Respected Hitlerji, please don’t be so unfair!
With clockwork precision and often with a detailed script, fascism consolidates itself in stages. In the advanced mode, ideologically driven street lumpens are let loose to terrorise the people and then quasi-legal measures are summoned comprising police and military to rein in the minions who were only carrying out orders. To the average TV watcher in India this may give the impression that rule of law has been restored when in reality fascism has just got more streamlined, more institutionalised.
Sunday’s arrest of Amit Shah, Gujarat’s minister of state for home affairs, for the alleged murder of an alleged gangster and his wife has the trappings of Ernst Rohm’s isolation and eventual liquidation by Adolf Hitler when he began to become an embarrassment to the Fuehrer. Rohm was one of Hitler’s closest aides and headed the powerful SA of brown shirts, the storm troopers who gave the Nazis the street-fighting capability to seize power.
Like the old-fashioned cataract operation in which the eye disease would have to ‘ripen’ before it was ready to be surgically removed, India’s march towards rightwing consolidation is still at an uncertain stage in the ripening process. This has led to confusion in the public discourse about fascism’s many 0signs and symptoms.
Recently, the Headlines Today TV channel, on most occasions sympathetic to rightwing Hindu ferment, was attacked by a group of men for carrying a report in which the revivalist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) was linked to a series of false flag attacks targeting Muslims but blamed on Muslim extremists. Those complicit in the propagation of the planted stories included a section of the media and the main political players — the ruling Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), an adjunct of the RSS.
The assault on the Headlines Today offices displayed all the qualities of a Rohm-like operation in Germany of the 1930s. It also fitted with the ideology of the attackers. However, since an in-depth discussion on rightwing politics in India was never the forte of its self-congratulating TV channels, the Headlines Today editor just about barely managed a mumbled protest.
“I have no problem with a protest but what they have done is grossly incorrect. They have not acted in a fair manner,” complained Headlines Today editor Rahul Kanwal. “If they had a problem with the contents of the story, they could have protested through democratic means. They could have approached the Editors’ Guild, the channel editor or held a press conference. Barging into the office of a channel and indulging in hooliganism cannot be defended.” It’s a little like saying that Hitler was sometimes an unreasonable gentleman.
A close look at the Headlines Today episode would reveal that its claim about the involvement of Hindu fanatics in terror activities was based on video tapes that were a couple of years old. All this time the view propagated about fanatical Muslim groups being involved in the attacks was unquestioningly carried by the media. Whoever gave the channel the tapes at this juncture was interested in releasing them at this particular point in time. Consider also the fact that at least two popular weeklies with a soft corner for the ruling Congress carried cover stories on Hindu terror very recently and the federal police (CBI) decided to give a chase to Mr Shah only at this particular time. Perhaps there is an alternative narrative lurking in the background.
Everything coincides with the opening of the parliament’s monsoon session on Monday. Is the Congress government trying to use the (orchestrated?) protests by the BJP over Shah’s arrest to quietly push some legislation or to avoid discussion on more serious issues? Apart from the nuclear liability bill, which the government wants to ram through supposedly at the behest of the United States, there are other raging topics that will be conveniently not discussed. One of them relates to the Maoist revolt in India’s heartland states.
The special police in Andhra Pradesh recently killed a top Maoist who was indirectly communicating with the government on various proposals for a ceasefire. Swami Agnivesh, a well-known social worker was in touch with Cherikuri Rajkumar Azad, the slain Maoist, and Home Minister P. Chidambaram. When Agnivesh called a press conference to share the letters written by Chidambaram and Azad (a few days before he was killed) it was mysteriously cancelled. Agnivesh reportedly believes his communication with Azad could have been used by government agencies to track him.
The media is replete with different angles on Sohrabuddin’s encounter killing allegedly on the orders of Shah but it has fought shy of investigating the circumstances of Azad’s death. This is curious since Azad was leading a group that is described by the government as India’s gravest internal security threat. Chidambaram is widely seen as pushing a militarist line against the Maoist, a move supported by the BJP but which has evoked misgivings among his senior Congress colleagues. While the Headlines Today expressed concern over the attack on its offices and described it as an attempt by vigilante groups to muzzle the media, it has taken scant interest in the home ministry’s attempt to stifle criticism of its militarist line against leftwing extremists. Nor is there a matching critique of the government’s illegal use of vigilante groups to terrorise and murder tribespeople who are seen as being sympathetic to Maoists.
Meanwhile, it is left to the civil society and occasionally to the Supreme Court to critique the deep-rooted malaise that enables groups such as the Maoists to use the resultant popular disaffection to their advantage. In a strong critique of official apathy towards the poorest of the poor and their continued exploitation in the name of development the Supreme Court last week made a memorable observation.
Terming the government’s developmental policies as “blinkered”, the apex court observed that promised rights and benefits never reached the marginalised citizens fuelling extreme discontent and giving birth to Maoism and militancy. It was this that threatened the sovereignty of the country.
“To millions of Indians, development is a dreadful and hateful word that is aimed at denying them even the source of their sustenance,” a bench comprising Justices Aftab Alam and B. S. Chauhan said last Monday.
“It is cynically said that on the path of ‘maldevelopment’ almost every step that we take seems to give rise to insurgency and political extremism which along with terrorism are supposed to be the three gravest threats to India’s integrity and sovereignty.”
According to a Times of India report, the anguish of the court brimmed over when it dealt with a case relating to acquisition of tribal land by Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd in Sundergarh district of Orissa, which is a Maoist stronghold, and found that those who lost their land were not paid compensation for 23 years.
This extreme example of governmental apathy shook the conscience of the court forcing it to ask a series of questions — “Why is the state’s perception and vision of development at such great odds with the people it purports to develop? And why are their rights so dispensable? Why do India’s GDP and human development index (which is based broadly using measures of life expectancy, adult literacy and standard of living) present such vastly different pictures?”
It said: “With the GDP of $1.16 trillion (of 2008) Indian economy is 12th largest in US dollar terms and it is the second fastest growing economy in the world. But according to the Human Development Report 2009 (published by UNDP), the HDI for India is 0.612 which puts it at 134th place among 182 countries.”
The court said the counter argument was that very often the process of development most starkly confirms the fears expressed by Dalit ideologue Bhimrao Ambedkar, who had said though politically one man had one vote of equal value, in social life one continues to deny one man one value. Some would say the state of affairs is symptomatic of incipient fascism, not as Hitler and Mussolini practised it in Europe, but as something uniquely Indian. The Sohrabuddin case seems like a red herring.
Mohammed Abbasi 