Not Much to Celebrate in Festive Season Amid Hate

Why has this season of religious festivities and fervour been converted into a season of hate? This question continues to rankle in the head of every peace loving citizen of the country.

For the second year in a row there have been cases of clashes being reported on Ram Navami. This time the festival coincided with the ongoing holy month of Ramzan.

That the events are aimed at petty political gains reaped from communal polarisation is a long drawn conclusion, particularly when a series of Assembly elections are set to culminate in the parliamentary polls of 2024.

What is worrisome is the normalisation of such communal clashes where there is hardly any criticism of such acts, either in the media or at the public level.

An observation from a Sikh friend made the thought more complex when he said, “By the acts that have been reported from across the states of targeting the ‘other’, they have shown disrespect to their own God/s.”

There have been reports pouring in from various corners of the country of majoritarian mobs trying to provoke the minorities by raising provocative slogans and playing offensive songs outside the religious shrines of the latter.

There have been allegations and counter allegations coming from both the sides at places which only help wily politicians divert attention from the real pressing issues.

All this has come in the backdrop of no less than the Supreme Court expressing concern over hate speech and reportedly going to the extent of pointing towards the impotence of the state to check hate speech.

I admit at the outset that I am not religious but have respect for the pious practising their faiths. At the same time I admit that I love listening to M.S. Subbulakshmi’s recital of ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ as much as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s ‘Koi Bole Ram Ram’.

Having said this, I have been revisiting my own past as a reporter, particularly the stint in Gujarat whose ‘model’ of polarisation for political benefits is in vogue these days, to understand how the distortion works in the collective psyche of the society. This eventually results in alienating the other and ends up in hate.

It was July 8, 2005 and the event was the annual Jangannath Rath Yatra in Ahmedabad where ‘peace’ prevailed and people were supposed to have forgotten the 2002 riots. The police had made its quota of pre-yatra arrests along with some recoveries.

The only difference was that this time they were reluctant to say that members of a particular community wanted to disrupt the yatra. Anyhow, the local media was abuzz with pre-yatra stories and going by these reports anyone would feel that Ahmedabad had become normal once again.

But the illusion took a beating when I went to Dariapur, a

predominantly Muslim area, falling in the category of disturbed pockets.

There were scores of policemen, as expected. Muslim women were mainly indoors and only kids lined the route from where the yatra was to pass. The road had been cleared by the police and everyone waited in anticipation for the yatra to arrive.

Around 1.30 p.m. elders of the community could be seen asking the few women outside to go indoors. The logic being given was disturbing indeed. They were telling the women,’’ Don’t you understand that looking at idols is Haram (sin) in our religion.’’

The women and others, low on literacy, somehow understood. The children were getting smacked for venturing closer to the road. A friend told me that things were different till some years back when women and children actually used to line the streets.

Exactly at 2 p.m. a police van with a public address system mounted on top, came to the spot and appeals were made to clear the road. It was quite similar to the addressing when a curfew is about to be imposed. All of a sudden one could see the yatra approaching after its small break at Sarangpur.

Immediately, a large number of speakers started blaring out patriotic songs and both the police and the elders in the Muslim community resorted to blowing whistles at a shrill pitch. I was surprised as I could not connect freedom movement or any of the nationalist events to the religious occasion of the yatra and wondered why these film songs were being blared at such a high level.

I decided to ask this question to an elder. The reply was, “The yatris hurl abuses at times which are countered by the Muslims.It may happen vice versa also. The spats have all the potential to turn into violence. With more than 120 truck loads of yatris you cannot take chances. Hence loud music and chaos simply make abuses inaudible.’’

I could also not come to terms with Muslims voluntarily staying indoors, they call it Janta curfew here, a concept which is a blot on the secular society. Why do they do this? The reply of an elder was, “By being indoors for three hours we buy peace for the rest of the year.’’

As expected all the papers next day reported that the yatra had passed off ‘peacefully’ and the attempts to promote co-existence of Hindus and Muslims were successful!

The segregation in the name of apprehension of trouble is another norm that has set in. The whole concept of celebration in inclusivity has gone for a toss.

Communalism is not a new concept for any one of us. The generation to which we belong has heard enough about the Partition, witnessed 1984 anti-Sikh and 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms.

But it was in Gujarat that I came to face it firsthand and tried to analyse the hows and whys of this machine that churns out hatred, bloodshed and irreparable losses.

The period between 2002 and 2005 had all the ingredients to experiment with the limits of human sanity.

Lord Hanuman has been among the favourite mythological characters. I have grown up listening to numerous stories and verses dedicated to him, particularly on the banks of the Sangam in Allahabad when visiting my maternal grandparents as a child.

But it was a horrifying experience when I came across references to a ‘Highway’ Hanuman (since the road led to a Muslim settlement) and a ‘Hulladiya’ Hanuman (Hullad in Gujarati means commotion or riot) in the post 2002 riots Gujarat.

The answer to the question that how come a loveable mythological character be reduced to an emblem of hate, could never be found. It once again raised its head in the aftermath of the Jahangirpuri violence in Delhi along with the instances in other states on Hanuman Jayanti last year. There is anxiety at many places on the eve of the festival once again.

The same Ahmedabad, whose residents are known for their acute business sense, has a Hanuman temple that has adoringly been named ‘Rokadiya’ Hanuman (Rokadiya in Gujarati means cashier). It is located in Hatkeshwar area of Amraiwadi locality and simply goes with the Gujarati penchant for business and commerce.

It’s time the society understands the difference between being ‘literate’ and ‘educated’ as the two terms overlap in their usage.

It has to be mentioned to denote yet another example of how even supposedly ‘educated’ people can stoop to lows once their mind is governed by the philosophy of hate.

This time again it happened to be a person whom I had just met covering a couple of political rallies. By the small interactions that we had, I knew he supported the cause of Right Wing Hindutva as he kept on quoting people and books supporting the ideology.

I bumped into him during the course of an official assignment, and as I was about to depart, I said I had to go to the nearby market in old Ahmedabad to purchase dates that I loved eating in winters.

“Do you also eat dates? I thought only Muslims eat that fruit,’’ he asked. I had no reply to this one and kept wondering for days that since when have fruits started getting identified with religion? Tomorrow someone just might as well say that Apple is a Christian fruit or Orange is a Hindu fruit.

Later I came to know that I was not the only one to have had such an experience. A senior journalist with a Hindi daily had also been confronted with similar remarks.

What was then witnessed in the state often called the laboratory of Hindutva has been amplified across states as the ‘Gujarat Model’ and popularised to divert attention from pressing real issues of economy, employment, social and gender equality apart from a host of others.

With festivals becoming occasions of hate and stress there is hardly anything left to celebrate.