In the short video clip, Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati can be seen making derogatory remarks about the much-revered former president while also using derogatory language to target Muslims. The following is an excerpt from his speech.

“APJ Abdul Kalam is one of the biggest traitors in India. APJ Abdul Kalam is one of those people who are ghaatak (prone to violence); the world should not have such people. He was not very special, did not have a PhD and was given just an honorary doctorate. The thing is that Muslims like APJ Abdul Kalam are more violent than ‘ordinary jihadis’. Traitors like him, we (Hindus) can’t accept it as a weak community. People like APJ Abdul Kalam are like the rakshasa.”

Whom the whole world salutes.

Listen how Yati Narsinghanand is Abuß!ng Respected Abdul Kalam.

Remembering Missile Man of India, #APJAbdulKalam pic.twitter.com/70Qn8Zmf30

— Shivam Yadav (@ShivamYadavjii) October 15, 2023

Narsinghanand has been at the centre of a slate of controversies in the past. An FIR was registered against him based on the video clip; this was confirmed to the media by Commissioner of Police Ajay Kumar Mishra. For the comments on former President Kalam, the Ghaziabad police have booked him under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 295A, 505(1), and 67 of the IT Act.

According to Navbharat Times, the Deputy Commissioner of Police revealed that the video went viral on Twitter on September 7, 2023.

In his defence, Narsinghanand has allegedly claimed that the video in question is nearly a decade old and has been circulated multiple times over the years. He has also further stated that he already faces three pending cases related to this same video, and that people who have interests against him keep circulating the video to get him in trouble.

Narsinghanand has been no stranger to controversy. As per a report by the BBC from 2022, the police told the BBC about some of the details from ten out of the more than 20 cases lodged against Narsinghanand which comprise of a wide array of charges, including attempted murder, abetment of suicide, and dacoity. Maa Chetnanand Saraswati, who is reportedly a priest at the Dasna Devi Temple and also Narsinghanand’s lawyer, told the BBC that these cases are politically motivated.

Anil Yadav, a man reportedly closely associated with Narsinghanand, also informed the BBC that these cases are ‘like our jewels. That’s no problem.’ However, when the BBC asked Narinsghanand himself about the cases, he reportedly became agitated and threw his mic away.

Related:

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Indian elected officials and hate speech: ADR Report

Hate Speech: T Raja Singh attempts to incite hate in Rajasthan

India’s Struggle for Social Harmony: Challenges Amidst Surge in Hate Speech

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It is now almost certain that the India will get its first Adivasi women President. The choice of Droupadi Murmu, from the land of Dopdis of Mahashvetadevi, by the BJP -RSS for this ceremonial and constitutional, nevertheless a figure-head post, has made the united opposition’s contest not only self-defeating but reduced it to a mere token fight. This is so because BJP’s presidential candidate is now supported by every associate of NDA II alliance and also by its extended family like that of BJD of Orissa and the YSR congress party. This has ensured the BJP candidate pass the half way mark comfortably and hence her victory a forgone conclusion. The united opposition is once again fated to stage a poor show electorally, politically and ideologically.

The candidature of Mr. Yashvant Sinha by the opposition will be used by the ruling regime to showcase its commitment to the downtrodden in contrast. Even though some of its over enthusiastic leaders in states like Karnataka, has been using this to falsely claim that it only because of Mod and the BJP that a Muslim (Abudl Kalam), a Dalit (Ramnath Kovind) and now a Adivasi and a woman are made President unlike the Congress which ruled the country all these years. By doing so they are conveniently erasing the non-BJP history of post independent India, where a K.R. Narayanan (arguably the only president in this century who in some occasion refused to work as the rubber stamp of the government) had occupied the office as the first Dalit president,  Zakir Husain and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed as Muslim Presidents and also that  the first women president of India was Pratibha Patil who was a UPA nominee when the BJP had fielded a Rajput man, Shekawat.

However, these facts may not appeal to the WhatsApp generation since the BJP-RSS is successful in cunningly portraying themselves as the only nationalist force in the country, while the Congress and all other non-BJP parties forces in society are essentially opportunist, corrupt and inspired by non-nationalist political ideologies. That the BJP is an antithesis of what it projects for itself does not need underlining. But since the battle is one of perception and the BJP has in place a well-heeled and oiled propaganda machinery, the battle is won before even it has been fought. The announcement is enough. The BJP and the Sangh are systematically using every occasion for the furtherance of this political and ideological propaganda. The upcoming Presidential election is also not an exception of an occasion. The opposition, moreover, lacks the necessary political-ideological and more than anything else, the moral standing to counter it.

