Modi’s anti-Muslim, tirade an outcome of early Shakha training | Faraz Ahmad

It was in September 2002, after presiding over the pogrom of Muslims of Gujarat under the watchful eyes of its newly elevated chief minister Narendra Modi that he coined the term ‘paanch pachees’ to identify Muslims, the target of mob lynchings in February-March, 2002.

It is worthwhile to recall the context in which our current Prime Minister Modiji made that shocking public statement targeting poor Muslims, sitting for months on a pile of dirt and muck for months after some semblance of peace returned for the hapless victims left with no home and hearth.

The trigger of the violence against Muslims was the burning of sleeper coach number S-6, early February 27 morning presumably carrying over 60 kar sevaks from Ayodhya, all of whom died in that horrifying incident.

Who actually burnt the train and how was that act performed so successfully remains still in the realm of speculation while some of Modi’s critics like former Gujarat chief minister Shanker Sinh Vaghela, even now call it a pre-planned conspiracy.

The arson and violence including killing of men, women and children along with gangrape of Musliṁ women on roads in full public view carried almost unabated incessantly almost throughout Gujarat for nearly five days till March 3. The outcry by concerned citizens and the Opposition parties led by none other than the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi in the Lok Sabha, compelled Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to despatch his Defence Minister George Fernandes to Ahmedabad and put an end to that orgy.

Following some respite Vajpayee who, the then BJP leaders said, had made up his mind to sack Modi, but for the forceful intervention by the then Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani and Cabinet member Arun Jaitley, on reaching Gandhi Nagar, publicly counselled Modi on Raj Dharma.

An egotist Modi couldn’t take this public reprimand by the Prime Minister, though coming under pressure from Advani and predominant Hindutva lobby in the BJP, Vajpayee relented on his desire to sack Modi.

Modi’s ‘paanch pachees’ tirade against Muslims came in this background. Assembly elections were scheduled for later that year and Modi had staked his prestige to sweep those elections, which he actually did. The mantra was, as was evident, naked communal polarisation. Modi went on a state wide yatra and in Becharaji in Mehsana district he asked the responsive crowd, “What should we do? Run relief camps for them? Do we want to start baby producing factories there? For certain people that means ‘Hum paanch hamare pachees.”

He did not end it there. He said, “I brought Narmada water to Sabarmati in the holy month of Shravan and not Ramzan, Congress has a problem with that too,” painting Congress as a Muslim appeasing party.

In Banswara election rally on April 21, Modi repeated the same allegations against the Congress party and Muslims: “Pehle bhi jab inki sarkar thhi to inhone kaha thha, is desh ki Sampatti par pehla haq Musalamanon ka hai. Iska matlab hai desh ki Sampatti ikhati kar ke kis ko bantenge? Jin ke zyada bachche hain unko baantenge, ghuspaithyon ko bantenge. Kya aap ki mehnat ki kamai ka paisa ghuspaithyon ko diya jayega. Aap ko Manzoor hai ye? (Even earlier when it was their government, they had said that Muslims have the first right over the wealth of this nation. That means that they will collect all the wealth of the nation and distribute it among those with more children, among the infiltrators. Is it acceptable to you?)

Before that he had alleged that the Congress manifesto was influenced and bore the stamp of the Muslim League, which by the way is farthest from truth. But these minor inconsistencies don’t bother our great leader. Actually, they never had.

For instance, he identified in Becharaji and again this time in Banswara Muslims as those producing too many children. It didn’t bother him in the least that he himself is five brothers and a sister, that makes six.

I grew from childhood to adulthood in Timarpur government quarters. In our quadrangle of sixteen double storey quarters, in quarter number one there was a Goel family who had six sons and one daughter. Above them in No. 2 there were Kashmiris with three daughters and three sons. In No. 3 there Pandit Tika Ram had innumerable children Next door to us the Kaushiks had three sons and a daughter. In Number eleven and thirteen likewise there was no dearth of children. Similarly in No. 16 where the uncle would go to Shakha religiously every morning had three sons and three daughters. We were the only Muslim family and we were two brothers and a sister. My mother was teaching in Government secondary schools and father a journalist. Similarly in No. 5 there were university professor couple with one son and one daughter. The point is that it is education which restricts the number of children. Even in our childhood, about the same era as Modi’s, the educated had only few children, among Hindus and Muslims both.

The latest Pew research report on population growth in India put out the data to show how population growth rate is coming down in all communities. For instance, it showed that the population growth rate of Hindus in the 1951 census stood at 20.7% which came down to 16.7 in the last census—a reduction of four percent.

In the corresponding period Muslim growth rate stood at 32.7 per cent in 1951, come down to 24.7 per cent in 2011 census figures which worked out to a reduction of 8 per cent, double of Hindu growth rate. Christian rate came down from 29.0% to 15.7%, a come down of 13.3%. How come? Because population growth is in direct proportion to education. Christians being most educated among all three have the lowest growth rate, while Muslims lagging behind in education are bound to lag behind in population control as well.

Modi or UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath or Modi’s Man Friday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, poor fellows cannot be blamed entirely for spontaneously spewing out venom against Muslims, looking at Christians as aliens and speaking under their breath in hushed tones against reservations for the scheduled caste, scheduled tribes and later on against OBC quota as well, which caused many an intelligent Savarna student in prestigious institutions to rise in anger and commit themselves to the BJP.

Twenty years after independence, in 1967 I as a teenager often heard my friends, almost all of whom went to Shakha before going to school, complain against the continuation of reservation when it was only promised to last 10 years. They couldn’t take it that an independent India would have a Muslim president (Dr. Zakir Husain) in Rashtrapati Bhawan and also a Muslim Chief Justice of India (M. Hidayatullah). This was ingrained in them from early teenage, as far as I remember. And mind you these were very well-behaved boys and girls, playing cricket, football, badminton and other outdoor games with me and my brother, with never a sign of any personal rancour or animus, Looking back, I find it strange to explain, except that without realising, their young minds were being poisoned at the Shakhas. And if there is someone who publicly announces he has had no formal education, it is not difficult to understand, that apart from political expediency, which is also necessary for a shrewd politician like him, this anti-Muslim venom and accusing Nehru, Indira and the Congress for all the ills, a second nature to him, has been imbued in the Shakhas. That’s why he is a big asset to the RSS and there’s no way Sangh can even dream of pulling away its supporting hand to Modi, Yogi, Amit Shah and the likes in the BJP.