For Bajrang Dal, a PM's Chant. For Bajrang Punia, a Midnight Police Assault

Bengaluru: The Delhi police’s midnight manhandling of protesting wrestlers at Jantar Mantar is the latest instance of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government’s inclination to crush any form of dissent.

Not many would have thought that even internationally-reputed Indian wrestlers and Olympic medalists like Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia will be treated with the same apathy as most other groups who have had reason to protest in the recent past.

The wrestlers have been demanding punishment for alleged sexual offenders in the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI). They claim that the WFI president and BJP MP Brij Bhushan Singh and some coaches have sexually harassed multiple female athletes. For similar accusations against M.J. Akbar, the Union government had swiftly removed the former Union minister. But it has been largely muted in its response to the wrestlers’ protest. 

Singh is an extremely powerful and resourceful MP from Uttar Pradesh, and has never hidden his strongman image. He is rumoured to have a direct or indirect role in several crimes, including murders. Even while dismissing such accusations, Singh himself admitted to have committed “only one murder.” He is said to have great influence in over a dozen assembly seats in UP’s Gonda, which is why the BJP is reluctant in letting him go. 

The assault on wrestlers on the night of May 3, 2023 is a culmination of many moves already made by the government and its BJP supporters to malign and invalidate the serious charges that the wrestlers have been making against the governing members of the WFI. First, the Union sports minister Anurag Singh Thakur claimed that he had already met the protesting wrestlers for over 12 hours and heard their accusations. However, the wrestlers denied having ever met Thakur, alleging that many requests made to the ministers went unheard.

Singh, on the other hand, accused the wrestlers of conspiring against him at the behest of “a politician and an industrialist”.

At the same time, the BJP and compliant media have only complemented each other in efforts to protect Singh by equating the wrestlers’s protests over sexual harassment allegations with those who it could easily berate as the “tukde tukde gang” or “anti-India”.

Now, following the assault on wrestlers by alleged non-uniformed “drunk” policemen, the government has transformed the site of their protest into a fortress guarded by more policemen. The heavy barricading of the protest site reeks of the criminal treatment that the government has meted out to the Indian wrestlers.  

The chain of events around the wrestlers’s agitation only highlights the fact that the Union government may have set a template to deal with all forms of dissent. The justness of the cause simply does not matter to the powers that be, who have shown their incapability to understand any concern outside their own electoral interests. 

The year-long farmers’s movement on the borders of Delhi was treated in a similar way.

Firstly, the government and their supporters berated the protesting farmers as stooges of “Khalistani separatists”. The BJP supporters dismissed the agitation as sponsored by rich farmers and criminals when clearly all sections of the farming community were participating in it. The tags of “tukde tukde gang” and “anti-national” were slapped on them from the first day the farmers began agitating. The government officials and ministers engaged with them in multiple rounds of talks but only to hammer down the point that the farming laws could not be revoked. Even when the government was forced to revoke the laws, it has reneged on its promise of legalising the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) system.

Like last night when the wrestlers were faced with police attacking them late in the night, the protesting farmers saw multiple assaults on them at the protest sites late in the night. The barricading of the Jantar Mantar amidst heavy police deployment reminds one of the Delhi police’s attempt to stop the marching farmers by erecting nails and barbed wires on roads and constructing cement walls. 

The course of events during the anti-CAA protests were similar.

Castigating the peaceful Muslim protestors down by equating them with “terrorists”, booking many supporters of the movement in conspiracy and UAPA charges, lathi-charging university students and other protestors across the country, creating riot-like conditions through fringe rightwing organisations, ministers deriding the protests that swore on constitutional nationalism with hateful Islamophobhic statements – all happened before the protest sites were uprooted by forces in a joint action by Delhi police and Hindutva organisations.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The BJP-led government has only proven the old adage to be true in all its aspects. 

While the protesting wrestler and Olympic medalist Bajrang Punia, who is agitating in support of his female colleagues, is being reprimanded with the use of sheer force, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP has been defending the violent Bajrang Dal in Karnataka’s electoral ground. The Congress’s decision to equate Bajrang Dal and the Popular Front of India while promising to ban fundamentalist organisations has been projected by the saffron forces as an affront to Hindu faith. 

Most Karnataka residents are familiar with Bajrang Dal’s tendency to stir up religious controversies where there are none. Most of them also know about the organisation’s proclivity for violence while whipping up hate campaigns against Muslims. But that perhaps doesn’t bother the Prime Minister as he has not only defended Bajrang Dal but has also asked voters to chant “Jai Bajrang Bali” before voting. In all his rallies over the last two days, he has attacked the Congress for allegedly denigrating Lord Hanuman by promising to ban Bajrang Dal.

Modi doesn’t mind stirring up polarising sentiments if they entail political benefits to his party. In Karnataka, his last-mile push has been that of hardline Hindutva, alienating Muslims further from the mainstream, and using Bajrang Dal as a prop to consolidate Hindus along religious lines. 

Should the PFI now say that the central ban on the organisation was an attack on Islam? BJP’s logic was tersely summed by senior journalist Neena Vyas. “Does the PM know Ram naam is not the same as Ram Sena, Bajrangbali not equal to Bajrang Dal? The latter, the Dal, has repeatedly shown itself to be above law…When BJP split the Shiv Sena was it insulting Lord Shiva?” she tweeted.

The government’s response to both Bajrang Dal and Bajrang Punia has been a tale of opposites. One Bajrang has shamed the government for inaction against an alleged sexual offender, and was, therefore, dealt with a heavy hand, with a complete lack of humanism. The other Bajrang that has frequently seen itself as above law is empowered and encouraged to act with further impunity by none other than the Prime Minister. 

The hollowness of BJP’s slogan “sabka saath, sabka vikaas” shows through the two episodes. They also prove that the government has different yardsticks for different people. As long as violent organisations like Bajrang Dal advance BJP’s political and ideological interests, they can be accorded a position above law and a place above criticism. But those asking for justice will be nipped in the bud. It doesn’t matter that those seeking justice could be Olympic medalists who brought glory to the nation.