All's fair in love and hate?

A state of distress, distrust and despair is prevailing across the country with students, dalits and minorities being the  target of relentless hate rhetoric and violence, either over a lame excuse of sedition, cow smuggling, beef consumption or religious conversions. Mob lynching on mere suspicion has become the new alternative to communal rioting. That gives a perfect smoke screen for the right-wing government to then claim that no communal riots have taken place under its governance. Registering of FIRs against the victims of mob attacks instead of the rioters is the new norm in maintaining law and order.  Anti-social behaviour has become the criteria to declare oneself as a ‘rakshak’ of the Gods and the nation. When it comes to human rights violations by the armed forces one may hear justifications such as, ‘all is fair in love and war”.  And perhaps it is such a mentality with which acts of lynching, killings and human right violations are lightly passed off as mere unfortunate incidents in right-wing ruled States. Standard operating procedures of government seem to have been replaced by circumstances-based operations under which anything from shooting to kill civilians and then denying any police firing, using human shields to combat rioters, mob lynching, raids against opponents under the pretext of unearthing tax evasion, bypassing laws for development projects or denying civil liberties to minorities and dalits becomes fair and just. To protest against such delinquent governance may invite the tag of ‘conspiracy against the nation’. Who the government loves and who it hates is left to deductive logic as the only information that the nation gets is the pre-fabricated ‘Mann ki baat’. What is not revealed is ‘Mann ki soch’.

It is popularly believed that “love is blind” and according to John Steinback, “All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.” The more interesting part of this ‘love and war’ politics is not the rambunctious behaviour of some parliamentarians and fringe organisations but the lack of any proportionate reaction against such lunacy from the rest of the religious community which claims a big brother share in the social and political affairs of this country. The reactions we witness against the hate agenda, even in Goa, are predominantly from the minorities and liberals. The media seeks to obtain reactions from the minorities when fanatic  groups call for  doing away with secularism or the hanging for beef eaters, instead of seeking responses from Hindu stalwarts from various fields who for all other purposes claim to be secular and anti-superstition but have remained absolutely silent on this aspect. If it is their intention not to give credence to such lunatic religious fringe talk, then the same reasoning should also apply to those sections of Indians raising slogans of ‘Azaadi’  in university campuses or those protesting against the AFSPA in their States.

The unfortunate plight of secularism and democracy and the misfortune of minorities in this country is because the Ethics of Chanakya, which appears to have become the undeclared code of politics after 2014, is not the culture of the minorities and liberals. To cast false aspersions or conspire to destroy another human being is a sin in most religions. The shrewd right-wing culture of befriending the enemy to gain entry, then creating suspicion and widening rifts to divide the rank and file of the enemy has now left some Bishops in Kerala desperately attempting to quell the misunderstanding and rumours within the christian community after their meeting with a senior political party functionary. The same strategy was employed in Goa in 2012 with systematically planted rumours claiming support of church leaders. The fanatics could be extremely generous to disgruntled minorities in lending a shoulder to cry upon and settle scores with their religious leaders if it contributes to dividing and destroying the community.

The religious lunacy can only be expected to increase unless the lazy secularist attitude of preferring the legal option to that of the people’s court is not arrested. With stray incidents, as reported in the media, of personal preferences, beliefs and ideologies of judges being slipped into judgements to give them sanctity of law, the scope of getting justice from the judiciary against the  government’s repressive policies is probably also diminishing. It’s time for citizens to love their government by asking as to when last did the PM of this nation submit to an impartial interview before the media. If at all there needs to be any war, of course a civilised and non-violent one, then it needs to be for protecting the secular, democratic, socialist and republic ideals as enshrined in the Constitution of  India. Let us not get tricked with the words pouring out from the lips of our political leaders but strive to understand the love and hate concealed in their minds and hearts, particularly of those in government.