significant advantage in contests focusing on the communities where these activists work.
To work up the hysteria, which BJP has shown that it masters at doing, the police seem to have come up with an ambitious plan. Some of these people are said to have been involved in a plan to assassinate PM Modi, which, in all truth, sounds as bogus and fabricated a charge as the terrible script-writers at BJP think tank could muster. If sheer common sense and logic were things we went by, why would these activists, authors, cultural critics, professors and lawyers, who have fought repression respecting the rule of law throughout their lives, suddenly be gripped by a crazy, ludicrous plot to assassinate the prime minister?
Seriously?
They have spent their lives working for the poor and marginalized when each one of them could’ve instead lived an apolitical, secure, and lavish life, only to undo their lives’ work by being involved in something as sensationalist as this? Such charges reek of a Machiavellian cheapness and are aimed at compounding hysterics, with the BJP appearing hell-bent on falling to unimaginable depths to win. They have quite mastered the art of emotional manipulation. In their ivory towers, its leaders must be having a hearty laugh at the staggering level of misinformation that our honestly clueless urban populace accepts without as much as “what the actual f**k?”
This if what fascism is. Slowly but surely, the democratic ideals of this country are getting eroded. What would have created a huge debate yesterday will be accepted today, and tomorrow, we might even begin to support it.
Our only hope is because it is the 21st century, we have more resources at our disposal to connect with each other and stay informed. There is no excuse for not knowing what is truly happening behind the scenes, and if we put a little bit of an effort by removing our rose-tinted glasses, we may be able to decipher the evil design of our rulers. The government faces more scrutiny over every action that it takes, and the media has to play its part. If India’s fourth-pillar is actually a real thing, journalism now should be ready to tackle the collapse of democracy, and be ready to ask the tough questions. That also means that mainstream media organizations stop publishing articles where the police narrative is presented as truth. As journalists, it is our jobs to find out both sides of the story and unless we do that, we end falling prey to the fallacies of a media trial.
Finally, you must get off your mostly cushioned, secured life and begin to confront what is wrong. Because today they have “arrested” these activists, and tomorrow it could be your turn.
*Mohit Priyadarshi is a filmmaker and writer, whose first feature, Kosa, about the travails of a teenage Adivasi boy falsely accused of being a top “Maoist” commander, is set to come out later this year.
Related:
Sudha Bharadwaj’s Remarkable Journey: From Trade Unionist and Lawyer to ‘Urban Naxal’
Pune Police forcibly detains activist Sudha Bharadwaj
State Crushing Dissent Again!
Raiding the Resilient