THE MIND OF A MODI BHAKT: Part 1
Part – 1
On 24th October in an T20 world cup match between India and Pakistan played in Dubai Pakistan beat India by ten wickets. Notwithstanding the on-field camaraderie between Indian and Pakistani players, some Hindu fanatics who are also be identified as Modi Bhakts (by none other than a one-time Modi Bhakt Chetan Bhagat) could not take a defeat from Pakistan gracefully as would a normal human. They had to vent their frustration and that venting took its normal turn for Bhakts (but bizarre for normal people) in the form of assaulting Kashmiri students and trolling Mohammed Shami, the lone cricketer with a Muslim name in Indian team as responsible for India’s defeat. This response is bizarre for people with common sense because Indian cricket team has 11 players out of whom Shami is Muslim and the entire burden of India losing is placed on him. But the Bhakts would also have exhibited some bizarre behaviour if India had won due to Shami playing a key role. Certainly, they would have either praised the Modi supporter captain Virat Kohli or even Mr Modi himself for “making India great again” by teaching Pakistan a lesson. This example offers an inkling of how India’s Hindu fanatics or Bhakts think and act. Their skewed and irrational way of thinking and boorish manner of acting has turned India into a ugly place of bigotry, violence, and Islamophobia.
A more bizarre display of Bhakts’ cognitive dissonance and hatred for Muslims was evident recently in Gujarat as reported in thewire.in. To present it in its full nakedness here is what a 60 plus-year-old man shouted that Muslims should be beggars, not hotel owners, he meant it. He was part of a group of Bhakts who were protesting the inauguration of a hotel in Gujarat who two out of three owners are Muslim. These are his words:
“This is my country. America is not my country. If Muslims want to live in my country, they will have to say ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Whenever we ask them to”, he said, not taking into consideration that his son who lives in the US works for a Muslim-owned company as he furiously shouted anti-Muslim slogans.”
The man is so blind and deranged with rage against Muslims that he doesn’t see the contradictions in his stance where his own son lives in the US (a so-called Christian country) and works for a Muslim-owned company. But his father in Gujarat wants Muslims to starve and live as slaves of Hindus.
If this is not bizarre what else could be? For a normal mind this looks bizarre but not to the Bhakts. For them it’s not logic and reason that works. They are emptied of such human minimums, thanks to RSS and Hindutva hate syllabus implemented for over three decades under the “Kill Muslims” project implemented under Modi as chief minister and now offered full immunity as the Prime Minister of the country. The penetration of RSS’ poisonous Muslim hate syllabus is so deep and ubiquitous that it has robbed of all reason and humanity from the Bhakts. The composition of the group that was involved in the protest illustrates this. The group that sang Ram Bhajans, Ram Dhoons and sprinkled Ganga jal to “purify” the area had doctors, lawyers and students. They shouted: “This is a Hindu area. This hotel is owned by Muslim[s]. It is a blot on our Hindu culture to have this hotel here.” This is the fate of Muslims, a kind of systematic cleansing of Gujarat of Muslims, from setting foot into any area that the Bhakts claims to be Hindu. A kind of segregation of communities was forced on Muslims since Modi managed Gujarat riots of 2002 where a thousand Muslims were killed or burnt by Bhakts.
Such hatred and clamour for ethnic cleansing of Muslims is becoming a norm in India. Today, a Muslim can be treated in most heinous manner but the majority society, the law enforcement agencies, and even the courts don’t stand up against such bigotry and violence against Muslims. With the ongoing saga of the arrest of Aryan Khan to target Shah Rukh Khan and the Bollywood, a sphere where there is a significant Muslim presence and the propagation of secular ideology, who are not prepared to toe the RSS-Hindutva line this becomes even more clear. The following Facebook post says it all. The post shared extensively among and by the BJP supporting social media crowd that demands the boycott of movies made by the Muslim stars.
(Image courtesy: Social media)
The shocking part of the degeneration of Indian state machinery is that the ruling dispensation itself is involved in instigating riots and ethnic cleansing of Muslims.
