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Mainstream, VOL LVIII No 10 New Delhi, February 22, 2020

Anti-Muslim Tirade: Foot Soldiers and Masterminds

Friday 28 February 2020, by Humra Quraishi

#socialtags

MUSINGS

Why arrest only the foot soldiers, when the actual masterminds sit untouched. The Hindutva rulers who insist on heaping provocative, threatening, communal, gutter-abusive taunts! They are part and parcel of the political machinery!

Yes, today it’s the likes of Anurag Thakurs, Kapil Mishras, Parvesh Vermas. Yesterday there were many more — mind you, none of them even bothering to somewhat camouflage or conceal their hate for the ‘other’. All out in the open!

At the very start of 2019, Ananth Kumar Hegde came up with this revengeful one liner—“Hands that touch Hindu girls should be chopped off!” Earlier it was this particular provocative sentence from him: “Till Islam is in the world there can be no end to terrorism!” Yet he remains untouched.

In 2018, Right-wing MP, Vinay Katiyar, went to say loud and clear, Indian Muslims ought to go to Pakistan! In 2017, Sakshi Maharaj and several others unleashed along the strain that Muslim men marry four times and with that produce 40 children! In 2016, the communal speeches of the BJP’s MP from Fatehpur Sikri, Babu Lal, and also that of the BJP’s MP from Agra, Ram Shankar Katheria, who was then Minister of State in the HRD Ministry (GOI), made news and then nothing very much. Nah, no ‘terrorising’ charges against the duo, even as they seemed hell-bent on publicly humiliating the minority community, going to the extent of calling Muslims ‘demons ...descendants of Ravana!’ Then Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti went to the extent of heaping abuses along the Haramzada strain for the entire Muslim community ...Not to be overlooked Sangeet Som’s communal speeches in Western Uttar Pradesh, threatening to once again ignite violence in that belt (if you recall, Sangeet Som had been implicated in the Muzaffanagar riots of 2013 and he was also accused of stoking communal tensions in Dadri’s Bisada village after the killing of Mohammed Akhlaq.) Within days of that came in Vijay Goel’s comments on the hijab! Also, the BJP’s MLA from the Goshamahal constituency in Hyderabad, T. Raja Singh, could get away even after mouthing death threats to all those who come in way of the Ram temple construction. “If there is anybody who has the guts to say he would stop the construction of Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, let him come forward. I challenge that I will behead him...Until now, Uttar Pradesh had witnessed timid governments. Now, you have the powerful government. Baap ki sarkaar!” ...And just days after declaring that India would become a Hindu nation by 2024, Uttar Pradesh BJP MLA Surendra Singh came up with his next communal onslaught—those who desisted from saying ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ are Pakistanis!

I could go on ...the list is long, of today’s rulers who seem hell-bent on threatening the very existence and survival of the Indian Musalmaan in the country. Though the likes Sangeet Soms, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyotis, Giriraj Singhs, Katiyars, Sakshi Maharajas, Togadias, Hegdes, Yogi Adityanaths have been openly and blatantly threatening, abusing, taunting sections of the minority community, yet they move around all too freely and gleefully!

Another Disturbing Dimension

A whole newgeneration of Muslim haters are getting trained, nurtured, tutored! Now coming out one by one, to attack and kill amidst chanting of—‘Goli maro salon ko!”

I have been writing about the arms training camps organised by the Hindutva brigades for its cadres. But before that children are exposed to communal text at the school level...Several years back, I had first heard details of this, when former Delhi University Professor Nalini Taneja talked in an open forum of the communally-laced, twisted history taught in the RSS-run schools. In fact, she had even read aloud several of the provocative passages from the text-books taught in the RSS-run schools... poison dripping from each one of those sentences, enough to inculcate hatred in young minds for the ‘other’—the Muslims of the country. As an activist summed it up—“Their history texts are nothing but unadulterated illustration of the RSS view of history and use of history for its sectarian agenda—Aryans are the original inhabitants of India, Indian civilisation is essentially Aryan civilisation, the ancient period of history when Hindu rulers ruled was golden and India had enormous advantages during this period. The coming of the Mughals brought darkness, cruelty... Hedgewar, Golwalkar, Savarkar are amongst the greatest freedom fighters. Muslims as a community are traitors. Hinduism is synonymous with nationalism. Also, caste, child marriages and sati are defended. Muslims, Christians and Parsis are called foreigners. Urdu is referred to as a foreign language.”

And in 2016, during an interview given to me, the former IIT Mumbai Professor, Ram Puniyani, detailed the teachings in the RSS-run schools. To quote him—“RSS has single-teacher schools, Ekal Vidyalaya and bigger ones as Shishu Mandirs. The pattern of authori-tarianism between teachers-taught, senior- junior is very rigid. The main values which are promoted are those of conformism. Along with this the books in these schools are structured around the mythical history of superiority of Hinduism, that all was well with Hindus till Muslim aggressors came, caste is presented as having given stability to society, Muslim Kings are presented as cruel and so on. The hatred for religious minorities is drilled into the children.”

And Yet Another Extremely Disturbing Dimension is this—Double Standards
all the Way! 

Not taking you back into history but till about last month—January 2020—when the likes of Anurag Thakurs, Kapil Mishras, ParveshVermas openly threatened my very existence. They abused me, they called me names, they wanted me killed—Gooli maaro salon ko...—yet what action on them! Only stopped from the star campaigning! Who is the establishment of the day trying to hoodwink! Are we so silly and stupid to be taken in by all this farce and gimmickry!

They should have been arrested and stopped from the fighting the elections!

Why should I, an Indian Muslim, be called a traitor and a rapist and a bastard and a terrorist by the rulers of the day! These men—yes, please do call them terrorists if you please—remain untouched. They are not arrested. They continue to terrorise me yet they are not declared terrorists! What’s going on!

In a damning contrast—the police picks up and arrests a JNU student leader Sharjeel Imam, on the basis on a video footage (not even sure whether it was fake or morphed or planted or doctored or fabricated!) and some clippings provided by particular pro-Modi government television channels! On that basis, Imam, a student leader, is even declared terrorist by the godi media! This godi media has already come out with its declaration! Ruined a student scholar’s entire life by planting and pinning that typical terror tag on him!

Another blatant case is that of the particular Muslim management school in Karnataka’s Bidar—where the entire school staff and management and children and even parents were subjected to sheer harassment by the police force because of that one play they staged where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was criticised in the backdrop of the CAA. Seditions charged for that!

And here in this Capital city, New Delhi, hundreds and thousands are getting abused and criticised and threatened every single day ...threatened to be riddled with bullets and killed and raped and done away with, and yet nothing against those ‘star’ Hindutva culprits! They are so very blatantly and ever so constantly terrorising you and me, but they are left untouched—after all, they are today’s political rulers of Hindoostan! They can get away with anything! Double standards holding sway as never before!

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