Take for example the choice by the BJP of an Adivasi women, or earlier a Dalit man or even Abdul Kalam in 2002 when the BJP had been severely tainted by complicity in the anti-Muslim genocide in Gujarat. Each time the choice was guided by not only by short term electoral gains but also long term ideological gain. While the choice of Abdul Kalam was to make up its image as secular party in the wake of Gujarat genocide, the choice of Kovind was to expand its political-ideological base among the Dalits and check the forces contending for the same. Now, after a relative electoral-political-ideological consolidation of those constituencies, the BJP has embarked upon expanding and consolidating the elusive Adivasi constituencies spatially and politically before the forthcoming general elections. The choice of otherwise retired politician, Droupadi Murmu has been carefully made to serve these political ideological goals.

The choice of an Adivasi, a Dalit, or a Muslim for the post of head of Constitution by a party ideologically and politically committed to perpetuate the Hindu Brahmanical social order smacks of not only political hypocrisy but also illustrates its manipulative politics couched in the language of inclusion. This sort of inclusion in the long history of Brahminical Hindutva has been a cunning design to cover actual exclusion.   

The realities of electoral politics compels the recognition of the numerical preponderance of the Dalits, the tribals and the women. Seven decades of a reluctant capitalist development also lead to the emergence of a tiny strata of a middle and upper middle class within all the castes and communities. This class and strata became the backbone of the radical social movements demanding substantial equality and dignity in the 1970’s and 80’s. The ignorance and sometimes even refusal of the traditional left-progressive movements to consider the question of dignity and community based assertion of the oppressed castes as another important democratic stream, led to the emergence of identity-based movements in the 1980’s and 90’s, independent of, and even sometimes antagonistic to movements aiming to achieve economic equality. This cleavage between otherwise fraternal streams were best manipulated by the oppressors privileging the identity politics over all other substantial issues. Thus, the crucial economic and social question of re-distribution was relegated to the backseat. What emerged was the politics of recognition.

Even in India, the 1980s and 90s saw the selective inclusion or the issues of recognition of the oppressed identities by the RSS-BJP. Their politics of Identity was strategy to politically disengage and disrobe the community from the questions of substantial equality or the question of equitable distribution of resources. Along with that BJP-RSS ensured the upward political mobility of these tiny strata as a part of a new brahmanical social engineering where the symbolical positioning bereft of substantive power is celebrated as empowerment and the real harmony and questions of substantial equality and alternative order demonised as anti-national and anti-identity.

Take for example the candidature of Droupadi Murmu and her carrer as BJP minister in Orissa and her tenure as governor in the tribal state of Jharkhand. Like Ramanth Kovind, she had never raised any political questions about the RSS-BJP philosophy of Brahminical Hinduism. As a governor she is remembered for her silence when Patalghadi movement was crucially suppressed by the BJP government. She is also remembered for silence as a custodian of the forest and wellbeing of the Adivasis when BJP state government was selling forests to the highest foreign bidder.

However, her refusal to give assent to two bills approved by the Legislative Assembly seeking amendments to the Chhotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908, and the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act, 1949 (Aug 17, 2017, DowntoEarth).  At the time in an interview she had stated, “The government should have anticipated the mood of the public. I talked to experts and thoroughly studied the bills. I felt the bills should be reconsidered and a rethinking is needed. There were 192 non-political and political meetings over the bills. Even people from outside the state approached me. The amendment bills have now been returned to the state government, along with 192 memorandums which were received opposing the amendments. I have asked the government to re-examine the amendments afresh in the light of these memorandums.”

However, the images of Droupadi Murmu, a proud representative of Indian Adivasis sweping the floors of a Shiva temple are disconcerting. This suggests her acceptance by the RSS-BJP leadership comes from her loyalty to their vision of Hindu Rashtra.

Like Kovind and Kalam before her, will the first Adivasi woman president of the country, instead of representing the vibrancy of Indian democracy, actually represent the elasticity and manipulative skills of the ruling Brahminical Hindutva regime? The tragic and self-deceptive contradiction between the politics of Identity and substantive equality.

*Views expressed are the author’s own. The author is an activist and freelance journalist who was also a columnist for Gauri Lankesh’s publication.

