MxMIndia

Tag: VHP

  • No point being disingenuous with "this is not the India we voted for", writes Ranjona Banerji

    This is the India we voted for…

     

     

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Ranjona BanerjiThere are a number of connected but confused narratives running around the Indian media at the moment. Some newsrooms and TV channels try to cover the sectarian violence breaking out in various parts of the country by looking at “both sides”. Others focus on one side or the other. And even others present the violence and hatred as a distraction from other things happening, like for instance, the economy. Actually, scratch that “happening” and replace it with “not happening”.

     

    I was genuinely shocked to read a 50-word edit in The Print which actually named Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and the BJP while commenting on the sectarian violence. This is a new one for Shekhar Gupta’s Print which is usually careful at the way it butters its bread. Mild, mild, criticism of the Emperor and his court is the best it can usually manage:

     

    “Religious processions aimed to provoke, angry slogans, stone-hurling and communal riots – this was the pattern of the old India we thought we had left behind. Obviously not. It’s back with a vengeance under Modi-Shah BJP. An immediate course correction is needed. This isn’t the new India people voted for.”

     

    You may legitimately argue that this isn’t any sort of criticism at all. But you need to see it in context. So far, The Print, like so many others, has ducked from even naming “Modi-Shah BJP” for any problems created by a government over the past eight years. Almost everyone else has been to blame, especially any policies set down by Jawaharlal Nehru before he died in 1964. You may think I’m being facetious but you would be wrong. The pusillanimity of the Indian public intellectual and Indian journalist and commentator is truly award-winning stuff.

     

    Hindu mobs have been on a bigger rampage this year than over the past eight years cumulatively. And they have been ably assisted by the police, governments and dare I say it, the judiciary. It is evident that a new directive has been sent out from the RSS HQ at Nagpur that targeting Muslims is the goal for 2022.

     

    But for the media, it is all about “both sides”. Let’s compare then. The Uttar Pradesh police arrested two Muslim boys – minors – for listening to Pakistani songs. Listening to music is not a crime but it is a crime when the police have been instructed that Muslims have to be tortured at any cost. Compare the severity of this action by the UP police to the soft, gentle reaction of the Delhi Police after an open threat from the RSS accessory, the VHP:

    https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/will-launch-battle-against-delhi-police-if-any-action-is-taken-against-our-activists-vishwa-hindu-parishad/cid/1861270

     

    We know that the Delhi Police will now do practically nothing to the VHP, just some lip service because as The Print said: “Modi-Shah BJP”.

     

    If I was a half-baked public intellectual, I would interpret The Print’s edit as a possible shift within the RSS from “Modi-Shah BJP” to another version of the BJP. Do not get fooled by this. The RSS is the RSS. The names will change. But the ideology will not. Nitin Gadkari may well be pulled out once again as a man who makes things happen (cuts down forests to build roads) and not quite a rioter in spite of being a core RSS person. This is all smoke and mirrors.

     

    The “both sides” media takes its cue from former PM AB Vajpayee’s “who threw the first stone” justification for the Gujarat 2002 riots under Modi’s watch as CM. That is, “Hindus should not have shouted provocative slogans but don’t forget that Muslims then threw stones and that’s why the MP government had no option but to demolish the home of an armless Muslim man for throwing stones”. Chuck in a few “allegedlys” and “reportedlys” and you’ve covered your bases by which I mean backside.

     

    The “distraction” media also hangs from a zipwire. It tries to acknowledge that Muslims are being targeted but does not want to upset “Modi-Shah BJP” too much either. It tells us that murdering a few people here and there is bad for India because it stops us all from getting rich. Something like that.

     

    I have completely ignored that section of the media – and it is enormous – which tells its customers that Muslims are entirely to blame and Hindus are only doing what they should have centuries ago. To me, these are criminals and not journalists, and in another world, they would have been shut down. In this world, armless Muslims have their homes demolished on trumped up charges of throwing stones, young Muslim women have scarves torn from their faces and Muslim boys are arrested for listening to music.

     

    The upshot is, and this is what the media as whole fails miserably, that “Modi-Shah BJP” plus their puppet-masters the RSS will not be acknowledged as the architects of our destruction.

     

    No point being disingenuous with “this is not the India we voted for”.

