People's Democracy

The Uncivilised and the “Kutte ka baccha’

Brinda Karat

MODI’S recent uncivilised speeches have torn apart the pretense that the leader of the BJP campaign for 2014, was chosen to project the “development agenda” as the main plank for their election campaign through the so-called Gujarat model. Only the very naïve would have believed that the RSS made its choice on the basis of a development plank! Of course, there are those in the corporate media who would have liked Modi to continue to make the kind of speeches he did at the corporate conclaves about how he had turned Gujarat around. Editorials have been written in some national papers urging Modi to get back to the development agenda, read corporate agenda.

In fact Modi is doing exactly what he has been chosen for – to polarise the electorate on religious lines through communal propaganda. The RSS believes that religious polarisation is the only basis on which the BJP can make an electoral breakthrough. His provocative references to secularism as the “burkha” behind which the Congress hides its sins is reminiscent of the language the country heard before and after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Earlier he had in perhaps the most outrageous and uncivilised statement trivialised the Gujarat genocide of 2002 by saying that anyone would be sad if a kutte ka baccha died in an accident. The word puppy in English is a much softer and endearing term which has been incorrectly used as a translation.

In defence of the insulting and repugnant analogy he used, Narendra Modi tweeted “In our culture every form of life is valued and worshipped.” – Except, he should have added, if you are a Muslim or a Christian. Looking at his interview from another angle, his concern for the kutte ka baccha is as touching as was Hitler’s love for his dog. In 1933, the German government enacted one of the most comprehensive animal protection rights legislation in the world, as a first step in a series of laws to protect animals, ranging from anesthetising fish before they were cut up, to ensuring that lobsters were killed swiftly rather than having to experience the pain of being slowly boiled, before being served up as special delicacies to those accustomed to fine dining.

In the moral hierarchies born and bred in perverted Nazi minds, there was no conflict between care for animals and genocide of Jews, since in the Nazi reading Jews were sub-human beings lower than most animal species, comparable to vermin.

Similarly, Narender Modi, brought up in the schools of thought run by the RSS that preach hatred towards the minorities in theory and practice, can find it easy to express sadness for a dog run over accidentally but cannot bring himself to directly express sympathy for the thousands of Muslims, men, women and children who were butchered under his watch in 2002.

The analogy is inappropriate for another reason too. There was nothing accidental about the carnage. Incontrovertible evidence is now available in the voluminous records of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to show the culpability of the State in the communal violence. It is this SIT set up by the Supreme Court, and headed by former CBI Director Raghavan that gave Modi the ‘clean chit” he now flaunts. The records had also been examined by an amicus curiae set up by the court because of the complaint that the SIT was biased in favour of Modi. The report of the amicus curiae in fact did not exonerate Modi but on the contrary held that there was enough evidence to further inquire into Modi’s role. These records were inexplicably kept secret by the SIT and have come into the public domain only recently through the Zakia Jafri petition in the Gulbarga Society case. The petition is to reject the SIT’s clean chit and has been admitted by a court in Ahmedabad where arguments are being heard.

A reading of the material would lend support to the legitimacy of such a petititon. Details of the post Godhra transcripts of frantic police messages to headquarters provide a blow by blow account of the build up to the massacres and the role of the various players like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal and Modi himself. They reflect the puzzlement of the police as to why action was not being taken on their reports. Why did the government not act in time in spite of warnings? Nor was it a question of being temporarily overwhelmed by unforeseen circumstances. The transcripts of State Intelligence reports prior to the kar sevaks leaving for Ayodhya from a week before the horrific Godhra crime was committed, also describe the highly communal anti-Muslim public slogans which were being given by the leaders.

Was it good governance to not take any preventive steps? Was it good governance to allow the postmortem of the Godhra victims on an open railway platform in full public view as Modi did? According to the records of the SIT, he was present at the Godhra station at the time. Was it good governance to then handover the bodies to precisely those organisations like the VHP, who the police were warning were out to create a communal conflagration? Or were these the actions of a so-called Hindu nationalist whose very idea of India has more in common with Hitler’s Germany than Ambedkar’s constitution? Or else is this an example of the decisiveness that Modi boasted of as a sterling quality for his claim to leadership in the Reuters interview?

The question to be asked is decisive for whom? For whose interests? Certainly not in the interests of justice. Only recently Modi decided to send Amit Shah as his proxy to Uttar Pradesh, a man chargesheeted in a fake encounter case, while defending others involved in the cold blooded murder of Ishrat Jahan. And here it is not only a question of taking swift decisions against justice for the minorities although that is the paramount question in the context of the Gujarat model. It is the lack of concern in decision making for justice to the poor, the undernourished, those deprived of the right to literacy because as analysts of the Gujarat model have convincingly shown, the indicators of social inequalities remain very high in Gujarat, even as corporates have benefited enormously from the quick decisions taken by Modi. Decisiveness, without a moral compass, is of little use to the working masses of India.

Those who have known sorrow in their personal lives know only too well the importance of moving on, of closure, as being essential for the process of healing the wounds of grief. But for loss inflicted by deliberate policy, by design, by the illegal use of power, closure only comes when those responsible are held accountable and punished. Modi was at the wheel when Gujarat burnt. In the face of his recent defiant justification, the wounds bleed afresh and force us once again to remember the horror of 2002 and ask the question is this the model that India needs ?

It is the utter failure of the Congress led UPA government in its relentless pursuit of the anti-people neo-liberal agenda and its venal record of corruption which has given the BJP the opportunity to mobilise ensuing public discontent to once again seek to set the political agenda on communal lines. The Congress has also failed to confront the communal forces. It is only the Left, which can mobilise other non-Congress secular forces to fight back the communal danger in the challenging days ahead while providing a platform of alternative policies to defend the rights of the people. The effort must therefore be, as the call given by the recent National Political Convention of Left Parties to strengthen the Left through people’s struggles.