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Jun-26-2008
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(Author is an independent researcher, and freelance contributor based in New Delhi, India)
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Ashis Nandy, the great Indian political psychologist has shown scant respect to the scholarship he demands, and the academic accolades he boasts in vituperating an entire generation of the Gujarati middle class in his article in the Times of India "Gujarat: Blame the Middle Class".
Nandy slanders the Gujarati middle class for being mired in its communalism and parochialism. The VHP and the Bajrang Dal supposedly set tone to Gujarat state politics. Nandy"s prescription for this vile Gujarat middle class should be to shun their religious identity, and vote en masse for the supposedly secular but perhaps the most incompetent, anti-development, and opportunistic Congress government at the center. Instead of Modi, opt for the characterless Vaghela, a former BJP leader who had gone on record in the summer of 98 to claim that his ideology was exactly that of the BJP"s and so there was no question of forming or joining another party and yet had no hesitation in uniting with its antithesis in the Congress.
Nandy is intelligent enough to be aware that VHP and the Bajrang Dal, and even the RSS have all been sidelined in Gujarat in the process of Modi"s unique brand of no-nonsense politics. When empirical proof for VHP and Bajrang Dal influence in state polity is absent, you can always invent false rhetoric.
For instance, examining Riots and the role of the State
YEAR AND PLACE OF RIOT : Ahmedabad, 1969 STATE GOVERNMENT - Congress PRETEXT FOR RIOT - Muslim procession turned violent and damaged a temple followed by Hindu retaliation. VICTIMS AND RELIGION - 480 Muslims. 24 Hindus in a duration of 12 days.
YEAR AND PLACE OF RIOT : Godhra , 2002 STATE GOVERNMENT- BJP PRETEXT FOR RIOT - 58 kar sevaks in the Sabarmati Express burnt down by a Muslim mob. VICTIMS AND RELIGION - 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus. [Official toll released by the UPA government] 200 of the victims were killed in police firing. Duration of riots - 4-7 days.
The Reddy Commission in 1969 indicted the police for being lax. Significantly, it did not attribute the riot to any single community as the Muslims had been responsible several times in the past for inciting the Hindu community through aggressive gestures and that it was necessary for both communities to approach living in harmony. The Nanavati commission report of 2003 exonerated the Gujarat police on charges of partisan conduct. In fact, 10,000 rounds of police fire accounted for 200 rioters.
Nandy"s specious hypothesis that the ideology of communalism pursued for 40 years has paid dividends simply self dismantles itself in the light of the above facts.
Similarly, the claims to communalism and parochialism with respect to the Gujarati community are baseless and positively perverse in themselves. The Gujarati middle has elected Congress governments even until the early 90s. The Congress has had enough opportunities to develop the state as much as Modi"s Gujarat. The bottomline is they failed, and the Gujarati people were able to transcend the barriers of caste, quota and reservation to elect a suitable government. The secular media was hell-bent in dividing the state on typical caste lines but their diabolical designs were averted. The Patels were persistently provoked to vote against the BJP because Keshubhai had been neglected, and the Kolis were graphically reminded of Modi"s inability to prevent sexual molestation of one of their women. Thankfully, the great Gujarati middle class was more intelligent than the average caste ridden Hindu whom the secularists have been taking for a ride for the past 50 years. Moreover, even this Gujarati middle class cannot be confined to the imaginary communal compartment of Nandy while bonded to the Sangh Parivar"s bandwagon. Dipankur Gupta"s analysis just after the 2002 elections proves the saffron wave was overestimated despite an obvious polarization of votes. The BJP had actually won very narrowly in several constituencies on account of the so called secular vote splitting between the Congress and the NCP. All, in all, the BJP despite winning a few seats less in 2007 dished out a far more creditable performance banking on the sole platforms of development and security. But Nandy is virulently anti-development for according to him development is always authoritarian. Can this demented definition of development encapsulate the spectacular rise of postwar Germany or Japan! Or even India as a rapidly emerging economy. And this Gujarati middle class with its vast remunerations from abroad deserves some credit in this process of development.
