The Age of Contempt

Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.

It is best to resist the urge to make forecasts in times such as these. How long will the guns and swords and trishuls remain silent and out of news? How long before a carefully crafted counter narrative surfaces to exonerate those charged with criminality and welcome them back into the fold with marigold garlands? Nobody knows.

Anyhow, the latest twists and turns in the case of a killer constable and rioting in Haryana are of secondary importance to this column. The state of the nation’s mental well-being is primary. Both those cases are clearly following a trajectory set in the early 21st century. The tragedies and pathos of the burnt up lives and homes such incidents leave behind have not changed much since. The dead have not risen out of their graves to testify, and suspicion over the now released criminals’ culpability has not evolved into trust. But a template has been created and is used on the eve of  almost every election: the state assembly, municipal councils or rural panchayats. Over the years a new virus has infected the petri dish where mischief is being spawned: contempt.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

It is obvious from the TV debates ,with party spokespersons and anchors bellowing at each other, how widely and deep this virus for ‘others’ has seeped within the popular view of minorities in Amritkaal. It was contempt for a group, not rage against certain individuals, that drove the killer Railway Police Force jawan to shoot down four human beings. In the video clips that surfaced thereafter, you heard no loud remonstrations from fellow travellers. The only one who spoke up, his superior, had been gunned down while people were simply gaping or making videos of the gory scene.

The same virus of contempt surfaced during the communal clashes in Nuh in Haryana. You saw young men in saffron raising slogans, picking up bricks and hurling them, firing from guns at scared, huddled folk pelting stones to stop them from roofs. The reporters and onlookers hiding in some safe perches simply kept recording it for primetime news, as though what was happening was not real rioting, looting, arson and murder, but an exciting video game.

The virus of contempt first created in an unknown lab somewhere belongs to mind-manipulating power groups who weaponise fear and turn revenge into a mindless game for their young followers. The followers in garish costumes, flourishing their guns, trishuls, swords and lathis, then parade on the streets like a militia, chanting provocative slogans. Through their young, the virus then enters entire families, schools, colleges, markets and mohalla groups, and of late even some serving in the armed protection forces. Communally sensitive areas then become a focus of contempt: areas where sub-humans live.

Chetan Kumar, the constable now in custody, is an example of a carrier of this fatal disease. Maybe in his eyes those that he shot were deserving of extermination. Look at Chetan Kumar standing legs apart, gazing down coldly at his victims gasping for breath. He can be seen strutting about from bogie to bogie, gunning down men, shouting slogans that if the likes of them wished to live in India, they must accept leaders Kumar personally deems to be worthy.

Reports quickly followed from the Railway Protection Force that first said the fellow was mentally unsound and was undergoing treatment. These statements were then denied when it was realised that handing a gun to a mentally unstable man could be construed legally as an act of criminal negligence. Then this denial was withdrawn.

That is no mad man. It was sheer contempt he is showing towards the rule of law, towards fellow humans. He was, for heaven’s sake, armed to protect. Contempt, you realise, is deadlier than simple hate. Hate has a target and a vendetta-driven agenda that it follows with cunning, keeping itself hidden with a mask, a helmet or even a gamcha wrapped around the face. One carrying the virus of contempt does not care. He is whimsical and can whip out a pistol to shoot to kill, entirely unmoved by moral or legal compunctions. In his eyes the ones he killed at random were not certifiably patriotic worshippers of The Regime.

The contempt virus was once again in full view in the communal rioting in Haryana. Every one knows that Nuh (earlier Mewat) is one of the few Muslim-majority areas in the state, but has never faced rioting along communal lines. During the two-day violence, the local Muslim traders have suffered the biggest losses of property. They feel they were specifically stigmatised as cow traffickers first and then their businesses were targeted and destroyed. Many of them who could have simply locked up their homes and left for safer places. The migrant daily wagers in the area who have been doing construction work, whose wives were doing domestic work in the rich gated community homes, have neither money nor the means to flee. The housing societies have simply barred their entry.

There is ample proof that the heavily armed rampaging members of the Shobha Yatra targeted primarily Muslim businesses (meat and scrap) and looted and burnt shops owned by marginal Muslim traders. They also attacked and burnt two mosques, killed a 19-year-old deputy imam, and have asked some 500 slum dwellers in the area, who they have decided are Bangladeshis, to leave within a week.

The day after the rioting, the chief minister issued a statement that offered little comfort to the affected. He talked of a larger conspiracy behind the communal violence. The members of preordained Yatra by the Bajrang Dal and the police, he pointed out, were also targeted by stone pelters from the area. The losses will be assessed and the guilty will be punished severely, he said solemnly. They will be made to pay for the losses. He also added that the police forces at his disposal were inadequate to maintain law and order for a population of 2.5 crore. People must also guard themselves.

In the evening talk shows, The Virus dominated. When apportioning culpability, one saw the supporters of the ruling group hinting at usual qualifiers like ‘meat traders’, ‘cattle hustlers’ or ‘links with BangladeshPakKashmir’ to underscore the danger ‘they’ posed to a prosperous and onward marching state like Haryana and its capital Gurugram. Gurugram has been showcased like a Bengaluru of the north: rich, progressive, replete with growth possibilities for Big Industry, abustle with building activity. It boasts of many posh high-rise buildings where the rich and modern citizens of India live. To those afflicted with the virus within such interconnected communities, the petty traders and scrap dealers and daily-wage labourers in Nuh are just people from the basti who live in cramped ghettos surrounded by filth, drink dirty water and die young of various diseases.

This is why one senses a fear among India’s super rich – a fear of real change. If The Virus were ever to fade or leave India, the whole edifice of a hierarchical India could fade. Many things would no longer be deemed normal. It would be politically incorrect if the G-20 were preceded and a Chandra Yan launch followed by communal riots. Insistence on making Hindi the rashtra bhasha and the medium of instruction in IITs and IIMs, while ministers and MPs send their own children to study abroad in Ivy League universities, would become almost unforgivable. Children from the ghettoised communities would stop distributing drugs to kids of the rich at their rave parties. Drunk brats of rich builders would not be able to get away after ramming their fancy cars into two wheelers or three wheelers.

Unless India acquires herd immunity, which seems unlikely so far, there are so many seams along which the virus of contempt will continue to rip apart communities, states and our democratic institutions. So the crucial question to all those preaching peace on earth and goodwill to all men, is: is there a real desire within this India to kill this virus and create a new India?

Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.

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