We are not intolerant, we screamed and swiftly attacked Aamir Khan for speaking his mind. Go to Pakistan, we yelled. Traitor, we shrieked, we made you a star, how dare you say we are intolerant! We lodged a case against him. We flung ourselves at him with such hatred that the state had to send in cops to save the actor from our ugly nationalistic rants about how good and tolerant we are. And by we, we mean Hindus, of course. Scratch the surface of our well-set democracy and our hideous prejudices fizz forth.
The rising intolerance in his homeland, Aamir Khan admits in public, alarms him and his wife, the filmmaker Kiran Rao. Alarmed enough to wonder whether they should at all remain in India. He has faced Hindutva hate before — his posters have been torn, his effigies burnt, his films banned in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat. No wonder Aamir Khan feels out of place.
It’s odd, but maybe we are all out of place. Take our ministers, for example. Anil Vij, Bharatiya Janata Party minister in Haryana, detected in Aamir’s comment a Pakistani plot to spoil India’s chances of getting a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. Was Mr Vij too feeling out of place? Are his talents as a psychic detective lost in his role as Haryana’s health minister?
Meanwhile Yogi Adityanath, BJP member of Parliament from Uttar Pradesh, was delighted at this opportunity to reduce India’s Muslim population. “Has anybody stopped him?” he enquired urgently. “At least, it will reduce the country’s population!” The poor yogi has been warning us about India’s Muslim population for a while and even dreaming of a law to stop it. And at every opportunity he tries to pack off a sizeable chunk of Indians — generally Muslims — to Pakistan.
In June, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was organising Yoga Day, this yogi urged those opposing the enforced Surya Namaskar to either leave India or drown themselves in the ocean. He failed. And a few days ago, when Shah Rukh Khan supported the protest against rising intolerance in India, the yogi’s attempt to drive Shah Rukh to Pakistan failed too. Even though he compared the Indian superstar to Pakistani terrorist Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the Mumbai carnage, and warned him that Indians might boycott Shah Rukh’s films, forcing the star to “wander on the streets like a normal Muslim”.
Yes, Yogi Adityanath too is out of place — as an MP. As are many others. Like BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj, who urges every Hindu woman to produce at least four children to protect the faith, he also believes that the government will pass a law that could hang you for cow slaughter or religious conversion. As a parliamentarian rooting for “martyr” Nathuram Godse and insisting that madrasas breed terrorism, he is clearly a displaced person.
Or should we say misplaced? We specialise in misplacing people. Look around you. In Assam, governor and BJP leader P.B. Acharya has apparently said that India or Hindustan is for Hindus and if Muslims are unhappy they could go to Pakistan or Bangladesh. When a governor talks like a Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh pracharak, we have a problem. Meanwhile in Delhi, Smriti Irani, Union minister for human resources development, is flamboyantly badmouthing journalists on Twitter, engaging in a public e-spat with anyone who dares criticise her.
And in Kolkata, Niranjan Jyoti, Union minister for food processing industries, is busy explaining how democracy works. “In a democracy it is the duty of the state governments to ban cow slaughter”, she declares bewilderingly. “If you are asking for respect from us, then you should learn to respect us first.” By “us” this Union minister does not mean all Indians, only the Hindu hardliners who oppose cow slaughter. By “you” she means all other Indians. Today’s politics is powered by the dialectics of us and them.
The othering could be by religion, caste or even race. Giriraj Singh, Union minister of state for micro, small and medium enterprises, who in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, had asked those opposing Mr Modi to go to Pakistan (where else?) had recently called upon people to ponder whether Sonia Gandhi would be leading the Congress if she was a Nigerian, and not fair skinned. The Nigerian High Commission promptly demanded an apology and the minister was temporarily silenced.
But we are rich in misplaced ministers, and at any given moment in time, at least one of them is speaking. Union minister of state for external affairs Gen. V.K. Singh (retd) responded to the two dalit children in Faridabad being burnt alive when their house was set on fire by upper caste attackers. The government cannot be held responsible, he said, “if somebody throws a stone at a dog”. Made one wonder not just about the leaders of the nation but also our armed forces.
Then there is culture minister Mahesh Sharma. Poor man, his attempt to seem secular while renaming Aurangzeb Road after former President Abdul Kalam failed miserably when he explained that Kalam was “a very big humanitarian and nationalist in spite of being a Muslim”. And when Indian writers started returning sarkari awards, saying that their freedom to write was being curbed by the culture of intolerance, the culture minister was unperturbed. “If they say they are unable to write, let them first stop writing”, he said. “We will then see.”
Our misplacement agency is active everywhere. In academic institutions, cultural organisations, important boards and committees. So we have Pahlaj Nihalani, who made a laughable propaganda film on
Mr Modi, and films with curious songs (like where the hero flaps his lungi as he tries to bed the heroine, singing “khada hai, khada hai, khada hai...”) as the censor chief. And Ashoke Pandit as member, who had expressed his disapproval of Karan Johar by saying he should have sex with his mother. And together they are busy cutting James Bond’s kisses to size.
Even our martyrs are out of place. Nathuram Godse is the new hero — the “patriot” who killed for a cause. His death anniversary is celebrated as Balidan Diwas, and the day he killed Gandhi celebrated as Shaurya Diwas. His statue is being put up, films glorifying him are being made. Look anywhere, from the Prime Minister to your local schoolteacher, and you will see the undetected misery of the misplaced.
Makes us seriously wonder whether we are currently a nation of the misplaced. Are we all uncomfortable and out of place, in one way or another? As uncomfortable and out of place, for instance, as Arvind Kejriwal in Lalu’s hug?
(The writer is editor, The Little Magazine. Email: sen@littlemag.com)
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