For IndiaTomorrow.net, Mishab Irikkur and Abhay Kumar interacted with noted social activist Shabnam Hashmi at ANHAD’s office in Delhi on a wide range of issues. Here are excerpts.
Last month ANHAD prepared a report on the 100 days of Narendra Modi regime and the question of minorities. What can minorities, particularly Muslims, expect from Modi?
If anyone is under the delusion that social and economic conditions of minorities will improve under the Modi regime or they are going to be benefited in any way, he or she should study the past records of Modi and the Sangh Parivar more critically. Since his coming to power at the Centre there were more than 600 incidents of attacks on both Muslims and Christians. We have documented this in 100 Days under the New Regime: The State of Minorities in India – A Report published by ANHAD and edited by John Dayal. Every single riot is now created and there is a well-oiled mechanism, run by the RSS and its sister organisations that work through the year to systemically manufacture incidents of communal violence. They are being assisted by the police who are highly communalized and they play partisan role, targeting mostly Muslims.
Do you also see such mechanism working in Delhi’s Trilokpuri areas where situation has still not completely returned to normalcy?
I have been told that the police in Trilokpuri picked up nearly 50 young Muslims. They were beaten up and were even not given food. It was only after the intervention by activists like Kiran Shaheen that the court ordered that they should be fed. Lawyers and their relatives were not allowed to meet them. Worse still, Block No 15 of Trilokpuri, where mostly Muslims live was blocked by the police who did not allow anyone to enter. The police did a massive combing operation and did not let journalists go inside Block 15. News reaching us suggests that Muslims are undergoing atrocities. If minorities are not guaranteed a life with dignity and a life without fear by the government, then it inflicts the biggest harm to them. That is why I do not have any hope from the Modi government. As I hinted earlier, the sense of insecurity and fear created by a large number of attacks on Muslims and Christians including their Churches is likely to increase. It is high time we struggled for protecting the idea of India.
Are you worried about the fact that some of recent communal conflicts, as reported in media, were fought among Dalits / lower castes and Muslims, who are the most oppressed sections in Brahmanical social system? How much the RSS has been able to “saffronise” lower castes, particularly Dalits?
The term ‘Dalit’ is not simply a caste but a political category. Anyone who fights against caste system is a Dalit. Thus real Dalits cannot fight against Muslims. Those who are fighting against Muslims are a miniscule minority of their community and they have been saffronised by the RSS. The process of saffronization of lower castes has been going on for last two to three decades.
You have worked with the victims of 2002 Gujarat communal violence. Is it true that now the RSS, the VHP, and the BJP do not want to organise riots on such a massive scale, rather they want to keep it at a low intensity level so as to maintain the atmosphere of communal tension. In other words, do you see any shift in Hindu Right’ strategy about riots?
In the last few years, communal forces have changed their strategy. They are now going for low-intensity riots so that they may not be reported in media and the national or international attention could not be drawn to them. Even the locations of riots have shifted and now they are organised mostly in small places and rural areas with a view to creating and maintaining hatred among different communities and places, where people have lived in peace in the past. One should also keep in mind that the constructed image of Modi as the person standing for development (vikas), may be tainted if a large-scale violence, like 2002 Gujarat, breaks out in the country.
You have been leading campaigns against assaults on freedom of expression, communalisation of media and saffronisation of educations etc. Could you tell us more about them?
Let me begin with social media. My ‘Facebook’ page is followed by 5000 friends and some 9000 followers. Earlier whatever I used to post on my Facebook wall, it was liked by a large number of people. But today their likes have drastically gone down because people are frightened of a possible crackdown on them if they appear to be “anti-ruling classes”. Earlier in social media the presence of secular and communal contents was almost balanced but today the space is captured by communal forces. Increasingly, media is now owned and controlled by right-wing corporate forces. The point I want to stress is that the secular voices and dissents in social media have been drastically reduced to one tenth of what they had existed earlier. There is also an attempt to saffronise education. HRD Minister Smriti Irani is just a new kid on the scene.
Your critics have alleged that you are soft on the Congress and you tend to overlook its failures. How far is it true?
I have strong differences with the Congress on its economic policies but I disagree with Left critics including those of the CPM, who talk about maintaining equal distance from both the Congress and the BJP. I also disagree with the view that the Congress and the BJP are the same. I think the Congress does believe in secularism and democracy in principle while the BJP is anti-democratic and anti-secular. But it is also a fact that when it comes to practice and implementation, the Congress has many times failed to fulfill its promises. The reason behind this failure is the growth of communal consciousness among a large number of Congress’ leaders and cadres.
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Mishab Irikkur ([email protected]) and Abhay Kumar ([email protected]) are pursuing Ph.D at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
