The celebrations of the Republic over a week ago did not make questions about the republic with the small “r” recede. If the republic means a linking of empathies, if it stands on the common ground of a shared commitment to justice and equality, dignity and fraternity, if it includes all and leaves out no one, then, too often, the republic is missing.
Where is the republic, for instance, when an elected chief minister openly exhorts people and the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls to target one group of citizens, as Himanta Biswa Sarma did only days ago? Sarma says he wants to drive Miyas out of his state — “Miya” is used for Bengali-speaking Muslims, labelled by the BJP as “ghuspaithiya” or infiltrators, but it is really deployed as a term of communal dog whistle politics.
Where was the republic when an FIR was filed in Moradabad last month under the stringent anti-conversion law against five Muslim girls, students of Class XII? This was after CCTV footage showed them, on their way back from coaching class, putting a burqa on a Hindu friend, playfully.
Some Opposition voices called out Sarma’s hateful rhetoric ahead of an assembly election in Assam. In a state where an election is not in sight, the Moradabad incident barely set off ripples.
So, is the othering of the minority by a chief minister, or by the aam aadmi who feels emboldened to weaponise prejudice on the watch of the Yogi Adityanath government — the Moradabad FIR was registered on the complaint of the Hindu girl’s brother — acceptable to the republic?
This is an urgent question. But the answer cannot be to berate all the people as stripped of all neighbourliness and decency. Perhaps the question needs to be re-framed: What stops “the people” from coming together against divisive politics?
To begin with, we, the people, are diverse. We live on uneven terrain. Diversity enriches, but it can also divide. The fault-lines on the ground, of caste, class, language, region and community, can stand in the way of forging solidarities with those who are different from us, or are placed unequally.
Then, the costs of speaking up are high, and seen to be so, too.
If political opponents of a powerful and thin-skinned government are disproportionately targeted by the CBI-ED, if a student giving a speech or calling for a chakka jam against a discriminatory law is jailed on a terror charge and denied bail for over five years, if university professors and activists are labelled “urban Naxals”, and if the Prime Minister calls the principal Opposition party “Maowadi-Muslim League-y”, suggesting that Opposition equals “anti-national” equals speaking for Muslims equals insurrectionary, a chilling message is sent out, a chilling message is received.
At the same time, the criminalisation of dissent or the othering of the minority has not acquired the critical mass in a large country that might make it more difficult for the ordinary citizen to unsee and unhear it. It leaves room for the voter to be drawn into the imagined communities and glossy pictures that the BJP paints and conveys in its legitimate work as a political party — the Opposition’s spectre-making of “Constitution in danger” and “vote chori” overlooks the hard labour of politics that the BJP also puts in (and the Opposition doesn’t). “Desh toh aage badh raha hai (at least the country is moving forward)…,” you hear even the sceptical BJP voter say. And: “If you are doing 10 things, getting four wrong, at least there are six …”
It’s not just this that accounts for the republic’s loud silences.
On divisive politics, the Opposition is seen to be either complicit or timid. The scale may vary — and it does significantly — but governments led by Congress and many regional parties are also seen to have presided over communal violence or minority-baiting. They are identified with a vision of development that includes minorities only as recipients of patronage, not as a matter of right.
Today, those same Opposition parties remain silent on “Muslim issues” because they subscribe to a binary that is pessimistic and self-fulfilling — speaking up for Muslims, Congress believes, will alienate the Hindu majority. Rahul Gandhi’s silence on the FIR against the Class XII students in Moradabad is of a piece with Congress leaders’ conspicuous absences, including at Shaheen Bagh.
The fact is that in a country in which governance has many tiers, the line of accountability swerves in and out of public view. While the Modi government expertly manipulates this to evade discredit for the discrimination and inequality on its watch, the deep reach of the Sangh Parivar’s footsoldiers ensures that it fully owns the credit for schemes and subsidies.
The reality is also this: The minority community chafes at being cast in the role of permanent victim by the dominant strain of politics, and at the expectations of permanent alienation and agitation the Opposition burdens it with.
The Muslims of India are also, like others, individual men and women who are raising their children to make better lives for themselves than their parents did. If politics denies them their due representation and opportunity, they search for more hospitable spaces, through education and by dint of their skills.
Muslims do not have what Dalits have, the other group that fights embedded injustice — the powerful symbolism of a Constitution their icon gave to the country, and the possibility of power through strategic alliances with other groups, as in UP. Yet, Muslims have a claim to their rightful place in their home, unwavering in a time of precarity. “Do you think, had we not voted for him, Modi would have won so handsomely?” — in elections across states, Muslim voters ask this question, challengingly. It may not mean that they voted for the Modi-BJP. It is an assertion of belonging.
A line also runs through the republic, today, separating digital haves from digital have-nots. Within the digital haves, the smartphone and social media algorithms have an effect that is fragmenting and isolating. The barrage of conflicting narratives breeds cynicism and disbelief — the adage, “truth will out”, is difficult to trust in.
In this landscape a chief minister openly exhorts people to target the minority in Assam, and an FIR is filed against Class XII students on charges of conversion in UP. On this teeming ground, you strain your ears to catch any sound of the republic.
The writer is national opinion editor, The Indian Express. vandita.mishra@expressindia.com
