Silence is culpable
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. ~ George Orwell
India has changed. I hate to say it, but that is the truth. It is no longer the nation I grew up in. The question is, ‘Do we want to continue to remain silent and allow this to happen? Or are we going to do something about it?’ The greatest strength of the corrupting forces is the silence of the good people.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politic? Vanity asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; But one must take it because it is right.”
That time has come. It has come for each one of us in India and for each one of us who calls himself or herself, ‘Indian’. We are not at a crossroad. We are at the brink of the precipice. If we go over, there will be no return. I am not sure that we are, even now as I speak, able to reverse what we allowed to be started. But I don’t want to die without having tried. I debated long and hard with myself about writing this article. ‘What is the use? Who cares about what I say? Let people choose whatever they want? Who will change because of one more article? After all there are several people today who are writing more or less the same things.’ I said all these things to myself and then concluded that it is not about them. It is about me. In that place, my heart is at rest.
Today the plight of the Muslims, Dalits and Christians is that they seem to have been all but abandoned by the three pillars of democracy, the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. And this, for no fault of their own, except that they happen to believe in a religion different from the dominant one, i.e. Hindutva Hinduism. The final nail in the coffin is the Press and Media, which is supposed to be the conscience of the nation. It is the single most powerful force of civil society which can raise a voice against government action or apathy and ask questions to the highest offices of power. In India today, both (with honorable exceptions) have reduced themselves to the role of being ad agencies for the corporation-bureaucracy-politician nexus. They sing their tune. They don’t report news. They state opinions as fact. Their entire effort seems to be to support the divisive, hate filled mindset, that is being propagated and is being used to win elections. Hate sells. And is being bought by our society in general. The general profusion of hatred and its open expression with impunity is to be placed squarely at the door of our so-called national media.
Finally, we have an opposition which busy in fighting among themselves. An opposition which is tainted by corruption, nepotism and partisanship like everyone else. Yes, there are minor exceptions. But they are minor. They show what can be done, if there is a will. But is there a will? In the last four years we have not seen any evidence of the opposition parties coming together on matters of principle to push strongly for change. Much more energy and heat seems to be expended in fighting for seats and shooting themselves in the foot in the process. Their chief claim seems to be, ‘At least we are not as bad as them!’ That is not a particularly inspiring slogan if you ask me. I know someone needs to be voted in. I know I must say, ‘VOTE FOR………………Because they are so inspiring.’ But sorry, I can’t. No wonder I am not a politician. I am a simple fellow trying to make sense of a world that seems to have gone insane. My point is, if you want to lead, you must differentiate. You must be able to say, ‘We are different for this wonderful reason.’ Is that the case here? Sorry to be undiplomatic.
Another very disturbing issue is that this is eroding our co-existential culture. This is as true in our cities as it is in rural India. Segregation in South Africa was an officially endorsed policy under Apartheid. So, it could be fought and was eventually abolished. In India our Apartheid is not officially endorsed but unofficially supported by what is in our hearts and it is equally effective. With one big benefit; that because it is not ‘official’ it can be conveniently denied when challenged. You can’t fight against something that doesn’t exist, can you? But proof is easy to find. Go to almost any Indian city and try to rent an apartment, pretending to be Muslim or Dalit. Just call yourself by a Muslim or Christian name and see what happens. We no longer live in mixed communities and therefore do not understand, appreciate or value each other. Unlike in my childhood. Therefore, it’s easier to be prejudiced and to stereotype, to demonize and hate. It is a self-reinforcing, vicious cycle that can have only one end.
In one line, what is happening is the ‘ghettoization of India’. Hate speech is the means by which this is being achieved. What is happening today in India is not about Muslims or Dalits. It is about India. My motherland. Your motherland. It is not enough to chant Bharat Mata ki Jai, if we fail to stand up to defend our Mata. It is India crying out in pain and begging for help. It is time to stand up, stand shoulder to shoulder for the integrity of our nation. If we don’t recognize the nature of the beast and terminate it, it will devour us all. Not a single person in this country will be left untouched.
