The cultivation of hate - 9

 

The cultivation of hate

According to a recent report by ANHAD, hate speech and hate crimes have predominantly targeted Muslims at 73.3% of all hate speech, now-a-days.  The main purpose of such hate speech is to provoke them so that they start breaking law and misprision them, and anger will be among the community and they should start to be busy in breaking law.

We remember, of the railway police constable who roamed through a train shooting Muslim passengers and delivering an impassioned diatribe against the community?

And did you see the news item in recent newspapers about four students in a government school in Delhi complaining that their teacher had made communal remarks to them. According to the complaints, the teacher said: “During Partition you did not go to Pakistan. You stayed in India. You have no contribution to India’s freedom struggle.” There was more in a similar vein.  Anger created cannot be pacified easily.  The reaction to all of these incidents was the same as mine- shock, outrage, anger, disbelief, sadness and fears about the kind of country we are becoming. And that you were as horrified as I was when the organised armies on social media posted lies to explain away the incidents. Apparently, the hate-filled teacher had not said anything communal. The video was distorted. Various glove-puppets and bots then hailed her as a martyr. Likewise, the Muslim-murdering railway police officer was not anti-Muslim, his social media supporters said, he was just ‘disturbed ’. The control rooms had to junk this lie after the shooter’s own superiors admitted that he had committed a hate crime, which he was then charged with. The biggest misconception about hate is that you can control it. Politicians (from all parties and all religions) make the mistake of believing that hate is like water. You can pour as much of it as you like. But when you are through, you can just turn off the tap.  In fact, hate is the opposite of water. It is like fire.

Once you light the flame, it becomes very difficult to control it and till the time it is controlled it will damage the whole thing beyond repair. The blaze takes on a life of its own and it is almost impossible to stop it or to manage how it spreads.  It is popular among people opposed to the current political dispensation to act as though the hate we see all around us emanates from the top and is the result of some careful political calculation.  Politicians are doing their own job of nothing achievement. Every Muslim-hater is not a sangh supporter who is acting on orders from Nagpur. Like fire, hate takes on a life of its own. Nobody can tell where the next conflagration will occur, where the fire will spread or who the flames will devour.  Even though the Prime Minister and his top ministers are very careful not to say anything that could be termed communal, the hate has now reached a level where it makes no difference what they say. Even the rest of the parivar — the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and all other liberal bogeymen and villains — lost control of the fires of hatred long ago. Nobody ordered the school teachers to target Muslims. Nobody asked the railway cop to kill Muslims.

The kind of hatred we see in today’s India is uncontrollable. It requires no trigger and no spark. And it is harder to fight the hatred because once the deed is done or the crime committed, an army of social media hitmen arrives to cheer on the murderers and the abusers.  It is nobody’s case that there was no hatred in India before the current outbreak. Independent India was created in hatred and bloodshed. But ever since then, most leaders (across political parties) and the media worked hard to heal wounds and to create social harmony.  Most distressing of all: the television media is more communal and hate-filled today than at any time in its history. As for social media — including the parts controlled by political parties — that is the biggest cesspit in our country.  I don’t know where all of this will lead us but of one thing, I am certain: even if the heads of all the communal organisations in the country come together and ask for social harmony and peace, it will make very little difference.

The opposition has accused Modi of hate speech against Muslims, and India’s election commission – the independent authority tasked with holding the country’s polls – has sent a warning to the BJP party chief about the PM’s comments. Election laws do not allow the overt use of religion to garner votes. But Modi has denied that he engaged in hate speech.

During an election rally on April 21 in the western state of Rajasthan, Modi claimed that if the Congress party came to power, it would distribute the country’s wealth among Muslims. “When they were last in power, the Congress said that Muslims have the first right to the nation’s resources. What does that mean? If they come to power, that means they will collect all the wealth. And who will they give it to? Those who have more children. To infiltrators.”

 Modi has previously used the trope of Muslims having a particularly high reproductive rate. In 2002, after deadly anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat, where he was chief minister at the time, he faced questions over his government’s failure to support relief camps for victims, which were mostly set up by non-profits and Muslim groups. In a campaign rally at the time, Modi had suggested that such relief camps could become “baby-producing centres”, and how for “some people”, that could mean a family of as many as 25 children.

After the prime minister’s Economic Advisory Committee released a report on May 7, suggesting that the share of Hindus in India’s population had declined by 7.8 percent between 1950 and 2015, and the Muslim share had grown by 43.2 percent, BJP leaders amplified suggestions that Hindus in the country would be in danger if the opposition came to power