Dissent Manufacturing Company at work

The bravest voice among all the voices raised against today’s climate of intolerance belongs to Shah Rukh Khan. That’s because he has the most to lose. The fact that he has spoken when he has been subjected to vicious abuse in the past makes his stand even more admirable. Moreover, he is a leading light of Bollywood, where actors, unlike their counterparts in Hollywood, play safe and never stick their necks out on matters of national importance.

Arun Jaitley should ask himself: Is Shah Rukh Khan part of the “Dissent Manufacturing Company” Mr Jaitley claims to have discovered? Is the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, chairman of its board? Are Raghuram Rajan of the Reserve Bank of India and N.R. Narayanamurthy, co-founder of Infosys, this company’s directors? When you think about it, this “Dissent Manufacturing Company” is quite an entity: those who belong to it are eminent writers, filmmakers, scientists and even an admiral who was once the Chief of Staff of the Indian Navy.

But is Mr Jaitley asking this question of himself? For that matter, is he asking himself any uncomfortable questions at all? Judging by his perpetually smug expression, you very much doubt that. That smugness, sadly, seems to be the prevailing mindset in the entire Bharatiya Janata Party hierarchy, starting from the Prime Minister downwards. Everyone in that hierarchy seems to believe that whoever expresses a dissenting view is (A) Anti-national or (B) Anti-BJP or (C) Anti-Narendra Modi or, and here at last is a pro-amongst the forest of antis — pro-Congress. This is the equivalent of the ostrich which buries its head in the sand and then pretends that all is well with the world.

What Mr Jaitley and company need to do is simply look at the morning newspaper. Not just a particular day’s morning newspaper, but one of any day. This column is being written on Thursday, a couple of days before you will read it, and here’s what today’s headlines say: “Shah Rukh Khan lives in India, but his soul is in Pakistan” (Kailash Vijayvargiya, BJP general secretary); “Shah Rukh Khan makes crores here but he thinks India is intolerant. If this is not anti-national, then what is it?” (Mr Vijayvargiya again); “There is no difference between the language of Shah Rukh Khan and Hafiz Saeed (Pakistani terrorist)” (Yogi Adityanath, BJP MP).

Yesterday it was S.N. Channabasappa, a Karnataka politician (he is BJP’s Shimoga district secretary and a close aide of former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa). He threatened to behead chief minister Siddaramaiah if he ate beef, and then play football with his severed head. Before that, it was the BJP puppeteer, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which in an article in its magazine Panchjanya said, “The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is different from other universities… It’s the only institution where talking about nationalism is a crime.” The article written by RSS ideologue Ashwin Mishra, continues “JNU teachers and students supported Naxalites, insulted the martyrs of the Kargil War, promoted beef-eating, protested against capital punishment for Afzal Guru… JNU teachers and students have made efforts to break Hindu society and the nation.”

That this happens on a daily basis is irrefutable because the evidence is there for all to see. Many of the inflammatory statements are later withdrawn, but the question is why are they made to start with? How is it that the people making them dare to make them in the first place? The social media space is awash with vicious abuse against anyone labelled a “dissenter”, but social media always has been a place for people to hide behind its anonymity to get away with their hate-filled messages, but here we are talking of party functionaries and even ministers, uninhibitedly spewing their venom to television and newspapers.

The standard BJP response to diverse people from diverse fields returning their awards, is not to introspect, but to ask “Why didn’t you return your awards earlier? Why did you not return them after 1984?” The reference is to the anti-Sikh killings in Delhi. No one, incidentally, asks why the awards were not returned after 2002, the year of the anti-Muslim killings in Gujarat. So if the BJP-types shout “selective outrage”, they are also guilty of selective outrage. The shrill voice of some TV channels — notably Times Now, which now surely can do away with a BJP spokesman on its News Hour because it has Arnab Goswami — gets added to this clamour.

The answer to this question is quite, quite simple. Firstly, anger was expressed about those atrocities, as loudly and as continuously as possible, both post 1984 and 2002, but it didn’t take the form of returning awards. Surely, there can be different kinds of protests at different times? Secondly, this is the first time in Independent India’s history that messages of intolerance have been delivered, and continue to be delivered, not from some outlandish fringe groups, but from senior party functionaries and ministers. The shame of 1984 will remain a blot on the Congress and the nation forever, especially because no one has been jailed for their horrific crimes, but the carnage was stopped in a couple of days and no one had the effrontery to justify it.

In retrospect, one can say that Rajiv Gandhi, pitchforked into a job he neither wanted nor was ready for, and facing the grief of his mother’s assassination, can’t be blamed as much as the home minister, the experienced Shankarrao Chavan and Delhi’s lieutenant-governor, B.G. Gavai (who had earlier been chief secretary in the Maharashtra government). What were they doing? Why wasn’t there an inquiry against them, the Delhi Police commissioner and the like? That’s one of the tragic ifs and buts of history. Even now if punishment can be meted out to those directly involved in the killings, it should be done. The Modi government should be pushing for this. But we know it won’t. That’s because of 2002.

This is precisely why writers, academics and others who occupy the intellectual space in the country should protest as loudly as possible. The protest has only one objective: to ensure that 1984 and 2002 don’t ever happen again.

The writer is a senior journalist