Shocking and Shameful

While film star Emraan Hashmi has openly come out conveying the fact that his being a Muslim has caused difficulties for him to purchase a flat in Mumbai and attributed this to the alleged anti-Muslim bias on the part of the cooperative society involved, another film star Shabana Azmi has disclosed similar problems she and her husband, celebrated lyricist Javed Akhtar, faced while hunting for a flat in the same metropolis—and ace film director Mahesh Bhatt has confirmed the prevalence of the bias bordering on anti-Muslim prejudice in large parts of the city. What is most shocking is that instead of taking steps to remove this bias and prejudice (which is what all right-thinking persons should be doing) a BJP worker has now filed a complaint against Hashmi and Bhatt “for making statements along communal lines”. But then can one really blame an ordinary BJP worker for levelling such a preposterous charge when the party’s national spokesperson goes hammer-and-tongs at both Hashmi and Union Minister for Minority Affairs Salman Khurshid for justifiably decrying such bias and prejudice against the dominant minority community on the part of a section of the majority community? This only furnishes further proof of the ingrained communal hatred against the Muslims at all levels in the BJP. At the same time, as has been mentioned in sections of the press, the bid to throttle Hashmi’s voice—as well as the voices of all secular democrats standing by him—is a wanton attack on both democracy and secularism, the core values constituting the bedrock of our Constitution. These developments are a grim reminder of the threat from the Hindutva forces to the Indian polity in general as also our way of life that is totally alien to the Hindu communalist mindset which was decisively rejected by the people in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year.

Meanwhile as drought casts its ominous spell over the country at large with weekend data showing sparse rainfall due to the unpredictable monsoon having shaved off 66 lakh hectares of about 257 lakh hectares of area under paddy cultivation and swine flu claims its first fatality in India (a 14-year-old girl dying of the H1N1 infection in Pune), a serious social problem practised for long years and sustained on the foundations of caste animosity has lately caused consternation in Parliament. The recent ‘honour killings’ have led the Union Home Minister to exclaim: “We should hang our heads in shame.” Sharing the Minister’s sentiments members from all sides have called for a special law to deal with caste panchayats holding kangaroo courts to decree capital punishment to young men and women for their “crime” of deciding to marry outside their caste.

It’s a bit late in the day for P. Chidambaram and the MPs to wake up to this kind of medieval savagery going on in this country in the twentyfirst century. However, one must thank them for their belated realisation of the danger of the grotesque caste system to the nation’s integrity and advancement. Nonetheless, as has been highlighted in the print media, enacting a law would be nothing more than an exercise in tokenism since the disease can be cured only through the spread of education. But then for all the high-flown ideas in the field of education propagated by the HRD Minister, those perforce would take a back seat as the PM and his Home Minister prepare for an all-out military offensive with the help of the security forces (alongside US and Israeli training and advice) in Central India—all to root out the Maoists from the tribal belt to pave the way for opening up the territory, without let or hindrance, for exploitation by the corporate sector, both indigenous and foreign. The consequences are bound to be horrendous: the bloodbath of the tribal populace thereby earning their permanent hostility—for which the government of the day would have to truly hang its head in shame!

August 4 S.C.