THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024
With farmers up in arms against the controversial farm laws, activists rotting in jails on mystifying charges of sedition, skyrocketing fuel prices, social welfare budgets slashed, rampant privatisation of the public sector undertakings, rising displacement and unemployment and the disregard for accountability and transparency in governance, the country is passing through a turbulent phase. The Government appears to have nothing much to offer beyond a festival of phobias and illusions revolving around unsubstantiated sedition and conspiracy theories to mask its blunders. The nation seems to be suffering from a relapse of the ancient caste supremacist complex coupled with a majoritarian cultural syndrome.
A politics of selective targeting, repression and polarisation of citizens which has contaminated the socio-political environment across the country should leave every true and peace loving Indian disturbed and ashamed. What was initially about Muslim and Missionary phobia, then slipped into a Maoist phobia, and has now progressed to a Khalistani phobia. The conspiracy theories made to revolve around Congress, Pakistan and China seems to have now worsened into a delusion of some global conspiracy by imaginary Foreign Destructive Ideologies (FDI) against Hindus and Bharat.
The manufacture of weird conspiracy theories by the government to target and malign political opponents is on the rise. It is unbelievable that the ‘Jan Andolan’ (people’s struggle) which is an accepted means of non-violent democratic expression inspired by our country’s freedom movement, and conveniently used post-independence by the right-wing nationalist party while in opposition to malign the constitutional heads and governments in power, is now being labelled as a threat to the unity and integrity of this country. Probably it's all about the proverb “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Political power has transformed the andolankari (agitator) into a satta bhogi (hungry for power).
The growing abnormality and contradictions in the political mood of our nation is cutting a sorry figure for us globally. The political excesses resulting from hyper nationalism are reducing us to an international laughing stock. The Delhi police is now terrorised by some ‘Tool Kit’ put out on internet, as if it were some explosive device or some blueprint for terrorism. There are hundreds of tool kits published online by social change movements or agencies involved in various types of rights advocacies from across the globe. When a nation’s leadership claims that it is so popular among its people and that the world is envying its economic and development model, how come it becomes so insecure and nervous over trivial social media tweets or jokes? The world will not be convinced about such irrational delusions and phobias of foreign and hidden conspiracies that are haunting the government, more so when not backed with conclusive evidence.
Witnessing the paranoid responses of those in government on the farmers' protests against the three contentious farm laws, the impression one gets is of a democracy under grave threat. The unprecedented sight of concrete barricades, barbed wire fencing, trenches, nails and spikes fixed in the roads and riot police equipped with metal batons on the Delhi borders backed by the skewed media propaganda to demoralise protesting farmers and malign them as anti-nationals is not reflective of a democracy. The slide of India’s democracy into totalitarianism is very much visible if one takes a clue from Ecce Temelkuran’s acclaimed book on ‘How to lose a country: The seven steps from Democracy to Dictatorship’. The difference between the 1975 emergency and the present dictatorial atmosphere is that mobs, celebrities and private militias were not deployed on the streets to enforce State writs.
The claims by the government and its cheerleaders that the freedom of speech is still intact in the country sounds more like what Idi Amin had said, “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” With 96% of the sedition cases being filed after the BJP has risen to power, and the linking of almost every voice of dissent or every protest in the country with some unlawful movement or foreign conspiracy, can by no means be considered as normal politics. The arrogant, spiteful and aggressive reaction of a government towards any criticism from the opposition is not reflective of a progressive and intellectually conducive political environment, particularly for the young citizens.
Some political experts may opine that to label the prevailing political situation in the country as an undeclared emergency is an exaggeration. Such playing down of the reality is nothing different from the denial about the existence of Hindutva radicalisation. This ploy of masking the truth is no different from a claim that the perception about BJP as a communal party was a creation of the Congress to secure its minority vote bank. This stance is no different from the exaggerated Congress corruption and stacking of black money in Swiss bank accounts to project a ‘holier than thou’ image of BJP. If at all there could be any threat to India’s unity and integrity, it is from cowards who have never accepted this democratic Constitution and indulge in terrorising those who do not fit into the Hindu majoritarian idea of India.
(The author is a social activist creating awareness on the issue of local
self-governance)
