Four Muslims have been arrested in Javra town in Madhya Pradesh’s Ratlam district. They are accused of throwing a cow’s head in a temple. The administration promptly bulldozed parts of their houses and registered a case against them under the National Security Act.
In another case in Madhya Pradesh, police filed FIRs against 11 Muslims in Mandla’s Bainwahi and bulldozed their houses. They were accused of cow slaughter. It was alleged that they had kept beef in their refrigerators. Police claim that they found 150 cows on their premises. That is thought to be reason enough to justify the demolition of their houses.
Before that, two Muslims were beaten to death in Chhattisgarh. They were accused of cow smuggling. In Gujarat, a mob attacked Muslims who were carrying goats for the Bakrid sacrifice.
In Telangana’s Medak, a Hindu mob attacked a madrasa and Muslims who were preparing for Bakrid. When the injured were shifted to a hospital, the mob attacked the hospital and vandalised its property.
Meanwhile, we read that Hindu residents of a housing colony in Vadodara resumed their opposition to the allotment of a house to a Muslim woman who is a government employee and petitioned against her entry.
The day the election results were announced, NEET results were declared. Students saw the results and found huge discrepancies. They alleged that the examination was rigged on a large scale. The National Testing Agency, which conducts the exam, first flatly denied it, but later, when the matter went to court and the latter said the exam’s sanctity had been violated, the agency announced that grace marks given to more than 1,000 students would be withdrawn.
Even after this, it is adamant that no irregularities were committed on its part. It has not been able to answer why it released the examination results on June 4, the day of the election results, when it had announced that results would be announced on June 14.
We have seen state agencies working lazily, but the NEET train reached the platform ten days before its scheduled arrival. Is there something amiss here?
Why is the new government adamant about defending an examination in which irregularities are visible at first glance? Not even a day had passed since he assumed office when the education minister promptly gave a clean chit to the agency. Lakhs of students are protesting against it. But the minister alleges that the protests are “motivated” and are not sincere.
We can see that the government is ignoring the protests of students and their parents in the same way the previous government refused to listen to the voices of farmers, Muslim women or student movements and insulted them by calling them traitors, Maoists, Khalistanis, etc.
The Supreme Court admitted that the sanctity of the examination had been compromised, but refused to stay the counselling process. What then is the meaning of its conclusion that the exam’s sanctity was compromised if it allows the agency to go ahead with the next steps and does not stay the process?
Delhi’s lieutenant governor revived a 14-year-old case and sanctioned action under the anti-terror law UAPA against Arundhati Roy and Professor Sheikh Shaukat Hussain from Kashmir speeches they made in 2010.
Maharashtra’s chief minister alleged that the BJP alliance did not win a majority because ‘urban Naxals’ had become active in society and misled the public.. Before him, Assam’s chief minister alleged that a particular religious community, i.e., Christians, did not vote for the BJP, which affected its majority in some states in the northeast.
Meanwhile, a smear campaign is being run on social media platforms abusing the Hindus of Uttar Pradesh, especially Ayodhya. It is being said that they are traitors, ungrateful and cowards because they did not give the BJP as many seats as it wanted or deserved. The BJP’s hate machine is working overtime to shame and intimidate sensible Hindus.
It has not even been two weeks since the election results and only a week has passed since the formation of the government, but these initial indications make it very clear that the state machinery and the political machinery of the BJP have not learned anything from the mandate that refused to give it a clear majority. They continue with their old hateful and violent ways.
It seems that the state agencies have interpreted the mandate that emerged from the elections, resulting in the formation of the Narendra Modi government with a lesser majority, in a way that allows them to persist with their old anti-Muslim, anti-people policies and practices.
What were those practices? Utter contempt for the people in the state apparatus and the arrogant attitude of the state machinery, violence against Muslims by Hindutva gangs and the state machinery, complete disregard for and attacks on civil rights, and the media acting as the propaganda department of the government and the BJP.
The mandate which cut Modi to size was seen as the rejection of the politics of his cult. The Hindu people rejected the idea of him being elevated to the status of a god and reminded him and his followers in the BJP that he remains a petty human being and should be treated accordingly.
But after the results, posters were put up all over Delhi declaring Modi as the architect of modern India.
The mandate of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections has been read as a moral and political rejection of Modi, his politics and his way of functioning. Everyone, including Modi’s supporters, believed that by not giving his BJP an absolute majority, the people wanted to convey that they disliked the way things were going and wanted a change.
The mandate has been viewed by many as a popular rejection of the demand by Modi and the BJP to give them a free pass to run the country the way they had been for the past ten years. Despite this, Modi’s coming back to power is actually a theft of the mandate. It is being said that had the Election Commission not worked as a department of the BJP, had the media played an unbiased role and had state institutions not repeatedly created obstacles in the way of the opposition, the results could have been different. There is an assessment that if things were done in a fair manner, the BJP would have been restricted to a figure of 200 seats at the most.
We must not ignore statements by Akhilesh Yadav and other opposition leaders, where they accused election officials of rigging during the polling and counting of votes. We do not remember the opposition ever openly making such allegations in any election. They cannot be brushed aside lightly. Never before has the opposition made such grave charges with such vehemence.
Modi has, however, formed his government with the support of the Janata Dal (United), the Telugu Desam Party, the Lok Janshakti Party, etc. But is this coalition government any different from the Modi government with an absolute majority?
The incidents mentioned in the beginning show that there is hardly any change in the attitude of state institutions, the manner of governance or the attitude of the court. Hindutva gangs continue to enjoy impunity and feel free to attack Muslims.
By filing a case against a person of Arundhati Roy’s stature under the UAPA for a statement made 14 years ago, the government is saying that if anyone thinks it cares about international opinion, then she is a fool. This government will continue to crush civil rights in the same way as the previous government did. State institutions, along with the Hindutva mob, will continue their bulldozer violence against Muslims. The BJP will continue to malign its critics and opponents as traitors.
There is no sign that Modi and BJP leaders will do any introspection because the public gave them fewer seats. Looking at the attitude of a section of the media, it seems that it is the media that has lost the election. It is argued that the opposition misled the public with the help of YouTubers and journalists like Dhruv Rathee and Ravish Kumar.
What this shows is that even if you allow a fascist to form a government with a smaller majority, he will still remain a fascist. Some noble people had been wishing for a long time that a situation should emerge in which neither the fascist nor their opponents get an absolute majority.
While wishing so, they did not understand that in the last ten years, the political system and a section of the Hindu public have also been ‘facsistised’. Anyone knows that even if the fascist does not get an absolute majority, he will again take over the system along with his allies who have now entered and entrenched themselves in the system.
If we do not give absolute power to those who oppose fascism and keep them weak, then we are doomed to go back into the grip of fascism.
This is what seems to be happening right now. Will the public and the opposition parties together be able to oppose this in parliament and on the streets? We will see the answer in the next few weeks.
Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University.
