Looking down the road, will there be holocaust in India?

by Mustafa Khan

Looking back to Narendra Modi in 2002 there is reason to believe that there will be mass destruction and slaughter in the future. He has won the war and so post-war destruction in terms of revenge and settling the issues and scores will be a matter of focus for some and concern for others. Moreover Modi is the real-time revanchist-in-chief of our century as far as India is concerned. Do not forget that 2002 was the 10th anniversary of the demolition of the Babri mosque. He and his ilks wanted to recover the lost territory as revenge, ten years lapse in building the temple in Ayodhya. They wanted to revive the movement for temple which gave them rich dividends at the poll, from two members in Parliament they rose to many more seats and then enough to form a coalition government. What is more, even greater success they achieved in the Gujarat 2002 election. They forced the election when the wounds were still fresh. The victory of Modi and his BJP in 2014 was nothing less than like “ripping off the bandage and picking at the scab”.1

No Prime Minister in India, not even Indira Gandhi, was as paranoiac as the current one. He is set apart from them with suspicion and mistrust of people without evidence or justification. He got himself admitted in a hospital to avoid meeting a delegation headed by Madan Das Devi over the Haren Pandya matter and the Ellisbridge constituency. Pandya challenged him: “Don’t sleep like a coward. Have the guts to say no to me.” Devi was dispatched to placate him on behalf of PM Vajpayee, Modi’s mentor, L.K. Advani, etc. No one had a glimpse of what monstrosity they were nurturing in him, their protégé. Did they really fail to connect his intransigence and the assassination that followed and the subversion of the judiciary not in that case alone but in every other? So the resultant holocaust would be a consequence of this compendium.

From Jawaharlal Nehru to Rajiv Gandhi or Manmohan Singh no one at the helm of affairs had the obsessive compulsive disorder caused by Pakistan that we are insecure in our own country on account of that neighbouring country. This is motivated and well calculated, designed and cultivated self-insecurity towards an end. In the midst of this one must recall that it was Bal Thackeray who had claimed that he had taught Modi what to do in order to teach Muslims a lesson and he did it in 2002. The Malegaon riot in October 2001 was a guinea-pig experiment for Gujarat with white powder in open display.

If Hitler got the German parliament burnt, we also have our sorts of it over what happened on December 13, 2001. And thereafter the series of fake encounters where every Tom, Dick and Harry was sent to assassinate Modi. And now we are through another version of surgical strikes in all kinds of seasons.

The past of Modi is teeming with many cogent examples. Among them there are two for illustration. He had added a plume to his crown in brow-beating PM Vajpayee that he was doing his rajdharm or duty of ruling the State then way back in the past when he was just sent as the nominated CM in October 2001-2002. Vajpayee was snubbed into silence. Some called it politely as poetic musing. Could the minority sweep their fear and insecurity under the carpet and like the ostrich pretend that the storm would pass over? Their fear was real but their numbers were unhelpful to them. In a democracy heads count and not what is within the head, fear, sanity and what not! So will Modi again tamper with the third Newtonian law of equation? For numbers on a much larger scale to show someone their place?

But signs are gathering at the horizon and will take no time to reach the hinterland depending on who brings about the cascading effect of the Armageddon. Can it be the click of the desk-top of the Clean-the-Nation activist Ashutosh Vashishtha who wrote in a Facebook post: “The main reason for starting Clean-the-Nation was precisely for cleaning and weeding out anti-nationals who wear the tag of Indian but leave no stones unturned to insult and mock their own people, culture and the army that is one of the best in the world.” They have hounded four girl students of Kashmir for just being Kashmiri without any proof of any wrong-doing and got them out of the educational institutes they were studying in Rajasthan. This is reminiscent of the Holocaust of Jews who were paraded and then imprisoned and sent to the gas chambers. Another case is of another Kashmiri student of MBA in Greater Noida, who left the college and preferred not to return, because he was innocent and wanted to avoid trouble as he was “not involved in any kind of supervised criminal activity”, according to the police inquiry. Clean-the-Nation is a desi version of what happened in Europe, purging of Jews. After the Pulwama attack Muslim students were mobbed.2 What guarantee that this would not be exacerbated into a more sanguinary spectacle?

