The innocence that is not innocent enough

The denial of democracy is growing by leaps and bounds in our country. Paradoxically, it is done in the name of democracy. Economic democracy allows goods and commodities to circulate freely but ironically people cannot live freely under same ‘market freedom’.  The rich elite seem to enjoy more freedom that the poor do not have. The reigning economic order seems to say ‘democracy cannot be for everyone’. Democracy appears to be manipulated to thrust upon the people what might be called ‘the freedom of a forced choice’. The freedom of a forced choice is riding on what puts on a mask of innocence. It claims to occupy a higher moral space and hides its poisonous fangs that can be discerned by a critical engagement as plain and simple denial of democracy. The denial of self determination in the context of meat bans in Maharashtra in recent days is not innocent. It masks its divisive and utterly depraved pleasure in forcing a section of people whose habits of food are an object of scorn to the ruling elite. 

The food fascism that is embedded in the culture of bans comes to light when one sees how on one side while seeking to avoid an infliction of violence on animals, they end but inflicting violence on humans. Their hypocrisy becomes even more evident if we discern how they demand sensitivity to their sentiments while in the same breath become utterly insensitive to the sentiments of the victimized sections of the people. 

Somehow the recent culture of bans echoes the policies of Nazi regime in Hitler’s Germany. The prevention of animal torture was the first legal measure that was enacted as soon as Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany. In fact, this legal measure was taken to render illegal, the Jewish ritual of killing sheep. The politics of hate can mask in what is paraded as animal rights and sensitivities. We can even determine how Hitler promoted vegetarianism and appropriated religious symbol of swastika as a Nazi symbol. Moreover, he considered Bhagavad Gita as a sacred book and carried it all the time. Hence, there is no innocence in the attempt of Sushma Swaraj to propose that Bhagavad Gita be declared as the national book of India. 

There is no Innocence about our Prime Minster gifting the Bhagavad Gita to the President of Japan during his visit to Japan. The Nazi political ideology seems to be carefully executed in our country. What is disturbing is that it parades undetected and we seem to have succumbed to a narcissistic temptation of our majoritarian culture, religion and have become willing to sacrifice our fellow Indians to save animals and bits of our culture that pretends to represent the entire country. This means we seem to become willing signatories of the denial of right to self determine what one will eat, a clear denial of democracy only to satisfy our egos into a mirage of getting back at a section of our people. 

The Nazi practice of disciplining the ‘othered Other’ that can save animal but exterminate humans is threatening us. We seem to have become intolerant and even use our vegetarianism and other cultural forms to settle petty egoistic agenda. Some of us are willing to fight for the rights of dogs. Others among us are restless to protect our holy cows while every one of us is forgetting the poor in our country. Dr B R Ambedkar has narrated the story that might become a parable that portrays our depraved levels of society. He says once a cow fell in the well. It was rescued by a boy. Everyone was happy till somehow it was discovered that the boy was an untouchable. Then, the infuriated upper caste members declared the well was polluted by the boy and proceeded to enact what they called purification rites. The ironies of purity/pollution worldview continue to haunt us in several ways. We in Goa are not insulated from this culture. The Nagri/Romi impasse, the denial of self determination to the parents concerning the medium of instruction, the denial of permission to the Diocesan Society of Education, the change of land law to build mega projects like the one in Carmona without six meter approach road is not all that innocent. 

(Fr Victor Ferrao is the dean of Rachol Seminary)