Aarif Rashid Malik
Communalism is not a new phenomenon in South Asian politics. It is very old and we have witnessed communal violence in India before the period of colonial power . There has been no let up in communal violence in South Asia after the partition too. India witnessed communal violence during the British era too but the Indian history had never seen such communal violence that had happened during the time of partition and the communal violence in South Asia is increasing very fast. The communal trajectories in any country of the world is happening fundamentally to exploit, discriminate and exclude a particular community in order to prove that culture of a dominant community is superior and pure . Same is the case of India right now (Who want to make India as a ‘Pure Hindu State ‘ under the leadership of Narendra Modi ). When India became independent, at that time it was decided by the framer of Indian nation that India would adopt secularism (because of the communal violence that witnessed India during the time of partition). The main aim of adopting secularism in India was to stop India for becoming a majoritarian culture and also want to maintain composite culture of India that was essential feature of Indian civilization since ancient times. Despite the fact that the word secularism was not inserted in the original constitution of India, but still the nature of Indian society was secular because of the fourth fundamental right that is ‘Right to Freedom of Religion’. Despite of the fact that the communalism was strictly banned in India by Nehru and Nehru himself described communalism as the Indian version of Fascism. He said “While all communalism is bad, we must remember that minority communalism is born out of fear, while majority communalism takes the form of political reaction”. But he still failed to control the incident of communal violence, in spite of this thing that they were in lesser number like Kota violence in 1953, Jabalpur in 1961 and 1964 communal riots of Calcutta. But day by day communal violence began to Increase in India, we have witnessed communal violence in 1968 in Assam and Aurangabad etc. The dreadful communal violence in 1980 was a Nellie Massacre of Muslim community in Nellie in which more than 2000 people were killed mercilessly. After 1980 communal violence in India has strongly increased because of the strong support of BJP. After 1980 and 1990, we had seen a shift in Indian politics that is the decline of Congress and the emergence of Hindutva fanatics very strongly. Once they strengthen their supportive base they began to change the ideology of the Indian people regarding other communities especially regarding Muslim very fastly. The principle of ‘othering’ has remained an important part of their ideology but the only difference is that they were not openly practicing it and now they began to practice it very openly right now. So it means BJP has damaged most of the secular fabric of Indian nation. Covid -19 is one of the formidable and dangerous virus that has damaged each and every thing in the whole world. Even the great power of the world has completely surrendered in front of it and it is this “Invisible enemy” that has compelled the countries of the world to unite on global level to fight against this global pandemic in order to overcome from this ruthless virus. At this time the whole world is busy to discover a vaccine for covid-19 to overcome from this global pandemic in order to restore the normalcy in the world very soon that has been crippled because of this pandemic. But unfortunately, it is the govt of India and it’s media who want to give covid -19 a concrete manifestation to abstract thing that is covid-19 is being linked with Tabligee Jammat. In other words we can say that the Modi govt is constantly saying it that “It is virus that has been brought by Tabligee Jammat to India “. When covid-19 was not in India, at that time it was faithless and once it entered into India, it become truly religious one .These things are basically done to demonize and traduce particular community in India and media is not leaving any unturned stone in it and playing a role of “sheer anchor ” to communalize it for the sake of hate politics. The whole game of communalizing covid-19 is revolving around the concept of “exclusion and inclusion” which is the essential principle of Sang parrivar ideology. The roots of this kind of philosophy has been already embattled by congress and now BJP are taking full advantage of it when they are in power in India with full majority.
India is losing its close friends in the Arab world. If the govt will not change their policies this time, then the future of the India lies in darkness and it will create huge mess in India. It is best time for the citizens of India to think about the future of the India very seriously.
The main aim of communalizing covid-19 is to destroy communal harmony in India and also to subsume other identity in Hindutva philosophy and also to create an image in the public that they are there real saviors and want to make themselves unsung heroes of the nation. One more aim of it is basically to strengthen their political power and to create too much paranoid and insecurities among the minorities. This “Blame game” is essential game of politics and without this; politics can’t function in an effective manner in the world. So the same applies in the context of India. It is not a co-incidence, it is a pattern, a political design to caricature, frame and endanger one part of the nation. These kind of polemical narrative are linked with islamphobia , based on stereotypic notions and deep-seated prejudice. Govt of India was knowing this fact that global pandemic is dangerous because of the devastation that it has done to powerful countries of the world. But the govt of India was not serious about now. Second , in such conditions they should not allow the Tabligee Jammat to organize such a large gathering. Third , it was important to announce lockdown but govt need to think about these citizens very carefully who were entrapped in Nizamudin ,to whom they are blaming right now for the spread of covid-19. All these things are doing to hide the failure of the govt and want to make citizens fools about covid-19. From all these things, we reach to this point that right now India is not passing only through the crisis of leadership, but there are crisis of legitimacy in main institution of country. Independence of all institution has been crushed down completely by and large and even it is the first time in the entire history of country since independence that judiciary has completely surrendered infront of this govt. Fear and anxiety is such among the citizens that they are not allowed to criticize the policies of govt and democracy is being confined to election and representation has no value at all. Even secular nature of Indian society is in deep crisis right now and these kind of things are also hurting the image of India at global level. At last, I can simply say that the Modi govt have to introspect over their policies which they are following from last six years. They need to understand this thing very clearly that “Communalizing everything in politics” is no longer productive forever because people will ask u questions about their welfare policies, not about communalization. Second, they need to shun the business of communal politics and need to focus on communal harmony to maintain secular fabric of India. Further they need to accept the positive criticism from their citizens to remove the flaws in their policies and need to avoid the hawkish and arrogant stance. Another one is this, if they want to see that India should play a role of ‘sheer anchor’ in global politics, they must understand that communalization is badly impacting on their global image right now. India is losing its close friends in the Arab world. If the govt will not change their policies this time, then the future of the India lies in darkness and it will create huge mess in India. It is best time for the citizens of India to think about the future of the India very seriously.
(The author is a student at the P G Department of Political Science at Kashmir University Srinagar. Views are his own, [email protected])