Parallel to lynching of individuals now whole classes of Madrassas are forced to chant Hindu slogans of ‘Jai Sri Ram’!

Mahua Moitra, the MP from West Bengal, speaks about the kala bhoot, black monster, which is faceless and nameless fear. Was it not there on the kristallnacht in Germany of November 10-11, 1938 and the three days Modi had let the Hindus to vent their anger in February-March 2002? If in another round we have a much extended visitation of the same! There are examples galore. The black hole of Naroda Patia in 2002 saw several hundred Muslims when they were herded into it and had petrol stolen from nearby State Transport bus garage poured from above. This was holocaust. There are other instances of it in the transcripts made by the ATS under Hemant Karkare in which Members of Parliament, L.B. Sharma, Dr R.P. Singh, Lt Col Purohit, the man from the banks of Ganga maidan, talk about how they executed (carried out) mass slaughter of Muslims: “These two areas, MP and the Ganges planes on both the sides of the river are very sensitive.” The unidentified man gives example that once a whole wagon full of police from Gujarat came to arrest someone. The Muslims opened fire on the Superintendent of Police. This gave the excuse to the Hindutva groups to crack down upon the Muslims and visit upon them like a calamity. In ordinary parlance the extremist Hindus turned into a riot and made the Muslims suffer heavy losses in life and property. Once upon a time the people in Gudenwar also opened fire when Uma Bharti was on a visit there. In the resultant communal riot a boy lost his life. “Uske badle men samuhik nar sanhar musalmano ka ham ney kiye thay [in retaliation we butchered Muslims on a large scale].“ As a result of (Muslim firing and killing a boy) we had created a riot causing mass casualties (of Muslims). We killed hundreds of Muslims.” Dr R.P. Singh names this belt as Azamgarh in Western UP. Purohit says that “there are two different panels working in UP engaged in creating fear and riots or terror. These groups work in such a way that they do not show that they are known to each other. This is the same strategy that the planters of bombs in Malegaon, Ramchandera Kalsnagrah and Sandip Dange, used. They crisscrossed the roads around the graveyard, Mushawarat Chowk, and Bhiku Chowk while surveying the spots but acting as strangers to each other. That is how the hardcore Hindutva activists prepared for mass atrocities.”

The transcripts also reveal strategy of causing holocaust: “Creating fear psychosis in the Muslims, in an audio tape B.L. Sharma remarked that the people went to Islam out of fear and therefore they would return to Hinduism if fear is created in them. Bhay sey gaye they, bhaiy sey hi aajayenge. Hence, creating fear among the Muslims is necessary.” Purohit says: “bhaay bina shakti nahin hai is desh meyn. Without producing fear you cannot have power in this country.” Such is the efficacy of the nameless faceless. Surely it is terrorism in current terminology that can generate fear. There are two dimensions of fear, fear for the other which makes life insecure. The second is generating fear and awe to gain control over the people to rule them. Dr R.P. Singh recommends a guerilla organisation. Purohit gives it a name, Phantom organisation. All this to create fear. This was already in existence in 2001 during the Ijtema in Bhopal. According to the Hindustan Times, the huge gathering was 50 lakh strong. Sunil Joshi and his group had planted bombs at the railway station which did not go off. Purohit reasons it this way. According to him there are four groups: Hindus, Christians, Muslims and Communists. Only when they feel threatened they will not be united. Jis din ham musalmano ko unite kar payenge is desh men yeh sub se badi vijay hai hamari. “Our greatest victory in the world will be when we force [frighten] the Muslim to unite.” These conspirators also thought of using the Valmikis to make mass slaughter of Muslims as they did use the Charras and tribals in Gujarat. The next would be:

“No one leaves home unless

Home is the mouth of a shark.

You only run for the border

When you see the whole city

Running as well.”
Warsan Shire, “Home”

Footnotes

1. Madeleine Albright, Fascism, a Warning. William Collins, 2018, p. 9.

2. https://scroll.in/latest/929229/rss-wing-honours-group-that-got-anti-national-social-media-users-punished-after-pulwama-attack

Mustafa Khan, who resides in Malegaon (Maharashtra), has the following blog: http://commonalty.blogspot.com