Kathua didn’t happen in isolation or overnight. It is the culmination of innumerable hate speeches, made and tacitly supported that created a mindset where a nephew and uncle invited each other to satisfy their lust on a poor 8-year-old girl. Is this our society today? Are you happy to be called a member of such a society? If your son starts a conversation planning to rape a girl and invites you to join him, are you ready for it? Sorry to be blunt but this conversation actually happened in the Kathua case, between and uncle and his nephew and they jointly violated an 8-year-old and that too inside a temple. So, is this about Hindus and Muslims? Or is this about our humanity itself?
In the Unnao and Kathua cases, the Government and the Prime Minister made a statement only after countrywide protests. The incident happened in January. The Government’s statement came in April. That statement too was not specifically directed against the perpetrators of the rape and murder of Asifa but was a general statement about the protection of women. Statistics of hate speech after the NDA has come to power show that hate speech has gone up 500%.
The reason is not hard to find. In behavioral science and training, whether it be of animals or humans, we call it ‘positive reinforcement’. This means that the person who adopts the ‘approved’ new behavior is allowed to taste its sweetness, so that in encourages him to do it again. In training hunting dogs, trainers allow them to eat from the kill, so that the dog is encouraged to kill again. Same is the case in training falcons. Same is the case in training humans, you reinforce the new behavior by allowing them to enjoy it or by giving them prizes for it. This is what has been happening in India.
You may challenge me and point to all the marches and demonstrations, all the status pictures changed in WhatsApp, FB and so on, that are now happening all over the world, demanding #JusticeforAsifa. All the clever Tweets and Snapchat and Instagram messages. All the screaming for the death penalty for the rapists, some frankly very creative ways suggested to inflict maximum pain and suffering. But hold on a minute. After all, didn’t we see all this outrage in the case of Nirbhaya? And then? Did attacks on women end with that or with the law that was enacted? You know the answer. Not only did attacks not end, they increased. So, what’s the reason to believe that this will be any different? After all, Asifa’s parents are poor people, nomads to boot, who probably never vote. The rapists belong to the Ruling Class and have powerful supporters, including law makers, law enforcers and lawyers. Asifa’s parents have one gutsy woman lawyer. I hope she proves to be someone who can change the path of destiny; not of Asifa’s family, but of my nation.
To prove my point above about how after all the shouting has died down, we continue in our ways, here are some incidents of violence against women that have happened recently and continue to happen because we don’t care.
http://m.timesofindia.com/city/bengaluru/BJP-MLA-faces-rape-charge/articleshow/25456565.cms
http://zeenews.india.com/news/uttarakhand/former-bjp-leader-gets-life-term-in-rape-case_879518.html
http://m.timesofindia.com/city/raipur/Chhattisgarh-BJP-neta-raped-killed/articleshow/49707149.cms
Hate speech happens because it can happen. Because it is allowed, encouraged actively or tacitly. Because those who do it, know that they can get away with it and despite the stringent laws against it, they know that those laws are for the books but will never be applied to them. The enforcers of the law, the police, seem to have accepted the role of ‘lackey to the politician’ and are happy with it and IPC (Indian Penal Code) and CrPC (The Code of Criminal Procedure) be damned. Once again there are notable and honorable exceptions that prove the rule. You would have to be blindfolded, not to see this. As for our Constitution and what it guarantees, well, I don’t think you need me to explain that.
Here is an example of what I mean by creating a mindset of hatred.
Both Yogi Adityanath and Maharani Vijaya Raje Scindia can be seen sitting on the stage, while this man is calling upon Hindus to exhume dead Muslim women and rape them. Both remain silent. Silence is support. Silence in assent. Silence is culpable.
Question: Does this constitute hate speech? If so, what action was taken? We know that Yogiji was made the CM of UP. But was any action taken against the speaker?
