Impunity isn’t exactly popularity Impunity isn’t exactly popularity Jawed Naqvi
It’s a common error of perception to
confuse political impunity with
popularity. The distinction makes a big
difference in understanding the core
features of fascism, which have mostly
eluded South Asia. Ziaul Haq’s recourse to
public flogging in Pakistan did strike
terror in many hearts but he crucially
failed to win over the people. Pakistan
acquired all the accoutrements of a
fascist state, except the missing popular
support. Other Pakistani dictators have
been shown the door by unarmed people.
In Modi’s India, TV channels bombard the
gullible with a similar power projection.
In this they work in cahoots with web-
based platforms like Facebook and
WhatsApp. The process is all in all a
shabby attempt to pass the state’s
impunity as the government’s popularity.
Friends condole with friends with great
concern that India has gone fascist. They
undermine a different way of seeing it.
Popular support for wilful dictators was a
necessary ingredient in Italy and Germany
in the 1930s. There’s no compelling
evidence — other than perennially fudged
opinion polls — that Prime Minister Modi
has won himself invincibility any more
than what everybody manages to get in
India’s first-past-the-post electoral
system.
Nehru with his winning streak offered to
resign on at least two occasions. Indira
Gandhi swept the elections in 1971 and had
to hide behind the emergency in 1975. How
else can we explain the dichotomy between
Modi’s two innings and the fact that half
the Indian states run opposition
governments, including Kerala, Tamil Nadu,
Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra,
Rajasthan, Odisha, West Bengal, Punjab,
Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Delhi? Why do
cow vigilantes not succeed there? In
several other states, namely Manipur, Goa
or Madhya Pradesh, Modi’s BJP gained power
by backdoor methods. And where have the
cow vigilantes disappeared in the beef-
eating but BJP-ruled northeast?
What we are witnessing in India today is
impunity, state-backed impunity. Some
years ago, the late Dr Mubashir Hasan was
visiting India. His close association with
Z.A. Bhutto had given him handy insights
into how democracies work and how they
fail or fall short. In his view, Bhutto’s
gradually revealed lust for unbridled
power and his attendant insecurities laid
low many hopes for robust democracy taking
durable roots in Pakistan. If anything,
the lust for power contributed to the
parting of East Pakistan.
Mubashir Sahib visited the erstwhile
communist-ruled West Bengal and some other
Indian states, possibly Hyderabad, before
it de-linked from Andhra Pradesh to become
the capital of Telangana. His observation
was noteworthy. Any cadre-based (or caste-
based) party can ally with state police to
wreak havoc on the opposition. The left
thus terrified Mamata Banerjee as she does
the left today. Dalit leader Mayawati was
feared by the powerful landed Thakur
castes when she was in power. Now the
Thakurs have the goods on her. There’s no
guarantee of course that Thakurs or any
caste works in unison, though they usually
do.
The ruler of Uttar Pradesh walks with a
spring today though he was bawling like a
baby in the Lok Sabha not too long ago. It
was a sight to watch communist speaker of
the Lok Sabha Somnath Chatterjee consoling
Yogi Adityanath who cried bitterly over
police harassment unleashed on him in
Uttar Pradesh by a backward caste
government. Saffron-clad Yogi is of the
Thakur/Rajput caste and has been putting
some very loveable people in prison.
Erstwhile chief minister Rajnath Singh is
also a Thakur, and was in fact a major
power within the BJP to contend with. He
was party president, in fact. No more.
Yogi the Thakur has outsmarted Rajnath the
Thakur. Inserting the Muslim trauma into
the narrative at every pause is to play
into the hands of motivated TV anchors
whose lifeline is the Hindu-Muslim binary.
There is a Muslim issue, a serious one, of
course. However, its genesis precedes the
arrival of Hindutva, and the travails of
the community are duly recorded in the
Sachar Committee report among others, of
how shabbily Muslims have been treated
since independence, including by the left
in West Bengal in terms of their gainful
employment. Were the Dalits treated
better? Or the tribespeople?
What Mubashir Sahib had gleaned from his
visit is evident elsewhere. Rival groups
in Tamil Nadu use the police to their
advantage and suffer at their hands in
turn, depending on who is in the saddle on
a given day. In the Modi era, the lumpen
proletariat, which was traditionally on
the wrong side of the law, and suffered
for it, suddenly finds itself as local
vigilantes with total support from the
police thanas, the thanas where they once
used to be strung upside down from trees
or wooden frames and tortured mercilessly
for alleged petty crimes.
By calling lumpens lumpens one often walks
away from the problem, however. How does
one bring the shunned elements into the
mainstream of everyday struggle and human
fellowship? The left and liberals largely
used the term as a pejorative synonym for
a veritably untouchable class; the BJP
converted the perceived social waste into
gold. This lumpen proletariat is the
purported brown shirts or the black shirts
of Hindu fascism. Are they that, or will
they shift with the power base, as would
the police, if Mubashir Sahib is right?
There’s a fear that haunts the BJP. It
comes from a nationwide resistance of
which Muslims are only a small part. It is
an invisible coalition of Dalits,
Kashmiris, Sikhs, Christians, backward
caste Hindus, tribals and left activists
(distinct from Maoists) and of course
several mainstream parties.
The other day, Delhi Police named CPI-M
chief Sitaram Yechury in the riots staged
in Delhi by state actors in February.
Countless innocents have been arrested.
Impunity is growing, Hindutva’s appeal is
waning. Sudha Bharadwaj and Umar Khalid,
Anand Teltumbde and Devangana Kalita,
Gautam Navlakha and Natasha Narwal and
many others would agree from their
respective prison cells.
Dawn. The writer is Dawn’s correspondent
in Delhi.
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