The rise of Hindu supremacists – what is a legitimate citizen?

Big moral question these days, this business of who a legitimate citizen of India is. As fate would have it, as the super-Hindu government fucks up over and over, Muslims are among those who shine. Given the kind of publicity they get, one would imagine that Muslims are the sole saviors of India – almost as a corollary to the Hindutva government in the state being its current biggest clusterfuck. Of course, it isn’t true. How a person responds when they see another in a moment of need is more about them as people than their religion. Of course, when callous disregard for human life is the norm, it seems like a dramatic flourish to show the actions of the biggest targets as worthier than those targeting them.

A few days ago, we saw the ruling party’s considerable voice be misused to persecute a doctor who did his best to contain the damage of a massive crisis born of criminal negligence in Gorakhpur’s Baba Raghav Das medical college. It is hardly the case that he was the only staff the hospital had, but he acted well under pressure and was appreciated by the distraught parents. Yesterday, in the aftermath of yet another clusterfuck emerging from the sheer incompetence and negligence of the Hindutva government in the center, saints injured in the Utkal Express accident managed to tell media that if it were not for Muslims, they would have died. One wonders at the saints who managed to notice the religion of their saviors even in the face of death.

In many ways, what is happening is clear. Uncomfortable with the unfair attitudes toward Muslims, those who see them for the hate speech that they are, are trying to shame the Hindutva supremacists into seeing that those they support are responsible for deaths due to incompetence and neglect over and over, while the Muslims they like to find fault with are saving lives within those tragedies too. There is a catch. Hindutva extremists do not feel shame if it is pointed out that they made false accusations about Muslims. They make false accusations about Muslims routinely and on purpose. One would imagine that this works toward acknowledging the “other side” of Muslims, but in reality, it elevates absurd nonsense to the respect of an argument made in a logical debate that requires answering.

Now here is the problem. In acknowledging the “other side”, you end up legitimizing the nonsensical and rabid first side. This is a mirror of the technique that was used to whitewash Modi from the “butcher of Gujarat” to “Vikas purush”. Tenders on Gujarat government funds for reporting “news” that showcased the “development” in Gujarat – public funds openly used for paid news, while ignoring its ongoing horrendous human development aspects. Then trolls were unleashed to target individual journalists and dissenting voices with these pieces of propaganda in hand to “prove” that critics of Modi were showing only “one side” of the picture. Cornered over and over, the journalists started exerting caution about what they said on social media. They started being carefully “neutral” and “including the other side” of the story to avoid being called out in public by angry e-mobs.

Of course, it is a head fake. There is no “other side” to hatred being wrong. There is no “other side” to crimes being wrong. There is no such thing as “putting your finger in an electrical socket is bad, but you can do it on Tuesdays and it won’t harm”. The Hindutva right invents these “other sides” out of thin air at convenience.

But faced with a barrage of propaganda, many were fooled into thinking Modi was innocent and targeted by vested interests. Surely all his desperate pleas to show Gujarat’s prosperity were the signs of a man sincerely into development? Well, we saw the sincerity about development over the last three years first hand. Random people were put up to promise grand “deals” in Vibrant Gujarat summits and the lack of the deals materializing wasn’t reported. Carefully concerted media efforts ensured that the fake news plants out-shouted the expose and prevailed.

Today, we have the opposite. Where that was an effort to cover up reality, after this government came to power, what we see is an effort to invent a reality – where only those loyal to the BJP have a right to live in India. Everyone else can go to Pakistan. Intoxicated on dreams of disenfranchising people they dislike, bhakts couldn’t care less if nothing useful is actually delivered to them. The intoxication of power over another’s safety means they are important people, right? Supporting the right man, so they are important people. They decide who has permission to live in India and who doesn’t.

Every day the Muslims prove themselves worthy of belonging to the country they were born. “Jeene do becharon ko, kisi ki jaan bachayenge kal.” Hindutva’s biggest supremacist achievement. A default of half the country as being unworthy of belonging in the country for some reason or the other. If detesting the ruling party were enough to strip someone of citizenship, India would have become Hindutva free in the 60 years of Congress rule they keep harping about. It is fine to detest the government and you are still an Indian with complete right to being in this country. What is going on is basically thugs trying to attack people and make them flee.

“Muslims are a threat to Hindus!”

Strive to show how they save lives and establish the norm by submitting exceptions to scrutinize.

“Dalits are unworthy”

Showcase their achievements or competence and prove it by providing exceptions to the rule.

The TV channels that served by looking the other way are now serving by scrutinizing the targets of one political party that has never ruled India for any significant period and pretending it is the whole of India.

This too is a head fake. And the more you engage with it, the more you feed it, the more it grows. There is no such thing as Muslims being inherently criminal. There is no such thing as dalits being inherently unclean. It is all the propaganda of supremacists trying to disenfranchise everyone except themselves to become the biggest bullies on the block. The answer to this isn’t posting links about individual Muslims for them to peer at and go, “ok, this one may be all right, but most Muslims are criminals”. The answer isn’t posting links about dalit achievements so that they can go “ok, this one may be clever, but otherwise they are too stupid to achieve anything on merit”. There is no actual argument here that you are refuting. It is the chest thumping of bullies forcing you to play by their rules.

Sure, admire Muslims if they do something good, just like you’d admire Hindus or anyone else, but admire them for their deeds, not an accident of birth for being born into a specific religion and thus serving as a convenient example to answer a fictitious requirement. Admire the work of dalits for its own sake. There is no need to “prove” their worthiness. There is nothing inherently unworthy about them. I’ll tell you why.

When you point out individual examples like rare gems, you’re seeing the gems, but it is also an unintended “rare” being conveyed. There is nothing rare about Muslims being nice people or dalits achieving something. They are people, just like everyone else. They have their good, bad, achievers, good-for-nothings and everything in between. Don’t fall for this nonsense and start proving that they have good qualities, as though if they didn’t, their dienfranchisement was right.

Get this straight. There is no quality control test for remaining a legitimate citizen. A citizen is a legitimate citizen no superior or inferior to other citizens unless there is a formal procedure revoking the citizenship. Just look at the chest thumping monuments to proud refusal to coexist – would they qualify as good members of any place that wanted to stay whole? If they are citizens without a problem, why would people minding their own business not be?

No one has to deserve being a citizen. Just look at all the privileged idiots proudly showcasing ignorance and bigotry and still citizens. It isn’t only meritorious dalits or life-saving Muslims who need respect. All citizens are equal under law and they all have same value.

Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking otherwise. There is nothing to prove here.