Sadly, this is not the only such speech. There are dozens of such speeches, each more outrageous than the other by luminaries and leaders who are center stage. I am not talking here about some small-time village leader. I am talking about people who are seen and called ‘national leaders’. This has created a situation where hatred and its expression have become mainstream and are done without shame, because they are applauded. Here is one example:
As always, the comments are even more ‘interesting’. We have reached a stage today where someone not only openly says something like this, but it is condoned and supported also openly by others, some of whom are very prominent people in the leadership of the nation. I know some of you are going to say, ‘If D. Trump can do it, why not others?’ My answer is, ‘D. Trump is not my Gold Standard. Is he yours?’ We need to decide what kind of nation we want ours to be. We are not a part of any other nation, be it Pakistan or America or anything else. We are a sovereign nation and we must take our own decisions. In this case, ‘we’ means, ‘Hindu’. India is a Hindu majority nation. It could have been a theocracy on Day-1 if the Hindus wanted it to be. Instead it chose to be secular with equal respect for everyone. Something has changed since then. We know what that is. The question is, ‘Do we want this change?’ If the answer is, ‘Yes’, then I have nothing more to say. If the answer is, ‘No!’, then I submit to you, my Hindu brothers and sisters, it is in your hands. Because you are the majority. Majoritarianism is a non-inclusive ideology. While a majority that cares for, respects, appreciates and protects minorities is the surest sign of civilization. We need to make that choice.
We are progressively seeing a situation where those who raise a voice and have the courage to stand up to the divisive forces of extremism are targeted, harassed and silenced. Currently, the brave lawyer (Hindu) who is defending the victim of the Kathua case, is a case in point.
And she is not the only one. We all know about the Gauri Lankesh murder. But she was not the only one either.
Is this the nation we want to create? Is this the nation we want ours to become?
To give the devil his due, this is not new. And it is not something that the BJP or RSS invented. True, they are in the driving seat now and so must answer for what happens during their watch. But just to make a list of this litany of shame, we have the Gujarat Riots of 1969, followed by the Sikh Riots of 1984, then the Bhagalpur Riots in Bihar of 1989, then the Bombay Riots of 1992/93, then once again Gujarat Riots of 2002. One common factor in all of them and the numerous incidents of violence against minorities; the perpetrators always walk away, scot free. Positive reinforcement works.
In Kathua, the Bakarwala tribe has moved from the region out of fear. Which is exactly what the perpetrators wanted and that should concern the law as much as the act of rape itself. It was a premeditated act of aggression with the aim of creating terror. So, it was a terrorist act. Let us see what action is taken. The underlying narrative we need to look at is something that is happening in many places in the country, more so in Assam. A demographic purge is happening with the idea to move minorities out, so that the vote swing factor is canceled out. The fall out is that these people move to areas where ‘their own people are’. You would think this strengthens the community there who can now pick their MLA. This in practice creates one minority MLA in an assembly of opposition, rendering him ineffective and a target of government apathy.
Here is another case, which happened as we speak:
Interestingly, you will notice, and this is the case in almost every such incident, all this violence, looting and killing is done in the presence of the police. Nobody can accuse the police of not coming in time. They always seem to be present when minorities are subjected to violence. They bear witness while those who indulged in the looting and terrorizing, walk away with their loot, free. Is this the role of the police? Or is their role to stop the violence and bring the perpetrators to justice? Well, you should ask your friendly, neighborhood policeman or woman. I am not one of them. Just for the record, the police and the bureaucracy are empowered by the Constitution of India, no less, to stand up against any illegal instructions of politicians and implement the Rule of Law by the book. They don’t need to wait for directions. And they don’t need to succumb to illegal instructions. But they do. Why?
As for the courts, let me just mention three prominent and most recent cases and leave you to figure out what is happening.
Good to know that the one hundred Muslims died of natural causes and nobody killed them. Or maybe they didn’t die at all.
Great relief to know that there was no blast in Makkah Masjid. Or maybe it was an act of God, because it appears that no human being did it. But why did the judge resign immediately after giving this judgment? Ask Pontius Pilate why he washed his hands after giving his judgment.
Finally, let me share with you this totally amazing case of how saving lives and taking them seems to be the same. Be careful when you next have a pressing urge to save any lives. Who knows what kind of soup that may land you in.
https://youtu.be/dBL5pVYSmsY Interestingly, even the parents of the children whose lives he saved are silent, when the savior is paying the price of his soft heart and devotion to duty.
And of course, we expect that little Asifa will get justice because we run a hashtag campaign #JusticeforAsifa. Where is the boundary between hope and delusion? Between optimism and fantasy?
