Disturbing signs of RSS indoctrinating Police personnel | Arun Srivastava

by Arun Srivastava

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is politically correct in saying that BJP has launched a riot politics. But she did not say that for implementing the politics of riots, the RSS and BJP need a strong band of committed Monus. He is not the only mastermind the saffron brigade has, through its ideological perversion has succeeded in creating a strong band of Hindutva bigots, but the fact which is regrettably ignored while analysing the emerging situation is the administrative machinery or precisely the middle class turning a blind eye of such incipient trends.

Hastings, an area in the heart of Calcutta, which is hardly a ten-minute ride from Esplanade and has been the ultimate destination of the neo-rich people of the city in recent times has become the home of the Hindutva racists. The canal side road, popularly known as Kuli Bazar is inhabited by these people. Hastings also has the privilege of having the headquarter of the state BJP. At one end of the road, there is a temple, the inspirational guide of Hindutva. Throughout the day the sound system at the mandir blares irrespective of the fact whether there is any celebration.

The caretakers of the mandir invite small-time priests, most of who have little knowledge of Hindu scriptures, to recite or sing songs. The process which begins at 8 in the morning continues without any stop till 11 in the night. The organisers are not bothered by the impact of their act on others. Most of the people residing there do not muster the courage to speak out as they are scared of the retaliations from the bigots.

Marx and Lenin have to face ridicule from the “civilised society” for saying that religion is opium, but the mechanism being used by the Hindutva elements to spread their mission and indoctrinate the common Hindu in Hastings area simply endorses it. The religious recitation and songs being blared day after day unravels their modus operandi. Incidentally the area has a fairly good number of Muslim residents and also has a masjid. But they never opposed this blaring exercise. This is a classical example of peaceful coexistence. This device is not only used in Hastings. It is being practiced in many places with the mission to make the vast population of Hindus subscribe to the politics of RSS’s politics of Hindutva. It is really surprising that the people residing in the multi-storey apartments also do not object to this.

Liberating the country from the clutches of the rightist forces; RSS and the BJP, through the electoral battle is undoubtedly the primary task of the opposition forum, INDIA; but it is not enough. Right-wing fanatics have succeeded in turning a huge populace of Hindus into ideological slaves by injecting the venom of majoritarian nationalism and Hindutva into their minds. And as is evident from the recent incidents across the country, police personnel have been the primary target of this ideological perversion, turning them into foot soldiers of Hindu Rashtra.

The task of communalisation and elimination of the communal ‘enemies’, which were in the past carried out by the RSS cadres, is now being accomplished by the police forces. It has acquired a vicious dynamic. In some non-BJP-ruled states, these pro-rightist police personnel are reluctant to carry out the instructions of their secular political bosses. On the contrary, they indulge in vitiating the social order by promoting and patronising the Hindutva bigotry of unscrupulous social and political elements propped up by the RSS and the BJP.

Let us look at some of the latest police activities and initiatives. It is worth taking serious note of the Supreme Court’s observation while hearing the deposition of the government lawyers. Manipur has been suffering from the worst kind of violence during the last three months. Despite several pleas and requests from the people of this country, PM Modi has not even bothered to visit the state. Now the reason is out in the public domain. He did not want to prevent the police from carrying out its horrendous criminal operation. This truth is borne out from the observation of the apex court.

That the RSS-BJP has been an anti-poor rightwing force also gets substantiated by the nature of the crime and repression they perpetrate. Violating honour and dignity of poor women had been the most tested and tried weapon of the feudal lords’ now it’s the modus operandi of the saffron goons. While covering the rural violence and peasant struggles, we have seen how rape was used by the landed gentry and their mercenaries to break the morale of the agricultural labourers and proletariats. Women have been always the soft targets. Violating women has been the most effective war strategy of the landlords and feudal torture. It is a historical fact that most of these feudal lords and landed nobility owed their political allegiance or commitment to Jana Sangh or in recent times to Bharatiya Janata Party, both extreme rightist political forces.

Incidentally, the Hindu population of Manipur has been the obdurate followers BJP. The RSS has been cultivating the Hindu population of the state for nearly 70 years. It was through these Hindu people, primarily belonging to the Meitei community that BJP and RSS plan to spread across the northeast region. Some liberals argue that it would not be proper to look at the cashes from a communal angle, the fact remains that RSS targeted the Kukis as they believe in Christianity and are opposed to RSS.

The fact cannot be denied that the police kept their eyes shut when Kuki women were violated by the RSS-influenced Meitei mob. It in fact forced the Supreme Court to observe that the “atrocities against women were unprecedented” in Manipur. This is indeed shameful for Modi who desperately tried to hide the nature of heinous crime committed by his co-religionist bigots.

During these three months, ’except for one or two cases, there have been no arrests at all’ although over 6,500 FIRs had been lodged. What and who prevented Manipur police from making arrests? The Supreme Court said there was a “breakdown” of the constitutional machinery in Manipur and “there is no law and order left at all”, pointing out that the state’s police force was “either incapable of or unwilling to act” and was “not in charge of the situation” for close to three months.

It was indeed a national shame to listen government’s law officer saying “we are in the midst of a war of a different dimension”. They should have defined the true nature of the war and also identified the perpetrators. Though the apex court attributed it to “lethargy” of law enforcement and “tardiness” in investigations, the fact of the matter is they are actively involved in the conspiracy designed by the saffron brigade. Or, how else they would not perform the basic task of policing?

Their attitude even forced the Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud to say:

“The investigation is so lethargic. No arrests made. Statements being recorded after such lapse of time. This gives an impression that there was no law and order, (there was a) breakdown of constitutional machinery. Maybe it is correct that arrest could not be made because the police could not enter the locality, but even then, there was a complete breakdown of law and order”.