Other pieces by Shivasundar:

Adani’s capital Modi’s power in Sri Lanka

Modi’s eight years: Eight acts of shameful disgrace

How a state suffocated by Saffron got a new breath from Blue

Never Ever Forget

The post Subaltern Faces to sustain the Sanatan Core: The Murmus, The Kovinds,  and the Kalams appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: PTI

 
The late Indian president writes about this fall-out when he recalls his visit to the state of Gujarat after the 2002 carnage. He states that the then Prime Minister AtalBihari Vajpayee appeared to be not keen on President APJ Abdul Kalam’s official visit to the state but he recalled the message he had given India and the world at the end of the two day tour. “I expressed my thoughts through a statement in which I the need for an intensified movement to completely communal and other forms of strife and bring about unity of minds.”
 
The former President in the book recalled this painful period when then chief minister of the state NarendraModi was with him, every step of the tour. Kalam said, “my mission was not to look at what had happened,not to look at what was happening,but to focus on what should be done”.But at the ministry and bureaucratic level,it was suggested that he should not venture into Gujarat at that point of time. He also said that the he was first advised not to go. “One of the main reasons was political. However,I made my mind that I would go and preparations were in full swing at RashtrapatiBhavan for my first visit as president,” he said. “The prime minister,AtalBihariVajpayee,asked me only one question, ‘Do you consider going to Gujarat at this time essential?’

“I told the PM,’I consider it an important duty so that I can be of some use to remove the pain,and also accelerate the relief activities,and bring about a unity of minds,which is my mission,as I stressed in my address during the swearing-in ceremony.”
 
Kalam described the visit when he had released the book in 2012, “I visited 12 areas – three relief camps and nine riot-hit locations where the losses had been high. NarendraModi,the chief minister,was with me throughout the visit. In one way,this helped me,as wherever I went,I received petitions and complaints and as he was with me I was able to suggest to him that action be taken as quickly as possible.”
 
Recalling an incident during one of his visits to a relief camp,Kalamwrites,”A six-year-old boy came up to me,both my hands and said,’Rashtrapatiji,I want my mother and father.’ I was speechless. There itself,I held a quick meeting with the district collector. The chief minister also assured me that the boy’s education and welfare would be taken care of by the government.”
 
“While I was in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar,people from all sections of society wished to talk to me and express their and views personally. In one such gathering,nearly citizens of Ahmedabad surrounded me. The interaction was in Gujarati and a friend of mine translated. I was asked about fifty questions and received 150 petitions.
 
“My visit to two important places in Ahmedabad was indeed significant,particularly in the light of the riots. I called on PramukhSwamijiMaharaj at Akshardham where he welcomed me. I discussed with His Holiness the mission of achieving unity of minds and bringing a healing touch to Gujarat,which has given to the nation great human beings like Mahatma Gandhi,SardarVallabhbhai Patel and Vikram Sarabhai.”
 
Kalam also visited Sabarmati Ashram,where he met many ashramites and saw the agony writ large on their faces,even they mechanically carried out their normal chores.
 
“I witnessed similar sentiments at Akshardham as well. As I was wondering why,Irealised that both these institutions,virtue of their inherent love and respect of human beings and their spiritual environment,work to bring happiness,and progress to society and could therefore not accept a situation of inflicting avoidable pain.
 
“I say this because in our land,with its heritage of a evolved civilization and where great men were born and stood tall as role models for the entire world,communal riots with their attendant tragedy are an aberration that should never happen.”
 
There was some controversy too, around APJ’s visit to Gujarat in 2002.

Internally displaced persons and survivors staying at the largest relief camp, Shah-e-Alam accused the state government of changing his itinerary at the last minute.Unhappy that President A P J Abdul Kalam did not visit them during his trip to Ahmedabad, inmates of the Shah-e-Alam relief camp went hungry on Monday.

The over 4,100 inmates — mostly from the riot-hit NarodaPatia area — protested against the arrest of their camp organiser Sharif Khan Pathan and the government's "evil designs" to keep the camp off the President's itinerary.
 

The post When Last NDA President APJ Abdul Kalam visited Strife Torn Gujarat, Urged ‘Communal Harmony & Meeting of Minds’: August 11, 2002 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

APJ Abdul Kalam he 11^th president of India.There have been 13 presidents of India since the introduction of the post in 1950. Pratibha Patil was the 12^th and first woman president of the republic.

Though for the Sangh Parivar, Abdul Kalam has been portrayed and promoted with specific zeal—given their obsession with a militarised mind-set—APJ Abul Kalam’s contribution should be seen in the context of at least two other Muslim presidents of India have left their reflections — Dr Zakir Husain (1897-1969) and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (1905-1977). [Justice Mohammed Hidayatullah, who was acting president when Dr Zakir Husain died in office in 1969.]

