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Lucknow: Right to Public Health activists called anti-Modi-Yogi, beaten by mob

Thu, 20 May 2021 05:35:32 +0000

Image Courtesy:thewire.in

The Allahabad High Court Bench of Justices Siddhartha Varma and Ajit Kumar had recently observed that the entire medical system in the state of Uttar Pradesh pertaining to the smaller cities and villages can only be called ‘Ram Bharose’ (at the mercy of God). However, even this does not seem to have made the Uttar Pradesh government do a course correction.

This sarkari apathy seems to have also emboldened groups of right wing workers who have taken the law into their hands, and decided to crack the whip on individuals who are working on issues of public health and are raising awareness of the ongoing health crisis in the most populated state. According to a report in The Wire, a group of social activists campaigning for the ‘Right to Public Health’ was attacked in Lucknow on Monday.

Things took an ugly turn and the mob suddenly attacked the activists, after verbally abusing them, reported The Wire. A woman activist has also alleged that a mobster twisted her hand and abused her. However when the police arrived, they detained the three activists! The activists were taken to Hasanganj police post where they were interrogated for nearly three hours. The attackers are reportedly from the right wing and accused the activists of being ‘urban naxals’, a derogatory term made popular by so called ‘celebrities’ of the right wing.

According to the report a public campaign titled ‘Right to Public Health’ was launched in Uttar Pradesh by two groups: Naujawan Bharat Sabha and Stri Mukti League. Their demands included “nationalisation of health services as well as food and shelter for the poor during the entire lockdown.” Three social activists, Anupam, Avinash and Rupa were pasting posters and distributing pamphlets raising awareness about the campaign in the Hasanganj locality on Monday morning, when they were allegedly confronted by a group of locals. As per the report, the locals accused the activists of “misleading the public” and said they were pasting “pro-Muslim” posters near a temple. The locals continued to fuel hate and made the accusations communal. Even when the activists tried to reason with them and tell them about what the Right to Public Health was, showing them public interest information pamphlets, the mood did not change, stated the report.

Citizen’s groups, and some lawyers stood up in support of the detained activists, who were eventually released. However, police said there was no assault on the social workers! The Wire quoted the Hasanganj police station house officer, Yashkant Singh as saying, “We arrested three activists from Panna Lal Road for violating lockdown protocols and pasting posters illegally”.

Activist Rupa told the reporter that a man “twisted her hand” while snatching pamphlets from her; she added that she had already emailed senior police officers for registering a first information report against the miscreants. However, the police said no FIR was registered against anyone so far in this incident.

Anupam, one of the activists, however alleged that the mob were “sympathisers of the right wing as they were annoyed with our questioning on mishandling of the Covid-19 situation and the devastating condition of rural areas by the Bharatiya Janata Party government. They beat us as we were pasting posters featuring shortage of oxygen,” stated the news report. The other activist Avinash told The Wire, “The mob was saying that ‘everything is fine in the country, and there is no shortage of anything, neither in the country nor in the state. You people are falsely defaming the Modi and Yogi government’. While they were kicking us, they were calling us ‘urban naxals’.” The activists alleged that a local woman corporator was also a part of the mob and said the activists were “anti-Modi-Yogi people”.

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No Rain, Junaid: A Poem by K Srilata

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 06:02:18 +0000

On June 22, 2017, fifteen-year-old Junaid was travelling on a Mathura-bound train. His brother, friends and he were on their way home from Eid shopping when an argument over seats turned ugly. A mob surrounded them, accused them of eating beef and attacked them. Junaid was knifed multiple times and thrown out of the train, leaving him to bleed to death on his brother’s lap.

Image Courtesy: Neville Harson

No rain, Junaid will fill
this empty cup of grief thirst,
even though this is more June rain
than we want,
and elsewhere, boys like you,
with other names,
live and float paper boats,
and scavenge for fish
is unlikely, sudden street-pools,
food on their mind all the time.

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Gau Rakshaks’ have brought Shame to India

Tue, 26 Jul 2016 12:55:24 +0000

The decades-old reputation of the Jana Sangh and its successor, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as a Brahmin-Bania party has been reinforced by a series of recent events.

