The Hindu : Communal raj and criminal society

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 04, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Communal raj and criminal society

By Valson Thampu

At the outbreak of the Gujarat carnage, crowds varying from a few hundreds to several thousands, marched and marauded in Gujarat. They operated more like trained demolition-cum-extermination squads than hysterical mobs or frenzied individuals. Thousands of houses, shops and commercial buildings were looted and gutted. Hundreds of innocent people were burned or butchered. Unprecedented and unnamable atrocities were perpetrated. Not even the unborn were spared. For days the ghost of Godse stalked the state of Gujarat. It still does. This is a shame. And this blackest of "kalanks" (black mark) needs to be washed away from the forehead of the nation with our tears and, if need be, our blood.

But there is a flip side to this "kalank", which should be equally disconcerting. And that is the large-scale initiation of the youth into crime, violence and bestiality. Given the sizes and strengths of the crowds that went on the rampage day after day, it is obvious that a sizeable segment of the Hindu youths in Gujarat has been made to participate in heinous acts or in aiding and abetting them. Morally, those who facilitate criminal acts are as guilty and inwardly polluted as those who do them. That being the case, it is a worrisome thought that tens of thousands of young men have been tainted and polluted through these riots.

But our worries in the present instance go beyond the moral and psychological radiations of the Gujarat carnage at the level of individuals. We need to worry, and worry aloud, about the cancer of crime now pouring into the bloodstream of Gujarat. Latent in this is the logic of nemesis, which ensures that the victimisers will be worse losers than their victims, eventually. It is only a matter of time before this sinister fact begins to bare its fangs.

Once a society is criminalised, it begins to lose its social cohesion, cultural robustness, political élan and developmental urge. All-round disintegration sets in. The prospect of self-assertion via the violent route of crime and cruelty seduces the frustrated rural and slum youths who, in the best of times, are but a shadowy presence in the social spectrum. Frustrated and self-alienated, they are liable to erupt into orgies, given the freedom to go berserk and play god to cringing fellow human beings. Sadly, this fits into the divisive stratagems of the communalist. The result is that a demonic partnership is waiting in the wings to flare up at short notice. Just a spark, and a whole state goes up in flames.

By initiating the youths into crime and destruction the merchants of communal politics are planting a time bomb at the root of our society. Those who have been watching the emerging political churning in this country would not dispute this. It is there for all to see that the beginning of the Dalit ferment virtually synchronises with the political consolidation of upper caste hegemony under the cover of Hindutva. The more aggressively the upper castes assert their democratically indefensible privileges, the greater the urgency it generates for the subaltern segments to resist and assert their identity. To subject a distinct peoples group to systematic atrocity, simply because they are powerless to retaliate, is to awaken deep-seated anxieties in all other disadvantaged and disenfranchised groups.

It is not an accident, therefore, that the Gujarat carnage has catalysed the formation of a powerful Dalit-Muslim axis. The prolonged trauma of a religious community provides the ideal climate for fundamentalism to flourish. Wounded powerlessness breeds, besides, a passion to resist which, in due course, grows into the craving for power.

Delhi has already witnessed the largest-ever show of Dalit-Muslim solidarity in recent times. The ultimate irony of the current Gujarat scenario will be that, in the not-too-distant future, the logic of Newtonian physics will boomerang on Modi and his men. It will indeed come about that action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Whatever actions the Sangh Parivar has initiated in Gujarat will provoke a reaction and this reaction need not necessarily be from the Muslim community. It would make poor sense to complain then if the reaction that is to come is equal to the absurdly disproportionate action which is now sought to be justified as a reaction to Godhra.

It has been basic to human nature from time immemorial that we practise double standards: one norm for us and quite

a different one for others. Those who invoke the action-reaction theory in self-justification would be insufferably incensed if the same equation is invoked subsequently to their disadvantage.

In conclusion, the short-term profit in crafting a conflictual society and a murderous culture under license from the communal raj, is bound to prove a long-term tragic loss for the health and wholeness of our society. The Vedic seers equated three forms of violence: those who commit acts of violence, those who get violent deeds done by others, and those who remain passive witnesses to the practice of violence. The subtlety of the insight here should not be lost on us. Only those who are potential murderers can remain neutral or apathetic witnesses to the murder of a fellow human being. That is why we need to worry about the increasing exposures of our people to massive communal atrocities. The more exposed we are, the more desensitised we get; and the more desensitised we get, the more potentially violent we become.

Gujarat is, in this sense, a moral and psychic atrocity that has already taken a toll on the nation as a whole. Look, for how long we have stood by and watched! Who, do you think, is safe from us?

(The writer is a peace activist)

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