The trajectories are a stark contrast, while Dr Zakir Hussain will be remembered for his lasting contribution to education and the lasting message of peace and communal harmony, post-partition, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed’s tenure is ignominiously linked to Indira Gandhi’s declaration of internal emergency and attendant repression of civil liberties and press freedom.

Of those Indian Presidents who also happened to be Muslim, arguably Dr Zakir Husain’s contributions, especially in the field of education stand out. In 1920, when he was just 23, he became one of the founders — along with Maulana Muhammad Ali and Hakim Ajmal Khan — of what later developed as a great centre of learning  in India i.e. Jamia Millia Islamia (National Islamic University). [It was at behest of Gandhi and other senior leaders from the Congress that Zakir Husain left the MAO College and established in Aligarh a new college that was later shifted to Delhi with Maulana Muhammad Ali as its first vice-chancellor and Hakim Ajmal as the first chancellor. Husain completed his PhD in economics in Germany at the age of 29 and in 1926 came back to become Jamia’s vice chancellor, a position he occupied for more than two decades.]

It was Zakir Hussain’s contribution in the area of basic and primary education that made it’s most lasting mark. He presided over a National Committee on Basic Education established by Gandhi at the advice of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad who was to later become the first education minister of India. After independence, Aligarh Muslim University faced tremendous problems, because most Muslim teachers who were supporters of Pakistan migrated, and the university was seen as a stronghold of the Muslim League, opposed to the INC. Some elements in Congress even saw Aligarh University as a hotbed of pro-Pakistan sentiments and a threat to secular India.

That was the time when Dr Zakir Husain was asked by the union education minister, Maulana Azad, to take over Aligarh University and he remained it’s vice chancellor from 1948 to 1956; then in 1957 Nehru appointed him the governor of Bihar, where he remained till 1962. In Bihar when the state government tried to curtail the independence of universities through a bill in the legislative assembly, he threatened to resign rather than sign an act that was to be a blow to intellectual freedom of universities. The state government had to backtrack, and no such law saw the light of the day.

In 1962, Dr. Radhakrishnan, then vice-president was elected as the second president of India. This was after the completion of Dr Rajendra Prasad’s second term as the first president of India after Independence. Dr Zakir Husain was then elected the vice-president and ex-officio chairman of the upper house, the Rajya Sabha. In 1967, when Indira Gandhi had taken over as the prime minister and wanted Dr Husain to become the president, which he did. Though his tenure as President was short –he died in office in 1969, Dr Zakir Hussain’s seminal contribution in bringing sanity and harmony to an India still reeling from the after effects of partition, was significant.

It is also a tribute to the political leadership in post-Independence India that a man of his stature could and was considered for the top post, President of the Republic. Dr Zakir Husain’s books, especially Dynamic University, outline his ideas about education that is free from prejudice and indoctrination. His translations of Plato in Urdu still critical reading. He possessed doctoral degrees in various disciplines.

Unfortunately, history will remember India’s second Muslim president as being acquiescent to the declaration of emergency by Indira Gandhi in 1975. Indira Gandhi was known for her manipulation of institutions and over-centralisation of power, and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed allowed himself to be used as a rubberstamp to impose the state of emergency in his name. Officially issued by the president, the emergency remained in force for 21 months from June 1975 to March 1977. This allowed Indira Gandhi to rule by executive decree, and authorised her to suspend elections and curb civil liberties.

The year before, in 1974, opposition led strikes had caused political disenchantment at various levels. On June 25, 1975, Indira Gandhi declared the Eemrgency, rubber stamped by then Indian President, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed. By this declaration, elections were delayed, press was censored, non-Congress governments were dismissed and several freedom fighters like Jivatram Kripalani and Jaya Prakash Narayan were arrested.

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed remained silent when most of the political opponents of Congress were put behind bars, the press was censored and a compulsory, mass-sterilisation campaign was launched by Indira’s son Sanjay Gandhi in September 1976. One of the worst atrocities of the emergency apart from the compulsory mass sterilization programme, was, when Sanjay Gandhi accompanied by Jagmophan, the vice-chairman of the Delhi Development Authority, brutally bull-dozed, on April 13, 1976, residential tenements at Turkman Gate. Brutal police firing resulted in 150 deaths and over 70,000 persons were displaced by the episode. The internally displaced were moved to the Trans Jamuna area.
 
He died in February 1977, in the same bathroom of the President House where Dr Zakir Husain had collapsed eight years earlier.
 

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