Just a moment. Who is this mob? Are these trained mercenaries brought in from somewhere? Are they thugs from Chambal? Are they professional killers and highway robbers? No, they are not. Go look in the mirror to meet one of them. They are you. They are me. Look at those around your dining table in your home. Look at those worshiping with you in your place of worship. Look at those who work with you in your office. Look at those you deal with in the market. You are looking at mob members, who at the drop of a hat, have no compunctions about breaking and entering the homes of their neighbors, raping their daughters, looting their hard-earned savings, destroying their lives and laughing all the way home, laden with the loot they accumulated. They do this because they can. They do this because there are no comebacks, no accountability, no punishment. As long as the victims are Muslim, Christian or Dalit. How does this happen? Remember this question every time you hear a derogatory comment, a curse word, a snide remark, a nasty joke, with a Muslim or a Dalit as its butt.
That is how it happens. Hatred is nurtured in our homes, in our hearts and is ingested with mother’s milk in our cradles. That is where it must be fought and stopped and replaced with love, with acceptance, with appreciation of difference. It must be fought because all hatred is fire. Fire burns everything and everyone. And the result is always ash. Remember that the religion of a murderer is cancelled when he/she commits or instigates murder. Remember that the religion of the victim doesn’t make them ‘guilty’ and ‘deserving’ of being murdered. Remember that when we support a murderer or a rapist, we are supporting our own murderers and rapists in the future. Because injustice to one is injustice to all. All murder, rape, plunder, all acts of aggression are wrong, no matter who does them or to whom they are done. That is the only principle which can keep us from going over the brink, into the void from which there is no return. Your silence makes you culpable. By remaining silent you are supporting the crime. So, why are you silent? Don’t tell me. Stand in front of a mirror and tell him/her.
Many people tell me, ‘The vast majority of Hindus are not like this. They don’t want extremism to succeed. They don’t hate Muslims and don’t support Hindutva ideology.’ My answer is, ‘Really?’ The fact is that all those we see protesting against the extremist agenda are the ‘usual suspects’; Hindu socialites, intellectuals, artists, Dalit activits, Christian priests, leftists, liberals and the odd white-capped or burkha-clad Muslim. I sound dismissive, but I am not. I bow to them in reverence and love and undying gratitude for having the courage to stand up when nobody else is doing. I am mentioning this only to show that they are not the so-called vast majority. So where is this vast majority of Hindus who allegedly believe in human rights, equality, freedom of religion, gulab jamoons and rasagollas? I don’t see them. Do you?
Extremist orators seem to be fond of drawing parallels between Indian Muslims and Jews in Hitler’s Germany, casting themselves proudly in the role of Hitler and his Nazis. The question we (normal, garden variety, peaceful, moral, kind, compassionate, cosmopolitan, educated, suave, fashionable and erudite Hindus) need to ask is, ‘By inference does that not put us in the role of the silent German majority which allowed concentration camps to be established, gas chambers to be built and six million, innocent Jewish men, women and children, old and young, even babies, to be exterminated? It was this majority that would never have dreamt of defining itself as ‘murderous, genocide supporters’. But they were. Hitler, after all, didn’t kill a single Jew, at least to my knowledge. Yet six million died for no fault other than that they believed in another religion than that of the Germans. And remember that they were also German citizens. Yet it was their own government, sworn to protect all citizens equally, which put them in concentration camps and then in gas chambers. Why? Because their friends, compatriots, fellow citizens chose to remain silent. Silence is culpable.
In the words of Castillo, the Guatemalan poet and activist:
One day the apolitical intellectuals of my country
will be interrogated by the simplest of our people.
They will be asked what they did when their nation died out
slowly, like a sweet fire, small and alone.
No one will ask them about their dress, their long siestas after lunch,
no one will want to know about their sterile combats with “the idea of the nothing”
no one will care about their higher financial learning.
They won’t be questioned on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust when someone within them begins to die the coward’s death.
They’ll be asked nothing about their absurd justifications,
born in the shadow of the total life.
On that day the simple men will come.
Those who had no place in the books and poems of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered their bread and milk, their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars, who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them, and they’ll ask:
“What did you do when the poor suffered, when tenderness and life burned out of them?”
Apolitical intellectuals of my sweet country, you will not be able to answer.
A vulture of silence will eat your gut.
Your own misery will pick at your soul.
And you will be mute in your shame.
