Prime Minister Narendra Modi has over the years made an ingenious attempt to define secularism in terms of government schemes that do not discriminate between Hindu and Muslim. Does that mean a party which is not in government cannot be communal? Why were then the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Jan Sangh and Bharatiya Janata Party condemned all these decades, before they came to power, for communalism? It is obvious that secularism is not merely about non-discrimination in government schemes, and the prime minister is trying to conceal the true intent of his politics using sophistry and subterfuge.
While Modi’s track record bears testimony to the fact that his claim that he “doesn’t do Hindu-Muslim” is a blatant lie, he said in an interview after filing his nomination from the Varanasi seat on Tuesday, “If I give houses, I talk about saturation. 100% delivery. This means that if there are 200 homes, in a village, what community, what caste, what religion – that’s not a factor. If there are 60 beneficiaries in those 200 houses, all 60 should get the benefits. And 100% saturation is social justice and true secularism.” Over the past decade, the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues have repeated this logic on countless occasions.
Communalism is not the denial of a gas cylinder under the Ujjwala scheme to a Muslim woman, or the refusal to give cash assistance to a Muslim farmer under the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme. A toilet built with taxpayers’ money in the courtyard of a Muslim family grappling with wretched poverty is no evidence of secularism either. Even the Manmohan Singh government didn’t discriminate against Hindu, Muslim or Sikh workers in giving work under MGNREGA, but they certainly didn’t present this as the benchmark for their secular credentials. Affirmative action for a backward caste or community is a perfectly legitimate action, but discrimination at the policy level on the basis of religion is difficult in a modern nation state in this age of information explosion. No government can say Brahmins will not get treatment at a public health centre, or Muslims will have to pay more taxes. Modi and the BJP know they don’t have to deploy such barbarism and delegitimise themselves in the international community. They know that there are subtle ways of suppression and dominance and the world is also not oblivious to such sinister designs.
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But what has gone uncontested is this incorrect way of defining secularism. Democracy and secularism are more about freedom, rights, equality and justice than about distribution of largesse by the state. We fought against the British not because of bread and butter. That struggle was for freedom, for sovereignty, and for self-esteem. Secularism, too, is more about equality and self-respect than livelihood and survival. A Muslim man getting five kg rice, which is equal to what a Hindu or Sikh get, is not secularism or social justice. Ask a Muslim, living in permanent fear and vulnerabilities, and you will get the answer. A community whose patriotism is always on test, whose nationalism is perpetually suspect, whose sense of belonging is constantly challenged, demands more in the name of secularism than free ratio and doles.
Can the egalitarian ethic, that the Constitution embodies, be restricted to government schemes? What about equality – moral, social and political? What has Modi done to build bridges between communities against the macabre backdrop of incendiary sloganeering, threats and even lynching? How many speeches, among the thousands he made, were dedicated to secularism, pluralism and tolerance? Any campaign by the Sangh parivar outfits for peaceful coexistence? What message was intended to be sent out through controversies around halal, hijab and azan? Hindus can pray, sing and dance anywhere – airports, trains, malls – but Muslims have been beaten up, even booked, for quietly offering namaz at any public place. Muslim vendors selling fruits and vegetables have been chased out of colonies, meat-fish selling shops have been shut down for days because of Hindu festivals, Muslim boys and girls have been denied flats on rent in gated societies. Commercial advertisements sending out secular messages have been targeted. What’s the prime minister’s response to these horrors? What’s the percentage of Muslim houses demolished by bulldozers in BJP-ruled states? What about laws passed against love jihad (a farcical term)? What about cow vigilante groups targeting Muslims? Will the state allow it if Muslims form similar vigilante groups? The BJP promptly apologised to the sense of hurt among Rajputs caused by one irresponsible statement by their leader. What about countless threats, abusive statements and insults the Muslim community endured for years?
The very framework of political imagination has been redesigned over the past few years to treat the Muslim as the other, if not the enemy. Look at the myriad WhatsApp groups: the dominant messaging is anti-Muslim. Even if Rahul Gandhi has to be attacked, the criticism is not political. It has to be linked to Muslims. The entire Nehru-Gandhi clan is falsely accused of having Muslim origins. In villages where there is not one Muslim family, the message comes early in the morning – what if a Muslim boy elopes with your daughter? One lawyer once lamented, “Those who spew venom on Muslims every day, who have made harmony and secularism dirty words, were wishing amity, peace and harmony on the festival of Holi.” That’s because they know their target audience on Holi is exclusively Hindus. Their message of harmony excludes Muslims. Is the prime minister worried? Or is he happy that the same humiliated and frightened Muslim gets as much free ration as his Hindu neighbour?
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How many great films with a theme of peaceful coexistence have been promoted by Modi, or any BJP-ruled state? How many bad films inciting hatred and violence in society have been promoted by the RSS-BJP ecosystem? How many ministers and leaders have been punished by the prime minister for making divisive, toxic statements? Why are all journalists and TV anchors who spread the darkness of hate, ignorance and misinformation darlings of this regime? In any democracy, how the minorities are treated is a measure of civility and compassion. But any gesture of compassion towards Muslims is ridiculed and condemned these days. Any affirmative action aimed at addressing the economic backwardness of Muslims is condemned as appeasement. Will the prime minister answer which is an uglier word – appeasement or hate? Appeasement or violence?
There is an argument against this cynicism; some people would say Muslims have not been persecuted and there is rule of law in the country. They will defend Modi’s contention that welfare schemes do not exclude Muslims. Should the nation be thankful to this section of the people and the prime minister for not being that cruel? Even a typical fascist state resorts to such predatory measures at the last stage of their rule; in Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler started such discriminatory steps against Jews only after making them politically powerless. He first asked Jews not to take public transport in peak hours, then ordered them to stop using their private vehicles, then targeted their businesses and privileges before killing them off in concentration camps. We are doubtless not dealing with that type of a situation but the gradual drift towards an undemocratic mess is visible. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government didn’t do many things that the Modi government has done. Political insight should help us visualise the next stage, and the final stage. Modi’s definition of secularism doesn’t inspire confidence about the final stage.
Sanjay K. Jha is a senior journalist.