    We all know that this is precisely the India every bigot voted for.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia every Tuesday and Friday. Her views here are personal

     

  • We saw how today’s media celebrated when the Supreme Court handed the land to the destroyers of the mosque to build a Ram temple in 2019, especially our friends in television, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Nation’s Shame, and Now?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    “The scenes will return, like deranged ghosts, to haunt those of us who were at the graveside to witness the burial of a secular dream. The screams of exultation with each blow of a pickaxe, each thrust of a rod, each dome that came crashing down…

    “3 p.m. Sadhvi Rithambara starts singing and dancing and, as if in a trance, repeats over and over again a mesmeric exhortation: “Ek dhakka aur do, Babri Masjid tor do” (Give another shove, and tear down the mosque). A village lad from Kanpur district rushes past with a piece of brick held aloft like a trophy. “These are Babar’s bones,” he shouts in unholy glee…

    “A red cloud of dust settles on the rubble, all that remains of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid shrine. And, all that remains of the myth of Hindu tolerance.”

    These are excerpts from Dilip Awasthi’s report, in India Today magazine, on the demolition of the Babri Masjid, December 6, 1992.

     

    The magazine cover read: “Nation’s Shame”, as I was reminded by my former boss Inderjit Badhwar on Twitter, who was then editor of India Today. He now runs India Legal and more.

     

    I only use India Today as an example to demonstrate that 1992 was a different India, for the media at least. You can compare this report to India Today as it is now, as well as to its TV spin-offs to see the change for yourselves. 1992 was 28 years ago. A whole generation and more have grown up in between and never known what that India was. A whole media generation and more does not know what the media was. No relentless 24-hour news television. No internet. No social media. Those who could, watched the demolition on the BBC World Service. But there were witnesses.

    A special CBI court on September 30, 2020 acquitted all the 32 accused in the Babri Masjid demolition, including the LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi. The judge said there was no conspiracy and the demolition was not “pre-planned”. The CBI put forward 351 witnesses and 600 documents as evidence, apparently not good enough. The judge however did say that the demolition was an “egregious violation of the rule of law”.

    Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan, who led the commission of inquiry into the demolition from 1992 and submitted his report in 2009, said this to Indian Express on September 30, 2020: “I found it was a civil conspiracy, I still believe in it. From all the evidence produced before me, it was clear that the Babri Masjid demolition was meticulously planned… I remember Uma Bharti categorically took responsibility for it. It was not an unseen force that demolished the mosque, human beings did it,”

    He also said his “findings were correct, right, honest, and free from fear or any other bias”.

    “For posterity, it is a report that will provide an honest account of what took place and how. It will be part of history.”

     

    According to Justice Liberhan’s report, the accused had either actively or passively supported the demolition.

    https://indianexpress.com/article/india/justice-liberhanbabri-masjid-demolition-6657370/lite/?__twitter_impression=true

    Between then and now, between the action and the decision, the changes to India’s population, sense of self, of identity, and to India’s media have been incalculable and not all for the better. The fact that the media itself now sees the likes of LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and the planners and implementers of his Rath Yatra and Ram Janmabhoomi movement to be comparatively benign speaks to how much we forget and choose to forget. The comparison is made to Narendra Modi and Amit Shah as the fount of Hindu majoritarian hatred. But they are only the inheritors of a tradition laid down long before their time in power. Even the 2002 Gujarat riots when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat happened under the watch of AB Vajpayee as Prime Minister of India and his deputy, Advani.

    The role of Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena in the demolition and the subsequent riots in Bombay cannot be forgotten either.

    Already however, you will find from within the media itself, the blame being laid on the Congress government in power at the Centre in 1992 and PV Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister. And on Rajiv Gandhi who as Prime Minister opened the locks of the mosque to allow Hindu prayers. This blame cannot be escaped. But it is a sideshow compared to the RSS’s Hindutva agenda carried out by the BJP, VHP, Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena and all those of the “mob” that did the actual demolition.

    In the Indian Express article linked above, there is a photograph of the BJP’s Uma Bharti and Murli Manohar Joshi celebrating the demolition. It is possible that the CBI’s investigation was full of loopholes. But whatever the “mob” did that day, not all the acquitted actually wept with sorrow. Many were extremely happy at the actions of their own “kar sevaks” as we can see.

    We saw how today’s media celebrated when the Supreme Court handed the land to the destroyers of the mosque to build a Ram temple in 2019, especially our friends in television.

    You could replay that 1992 India Today headline for the media now: Nation’s Shame.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays, except this week because it’s a ‘no edition day’ tomorrow. Her views here are personal. She can be reached via Twitter at @ranjona