(Otto rene Castillo,
Guatemalan Poet and activist)
Once again, Hitler’s gas chambers didn’t happen in isolation. They were the ultimate culmination of centuries of oppression of Jews all over Europe and Russia. They were the ultimate expression of centuries of silence of ‘good’ Russian people, French people, German people, English people, Austrian people and many such people all over Europe; all good, religious, moral (or so they would have defined themselves) and kind people, for whom, killing a Jew or remaining silent when someone did it in their name, didn’t cast any aspersions on their own morality, kindness or religion. They would have gladly risked their lives to save a puppy caught in a house on fire but would also stand silently and watch while a Jewish man or child was set on fire. That is exactly where we, the vast and silent majority of Hindus, stand in India today. If India is to change, we Hindus must take the lead and change it. The minorities can’t do it alone without our support. We Hindus must stand with them, around them and ahead of them. My question is, do we want to continue to stand and watch until we are ourselves engulfed? Or do we want to drive the change we want to see, by being it ourselves?
It will be salutary for those who draw parallels between Jews in Hitler’s Germany and Indian Muslims to consider two facts: Even Hitler and all his silent accomplices, couldn’t exterminate all the Jews in Germany and those who remained, came out of the trial by fire, tempered as hard as steel. And those who remained silent, perished with Hitler and his active companions, when Germany fell to Allied Forces in World War II. Being silent didn’t save them from the consequences of the actions of their compatriots.
I am clueless about how as an ordinary citizen of this country, I can raise a voice and be heard, so that action can be taken to save our society from going over the brink. Where do I raise a voice? Who is there to listen? Who has the authority and the will to bring about change? It seems today that we, as a people, have no self-respect, no principles, no values and no shame. You don’t like what I’ve said? So, prove me wrong.
The biggest lie that is peddled to us and which we swallow without examining it, is that our leaders are ‘our’ leaders. The reality is that our leaders are a different species, who manipulate and rule us, because we are easy to manipulate, and we collude in this manipulation. They are our leaders. That is how they become our leaders in this poor, blessed democracy of ours. By manipulation. We know this. We have suffered this, election after election. But we still fall for the same stories, the same lies, the same betrayal. The truth is that today everyone has failed us. Who’s us? You. Me. Your neighbor, your parents, my parents, your wife, my wife, your husband, my husband, your children, my children, one of whom called Asifa, died in unspeakable terror and agony. Why did she die? Because she was ours. If she’d been theirs’, she’d have had Z-class security.
But hold on a minute, just in case you forgot. Who pays for their security? Who gave them their status? Who pays their salaries? Who pays for them to live in the style they live in? Who pays for them to travel all over the world in the name of service to the nation?
YOU.
Big question to you, “How much longer do you want to continue to do this?
What can you do?
Ask questions:
- What’s the action being taken in the Asifa case? Are the culprits going to be hanged?
- What’s the action taken in the Unao case?
- Why is Dr. Kafeel, who saved the lives of 200 children, imprisoned?
- Why are the parents of those children silent?
- Why are all these great leaders of ours, silent in all these cases?
- What action has been taken in the Gauri Lankesh murder?
- And the many other murders of anyone who raised the voice of dissent?
- What action has been taken in the more than hundred cases of lynching by Gaurakshaks?
- What action has been taken for the numerous encounter killings by police? Extrajudicial killings. In one simple word, murder.
I can go on but won’t.
Meet each other as people, as human beings, not with your religious and caste labels. Meet in your localities, villages, buildings, offices. Tell each other your stories. And discover that it’s really the same story. We are one. We all want safety for our children, education, good affordable health care, food on the table, decent jobs, to be treated with dignity, to be respected for what we are. Same story whether we are Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Dalit, Christian, God fearing or Godless. Same story. So, what’s the fighting about?
Truly we’re not that stupid, right? Wrong. We are, that stupid. That’s why we are where we are, and they are where they are. We elect them, keep them, support them, pay for them and then they treat us like dirt. So, who is at fault?
Meet each other and ask these questions.
Believe me, it doesn’t matter a damn to you what my religion is or if I have any religion at all. And vice versa. What matters to both you and I, is whether we and our children have a future in this land? Our motherland.
Guess who decides that?
Wake up, take charge, enforce justice. Or keep moaning and groaning until the next Asifa or Nirbhaya or Kafeel. Except, then, the name might be your own or your daughter’s.
In the famous words of Pastor Neimoller who wrote about Hitler’s Germany”
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)
