’Tis the season (of hate)

Extremist politicians are perverting Hindu festivals with calls of Muslim boycott

Alok Tiwari

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh protests driving away of Muslim businesses and employees from Indore's Sheetla Mata bazaar

The festive times are upon us, and I remember the time when I used to so look forward to them. It would be a time of endless cheer from the beginning of Ganesh festival to Durga to Dussehra and Diwali to intervening wedding season right up to Christmas and new year. Now though these times come with some trepidation and a sense of foreboding. You never know what new atrocity will be thrown upon you in the name of festivities or how some twisted mind will use it to further their political agenda. At a time when politics is all about asserting identity, particularly religious identity, festivals have become vehicles for projecting power.

Ganesh and Durga festivals are less about fostering community living and more about outdoing each other in garishness of pandals and displaying street power. You know longer hear strains of devotional songs but war-like beats of dhol tasha or, worse, DJ systems that shake every neuron in your brain. Money for all this comes not from donations collected from local households, that ensured participation and belonging, but from corporate and political sponsors. It’s not the community elders who run the show but an aspiring or established politician and his/her coterie who use the platform to advertise their influence.

As if this were not enough, there is an added layer of Muslim-bashing on top of every Hindu festival. If it is not videos of goons dancing atop mosques, it is netas and their acolytes calling for boycott of Muslim-run businesses during the festival. This is no longer limited to Uttar Pradesh that has become the crucible of hate-filled Hindutva politics. Instead, it has spread to places otherwise known for their harmonious existence and progressive thought.

Last month, Aklavya Laxman Singh Gaur, son of BJP MLA Malini Gaur, started a campaign to oust Muslim traders and businessmen from Indore’s Sheetla Mata market raising the bogey of love jihad. This is one of Indore’s oldest cloth markets. This campaign was accompanied with threats and intimidation on ground. Muslim shop owners and employees are being targeted by Gaur’s goons. Already many shops are shut and several lost their jobs. The police are doing little to stop this.

It gets worse. In Maharashtra, an NCP (Ajit Pawar) MLA Sangram Jagtap caused a stir by appealing for a boycott of Muslim-owned businesses. It is no surprise to see this kind of behaviour in BJP politicians whose entire existence is based on communal politics, but an NCP leader doing it was a new low even though Ajit Pawar’s party is now in bed with BJP in Maharashtra. A thoroughly compromised Pawar could do little except issue a notice to Jagtap. Jagtap alleged Muslim side started the boycott call and referred to vague posters and leaflets. Of course, the lawmaker did not go to law enforcement with evidence of wrongdoing, instead, retaliated with a wrong of his own.

Predictably, Maharashtra police under chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, a law student himself, sees nothing wrong in this. This is the same police that lost no time in registering offence against a group of Tata Institute of Social Sciences students who observed death anniversary of Delhi University professor G N Saibaba. They were charged with, among other things, fostering discord among groups. Raising slogans supporting those jailed for years without trial is fostering trouble but open calls for boycotting businesses of a particular community is cool. The souls of progressive Maharashtra’s founding fathers must be in pain today.

In between there are reports of similar campaigns being waged in several places in UP where Hindutva outfit volunteers go around markets urging people to make festival purchases ‘from their own kind’. This is wrong at so many levels. Discrimination based on religion, caste, and gender are expressly prohibited under Constitution. Every citizen has the right to carry out one’s vocation in a fair manner. Just as a business cannot refuse to serve anyone on the basis of their caste or religion, a customer should also not be able to boycott a business because of owner’s caste or religion.

With government and police intentionally looking the other way, the tendency to stir the communal cauldron is gaining strength. The troublemakers know they can get away with increasingly more hateful actions. This will only abet the economic marginalization of Muslims in the country. Sadly, I see no let up in the effort to further widen the chasm between the communities. At least not at the official level. When the Union home minister himself uses dubious statistics to raise the bogey of infiltration, there is little hope of healing touch from the government.

However, this is less about the trouble caused to Muslims by such acts, though their pain is real. It should be of greater concern for Hindus to see their religion and sense of identity being exploited in this manner. They need to ask themselves if it is okay to see their festivals change from occasions of joy to opportunities of hateful behaviour. Are they really happy seeing their inclusive and tolerant culture getting mortgaged to an exclusionary and bigoted ideology? They need to learn from history. Whenever these instincts have been allowed to have an upper hand, it has not ended well for anyone. Just ask the Nazis.

It is also a time for introspection for Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) that is celebrating 100 years of its existence and its untrammelled rise to power. Its leaders have often defined people of all faiths living in India as Hindus. Now is the time for them to prove that they mean what they say. I have not seen any RSS leader speaking out against BJP politicians who are asking one set of Hindus to boycott another. RSS leaders are proud of their foresightedness. They should ponder how they will be judged at the end of next 100 years.