A changing India

Leaders of 13 opposition parties on Saturday expressed deep concern over the recent incidents of hate speech and communal violence in the country and questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence over the issue. In a joint statement, the leaders including Congress president Sonia Gandhi, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, and her Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand counterparts M K Stalin and Hemant Soren, also raised concern over the manner in which issues relating to food, dress, faith, festivals and language “are being used” by the ruling establishment to polarise society. The opposition leaders were drawn to the recent spate of violence during the Ram Navani processions across several states. The last week kicked off with Ram Navami celebrations in India on April 10, and reports of several cases of violence across states. The violence involved not just street fights but also student clashes at the hostels of one of India’s premier institutes – Jawaharlal Nehru University. The communal clashes, mostly at processions on the occasion of Ram Navami, saw stone-pelting and arson, in which several people, including policemen, were injured. On April 10, communal violence was reported in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and West Bengal. On Saturday, April 16, further violence was seen in Delhi, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh, followed by more violence in Maharashtra on Sunday. These incidents confirm that communal clashes are becoming more frequent and interestingly those arrested mostly belong to minority communities. According to media observers, a majority of the Indian electronic media appear to have normalized an “anti-minority rhetoric” while routinely asserting the “imminent danger posed by internal as well as external enemies to the nation” using “systematic false claims and partisan facts.” What has happened is that since 2014, most national news channels have been uncritically , whose members play a huge role in creating a divisive, communal and anti-minority atmosphere. In this manner, mainstream media has become a political instrument for government at the centre and also a powerful machinery to propagate its majoritarian agenda at the cost of the country’s marginalized communities, critics and dissenters. What has been happening across several parts of India are not in irregular frequencies nor isolated incidents but a consistent fuelling of hatred, fear, insecurity, abuse of freedom of speech, browbeating the free and liberal media across the country. These are unmistakable but unhealthy signs of an emerging another India. To understand why these continue to happen, it should be understood that despite all the pretences of pluralism, communalism is ingrained in the country’s polity that led to partition of India and Pakistan. The vestiges of the communal partition has been carried on for many decades as it has been a politically gainful pursuit during elections. Unfortunately, the embers of communal hatred stoked by political parties-whether left, right or centre- has led to the injury becoming incurable. Rise in communalism serve to remind that it continues not because members of communities want it that way but because some inimical elements including politicians refuse to give up communalising incidents. The fuel for communal violence is ‘hatred’ which is sparked by extremist elements who unfortunately, are nor mere fringe elements in society. Religious minorities have been consistently targeted across India and the incidents are rising but most tragically, the government at the Centre has not bothered to speak a word.