As for regional parochialism Gujaratis have remained the preferred hosts for a generation of Indians. Why should not Nandy dole out these lessons of parochialism to Raj Thackeray, and the Congress government in Maharashtra. Or how about the rabidly anti-aryan DMK. Or perhaps, the anti-national communists. Or even better, preach the same to the ULFA in Assam who are routinely slaughtering Bihari labourers and the Christian separatists in Tripura and Nagaland who are murdering Hindus in cold blood and simultaneously eradicating their presence and culture.
Nandy is pained that the Hindus and the Muslims of the state - once bonded so conspicuously by language, culture and commerce - have met the demands of both V D Savarkar and M A Jinnah. But when did Gujarat or for that matter the whole of India form a composite culture. Even Gandhi failed to artificially reconcile Urdu and Hindi within Hindustani. Similarly, Hindus have yet not been able to adopt the Islamic culture of vandalism and iconoclasm, although the specter raised its ugly head at Ayodhya.
So instead of farcically claiming Muslims being treated as second class citizens, despite the state producing the talented Pathan cricketing brothers, Nandy should realize that Gujarat has rejected the Mahatma"s formula of Muslim appeasement. Muslims in Gujarat are treated just like any other Indian, they cannot claim any special privileges and this is the way it should be. If any Muslim feels victimized, it should be out of a delusion of persecution.
Nandy"s political daydreaming is evident when he claims future generations will as gratefully acknowledge the sangh parivar"s contribution to the growth of radical Islam in India as this generation remembers with gratitude the handsome contribution of Rajiv Gandhi and his cohorts to Sikh militancy. If it was so Mr Nandy, then why has not a single civilian life been lost in Gujarat in the past 5 years on account of terror attacks. Contrast this with Sikh militancy which accentuated itself soon after operation Bluestar both within and outside the nation. Nandy"s parallel sounds to me as patently preposterous.
Nandy pretends that it is the manipulation of media and education by the middle class which transformed the tribals and dalits into Muslim killers. He suppresses the fact that the response of these marginalized groups was against the oppressive Muslim moneylenders of the state. His Marxist friends have a duty to remind him that this is the beauty of class struggle. Remember, 1921 when the Khilafat khitchi cooked up by Gandhi consummated in the Muslim brutality at Moplah where even a woman of the stature of Annie Besant was shocked at the inhumanity meted to the Hindu women, even ignoring the general massacre of the Hindus. Communist historians have been adamant in defining this bloody riot as a sacrosanct peasant struggle.
But what is most disconcerting is the maliciousness of Nandy which is squarely reflected in his deriding Bengali Babus [read freedom fighters and nationalists] for seeking salvation through violence. Not only is this cheap comment racist, it is reminiscent of the remark made by another secular scholar Ramachandra Guha who considered Bengalis as eternally baying for blood. The eminent historian, R C Majumdar considered the Bengalis to have made the greatest contribution to the freedom struggle, and this he contested was without any prejudice despite him also being a Bengali. No other community, not even the Punjabis had to pay such a heavy price for freedom. And yet these sanctimonious academicians ignore the plight of Hindus in Calcutta on the direct action day, later Noakhalai and then the East Bengal genocide [with > 1 million Hindus killed], probably in fear of alienating their Muslim allies against their common Hindu foe. The Hindu Nationalists of Bengal were never Gandhians for those who had heard the voice of Vivekananda and Aurobindo could not be deceived by masochism, masquerading as ahimsa.
Nandy"s article displays nothing more than a string of lies with an occasional half truth thrown in. But the Gujarat government has characteristically shot itself in the foot by charging him with a criminal case. In all probability, the judgment of the court would prove to me a major embarrassment for the BJP. Scholarship, even of this hyperbolic and depraved kind should have been contested exclusively on academic lines, but the BJP"s characteristic anti-intellectual response coupled with their nonexistent PR means the secularists will have another excuse to parade the sacred saffron as another name for fundamentalism.
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