Disgusted at the attitude of the police, the apex court also directed the director-general of state police to be personally present before it on August 7. Describing police inaction as ‘lethargic’ would amount to giving a new lease of life to it. In fact, it was a well-designed treacherous act. True enough, SG Tushar Mehta was not telling the truth when he said: “The situation is now coming back to normal and that is why we ordered a CBI probe and said that let this court monitor it.” Even a layman of the country knows that handing over a case to CBI is designed to suppress facts and exonerate the perpetrators of Hindutva crimes.

The DGP has merely been a tool in the hands of the BJP and RSS leaders who had planned this massacre. Obviously, no action was taken against any of the policemen. It is bizarre that Union home minister Amit Shah who was in Manipur in June did not come to know of these facts. Shah could have posed the questions to the state chief minister and the authorities which the apex court put to his lawyers, “Has the DGP cared to find out if the police personnel were booked? What has he done? What is his duty? Did they interrogate those police personnel?”

Any amount of judicial dressing down to the police is not sufficient since they have turned into Hindutva robots, slavishly executing their masters’ orders. Just imagine bodies of 118 tribals were rotting in the morgues, but their families were not being informed and they had no access to the morgues. Even court was forced to say: “They cannot be kept rotting. There needs to be data on who all have been identified. When we come on Monday, inform us how will compensation be given and which officer will finalise the quantum of compensation.”

Now let us look into yet another incident that took place just at the far end of west India. A Railway Protection Force (RPF) constable on Monday morning shot dead four people, including a senior colleague and three Muslim passengers, on board the moving Jaipur-Mumbai Central Express near Palghar railway station in Maharashtra, officials said. In the video clip circulating on social media, the constable was seen standing beside the corpse of a victim lying in a pool of blood, and heard saying in Hindi: “If you want to vote, if you want to live in Hindustan, then I am saying, Modi and Yogi, they are the two, and your Thackeray.” Among those killed were Tika Ram Meena, RPF assistant sub-inspector; Abdul Kadarbhai Mohammed Hussain Bhanpurwala (48), a resident of Nalasopara in Palghar (around 100km from Mumbai); and Asgar Abbas Sheikh (48), a resident of Madhubani in Bihar.

To what extent the RSS and BJP Hindutva bigots have infected the minds of the police is evident from the RPF constable saying in the clip: “They are operating from Pakistan. Your media, this country’s media is showing the news, they are getting to know everything, these people’s masters are there.” Unfortunately, his bosses in order to protect him have come out with the plea that he has an imbalanced mind. This gives rise to the question: why then was he put on duty and that too with a gun? This obviously implies that the officers cannot initiate any action against the constable as doing so invite the wrath of the RSS and BJP political bosses.

The constable, a Hindu Rajput named Chetan Singh Chaudhary, has “never showed any sign of mental imbalance", as per his uncle Bhagwan Singh Chaudhary, from the village Mitai in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras. Even Pravin Chandra Sinha, principal chief security commissioner, Western Railway, told reporters: “He (Chetan) was not upset. He was a bit unwell... later he lost his cool.”

Nevertheless, this gruesome incident sends a clear and loud message that the RSS-BJP hate machine has succeeded in achieving its mission of turning the Hindu youths into a band of potential criminals, a tinderbox of unspeakable violence waiting to explode. The Congress media chief Jairam was correct in saying: “The cold-blooded murders carried out by an RPF constable is the result of a hyper-charged and highly polarised news media and social media atmosphere. The genie of hate is now out of the bottle and it will take a lot of collective effort to put it back in.”

Cops getting communalised is worst manifest in the working of the Delhi and Uttar Pradesh police. After Amit Shah becoming the boss of Delhi police, the phenomenon peaked, barely caring for any statutory obligations. A look at the police actions during the last nine years of Modi rule would make it explicit that their violating the rules has been codified, become the law. Assaulting the protesting women wrestlers is just one example.

A Delhi Court recently pulled up the Delhi Police and the special public prosecutor for their “insensitive approach” in failing to file on time a calendar of evidence and supplementary chargesheet in a case concerning the 2020 North East Delhi riots. This June, a Delhi court pulled up the city police for "wrongly" clubbing 27 complaints on separate incidents of rioting and arson during the 2020 Delhi riots with a pre-existing FIR and acquitted three people in the case.

The three men - Akil Ahmed, Raheesh Khan and Irshad - were accused of being part of a rampaging mob that looted and set ablaze a shop in Chandu Nagar on February 24, 2020. The judge said: “I find that all these complaints are wrongly clubbed in the present FIR in a mechanical manner and were not investigated."

A deeper look at the imposition of curfew post violent actions makes it clear that this is done to protect the perpetrators of the crime. It happened in Delhi in 2020 and is now happening in Manipur at a much, much larger scale. The areas which were placed under curfew witnessed massive repression. In almost all places, the RSS and BJP have been exploiting the land problems for fomenting communal violence. In Manipur, on April 12, Paolienlal Haokip, a BJP MLA, questioned the sudden revenue and forest survey undertaken in the Churachandpur-Khoupum Protected Forest in Churachandpur district, which was designated a protected forest in 1966. It was only after this the Kukis came under attack.

With embers of an impending anti-incumbency against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi visible on the horizon, as well as positive vibes among the general population created by the efforts of Rahul Gandhi and INDIA —the joint opposition platform, the RSS and BJP have come to heavily depend on these indoctrinated police personnel for ensuring the elections go a certain way. It will be hardly shocking if these elements work furtively or openly to ensure the victory of their ideological masters.