First, its ministers — Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya — maliciously targeted supporters of the Ambedkar Students’ Association in the University of Hyderabad, leading to the suicide of a bright young student, Rohith Vemula.

Now, the ‘gau rakshaks’ or cow protectors associated with the saffron brotherhood have run amok in Gujarat, beating up a group of Dalits for skinning a dead cow, which is their traditional profession.

Nor is this the first time that the self-appointed saffron vigilantes have attacked and even killed cowherds and suspected beef-eaters.

However, in these days of ever-present cameras and an overactive social media, the images of the Dalit boys being thrashed have fuelled Dalit fury and made the BJP run for cover.

Probably for the first time, the holy cow — a longstanding obsession with the Hindutva brigade – has landed the BJP in deep trouble.

For a start, the party’s recent strenuous efforts to shed its upper caste image and project its pro-Dalit credentials have been shredded, apparently beyond repair. Any electoral gains which the BJP may have expected in the Uttar Pradesh elections next year by securing a section of the Dalit vote have become virtually unattainable.

The Dalits have now joined the Muslims in turning against the BJP because the violent antics of the saffronites have handed the pro-Dalit Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) the entire Dalit electorate. It will be a big boost to the party since nearly 20 per cent of the state’s population are members of this community.

To make matters worse for the BJP, a vice president of the party in the state described BSP leader Mayawati as a “prostitute”. He has since been relieved of his position and is facing arrest, but the BJP’s critics are having a field day to castigate the party’s “Manuvadi” mindset reflecting the ultra-orthodox dictum of the controversial Hindu law-giver, Manu.

Before the Bihar elections, the BJP experienced considerable embarrassment when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief, Mohan Bhagwat, called for a re-look at the quota system, which suggested a dilution of affirmative action for the lower castes.

Now, the cow — former BJP minister Arun Shourie had described the BJP’s policies as those of the “Congress plus the cow” — is proving to be an unholy obstacle to Narendra Modi’s modernization plans.

While the prime minister did succeed in curbing the anti-Muslim tirades of the Yogi Adityanaths and Sakshi Maharajs on ‘ghar wapsi’ and love jehad — and calling Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, a patriot — his party has been slow in acting against the gau-rakshaks, presumably because of the cow’s special place in the saffron world.

But the party must have now realized that curbing the anti-Muslim hotheads is not enough — for the Hindutva storm-troopers can target other communities as well.

Even as the Dalit anger singes the BJP, the party will have to make up its mind to crack down on all the saffron fundamentalists, ranging from the proponents of those who advise Hindus to have more children to counter the Muslim “threat” to the “protectors” of the cow, not out of love for the animal, but to exacerbate the Hindu-Muslim division for, as Mohammed Ali Jinnah said with the same purpose in mind, that while the Hindus worshipped the cow, the Muslims ate it.

Alienating the Dalits is the last thing which the BJP wanted at a time when its plate is full of other, seemingly intractable problems.

Among these is the continuing unrest in Kashmir, caused by the high-handedness of the security forces. The disturbances have emboldened Pakistan to hold joint patrols with the Chinese on the border of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, thereby putting another spanner in the works of Modi’s friendly overtures to Islamabad.

It is a truism that none of the prime minister’s various endeavours in the fields of foreign policy and industrial development can succeed in the absence of a peaceful atmosphere at home.

Arguably, the RSS and sections in the BJP, who have been “planted” in the government and various institutions by the Nagpur patriarchs, are more interested in propagating Hindu “culture” than in economic advancement.

Since the cow is a part of this worldview, it is understandable why it has taken so long for the BJP to wake up to the hooliganism of the gau rakshaks.

It can even be said that as long as these goons were hanging to death Muslim cowherds in Jharkhand and forcing alleged beef-eaters to eat a mixture of cow dung and cow urine in Faridabad, the government took no more than routine steps like arresting the culprits.

But the attack on Dalits has given a new social and electoral dimension to the violence of the vigilantes.

It has also brought shame to India, for the cow fetish does not go with Modi’s Smart Cities and Digital India outlook.

It is throwback to a dark period of Indian history when widows were burnt to death and the shadow of an “untouchable” was considered polluting by the upper castes. The country can do without such regression.

(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)

This article originally appeared on Punjab Tribune and has been re-published with the permission of the author

Cover Image Credit: TV18.com

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