How the cowards are helping to push the chariot of death

When life raises the price of a kilogram of limes to Rs 200, how do you respond?

The same way you responded when petrol reached Rs 100 and cooking gas Rs 1,000.

You find someone to bash, preferably not the person or persons actually responsible but some long-dead historical figure or a member of a religious community you would really like to dehumanise. The first bashing is metaphorical, the second is bloody, real and violent.

Somewhere India has lost its way, some of us sigh. This is not how it was when I was young or when I had my own hopes, dreams, expectations.

Actually, there is nothing philosophical about what is happening to us. It is a careful, concentrated campaign, practised and perfected over a century. A campaign to use various insecurities, inferiorities and fears to drive hatred and violence. It is a strategy to control and dominate. It feeds into our worst atavistic tendencies and used modern, contemporary tools to achieve its final solution.

What is the point of sighing?

Every person who looks back at history and moans about better days is part of the campaign, even unwittingly.

You want history? Don’t go too far back. Just consider every politically “centrist” person who tells you that the BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a gentleman and “not so bad” as Narendra Modi when it came to anti-Muslim, anti-minority hatred and general regressive campaigns against Dalits and women.

What these dear innocents – or willing participants – pretend they do not know is that Vajpayee was an integral part of the RSS and its Akhand Bharat, Hindu supremacist thinking. He was not a lost soul trapped by the BJP. He founded it. He made it what it is. He did not leave. He may have had a less grating personality than Narendra Modi, he may not have displayed the same sneering arrogance. But he set the stage for what Modi is today.

As far as his government is concerned, Vajpayee had to head coalition governments. Had he commanded the sort of majority that Modi enjoys, who knows. Words like “gentleman” et cetera mean nothing in the larger political context. They only affect our interpersonal connections and our hopes and expectations.

It was the “gentlemen” in cricket who invented the diabolical Bodyline strategy and used those socially below them to implement it. And thousands of “gentlemen” determined the cruellest practices of European colonialism.

Our public historians are so good at determining just how Jawaharlal Nehru was wrong in his thinking and decisions. If only they would spend a little effort on all our other worthies… but no.

How do you justify a murderous agenda by not justifying it? You focus elsewhere.

And if you focus on some past mistakes, wrongdoings, you can wash over the price of onions. Or limes. Or cooking gas. Or fuel. Or joblessness. Or falling savings rates. Or growing bank fraud. Or just about anything you want.

It’s a neat two-pronged effort. Dehumanize and kill on the one hand. Provide the justification on the other. And helping to push the chariot of death are all those cowards in the middle: do not mention y, it will upset the bigots; do not refer to x, it only strengthens the bigots; don’t reveal z’s bigoted past because now he or she is not a bigot; pretend to be like a bigot so that you can get more votes…

On and on they go, pushing us into a downward spiral of disaster.

Who needs limes to live anyway? Let’s boycott limes. Let’s boycott all Muslim traders. Let’s ban them from trading near temples. Let’s vandalise their shops. Let’s question the business practices, even as we rip the scarves off the heads of their women.

And let’s not say anything critical because it might embolden them further? Let’s just live in our little holes and pretend we can’t see or hear what’s happening?

Remember those worthies who argued that a little bit of sectarian violence is okay as long as the economy does well? After eight years of sucking sour limes and pretending they were eating chocolate cake, soft voices emerge in gentle condemnation of communal hatred. Not because communal hatred is in itself wrong, but because it’s bad for business.

I understand we have to be grateful for a few sane voices here and there. But I cannot accept that because we stand against hatred, we have to celebrate a few crumbs of reason that might fall from the High Table of Bigots.

Surely, we deserve better as a society, for ourselves?

Well, not until we remain so insecure that only the violent death of another will make us confident in ourselves.

Meanwhile, no gas, no limes, no livelihood. Only the smell of blood.

(The author is a senior journalist. Views are personal)