But for normal people the behaviour and hatred seen in Bhakts is shocking. It is shocking for its irrationality and inhumanity. Keeping in mind Gujarati sensitivity the above-mentioned hotel serves only vegetarian food. And yet that is not enough for the blind and hate filled Bhakts as is clear from their following comments: “This hotel is owned by Muslims. It is a sin for us to see them also.” The owners of the hotel are Gujaratis (one Patel and two Muslims) who look and dress alike and none can distinguish them as Hindu or Muslim. And yet a woman says: “We can feel it. This entire area was very good. The vibes are different since this Muslim-owned hotel has come up.”
This is the level of hatred and loss of humanity among some in Gujarat. This is expressed with clear intention to ethnically cleanse the area of anything and everything Muslim. This is clear from their demand to the Hindu owner that if he himself runs the hotel and removes Muslims from day today management then they will have no issue. This again indicates how Hindu idea of pollution is weaponized to spread Islamophobia and deprive Muslims of any economic stakes in the country.
The Bhakts would be very delighted if 200 million Indian Muslims disappeared from the India by some catastrophe or magical fire. The idea behind this thinking is that India, the Hindu land, is polluted because of Muslims, Christians, and the like. Hence, just like what the Nazis wanted to achieve, the Bhakts would not mind genocide, burning or lynching of Muslims, (which literally happened in 2002 under Modi’s watch in Gujarat and keeps happening time and again in various parts of the country by way of communal riots).
Such ethnocidal intent is even clear from the very founders and ideologues of the RSS. Savarkar had started Muslim ethnic cleansing and establishing Hindu rule even while he was in Andamans jail which has become a blueprint for the Hindu Rashtra that RSS and Modi are trying to establish. This is what he writes about his days in the jail where he ended the dominance of Pathans. The language he uses to describe the Pathans exhibits his dehumanizing attitude towards Muslims as found in his work My Transportation for Life, pp. 494–5. I quote his words at length here (courtesy: Kannan Srinivasan, A subaltern fascism?:
“When I stepped into the Andamans there was in it, in prison and outside, what one may rightly call, Pathan Raj. Dressed in brief authority, the Pathan dominated the scene. It was overthrown, as I have described in this story, by the time that my stay in the prison had come nearly to an end. The Pathan Raj was gone and Hindu Raj had taken its place...The capital of that Raj was the oil-depot of the prison and as I have already mentioned before, I was its foreman and therefore the monarch of that Raj...The oil-depot being the main source of income for the Silver Jail, the man in charge of it was a person of great importance... every one connected with the oil-depot from top to bottom was a Mussalman, and mostly a Pathan...The wiliest, the intensely selfish, the most cunning and the most wicked person in the prison was often chosen for the job. During my seven to eight years of prison-life, an array of such men had adorned the seat. Now, in my ninth year, the seat had come to me. All the Mussulman tindals, petty officers and warders who had still remained in that jail, were full of fear that I was appointed to that office. The demi-god presiding over the oil-depot could only be propitiated by offerings in gold and silver. If the prisoner desired not to be ground down in the oil-mill of that place, they had perforce to propitiate its deity...Every single tindal began to approach me from now onwards with bated breath and in whispering humbleness.”
This was how proud Savarkar was about his achievement of putting Muslims in their place at a jail where these hapless men were trying to survive in difficult conditions. That he makes it a point to record this incident and that the Bhakts are so ecstatic about it says a lot about the character of the man, Savarkar, and the Bhakts who relish this “putting Muslims in their place” legend from a person, who initially though proposed jihad against the British rule along with Muslims, with this stint in jail, crawled before the British to obtain forgiveness and the eventual pension. This incarceration redefined his politics where he saw his fellow countrymen, Muslims, more dangerous than the even the British rule.
This minority hating ideology of the purported Hindu Rashtra had been crystalised in the thoughts of the subsequent leaders of the RSS according to whom, in order to be a true Hindu, one should satisfy the following three affinities: pitrbhoo, jati and sanskriti. The first refers to one’s affinity by birth with the fatherland the “Sindhu” nation which refers to the landmass covering areas between river Indus and the two seas (Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal). The second refers to one’s belonging to one of the designated hierarchy of castes within Vedic traditions and the third refers to the requirement of considering India as one’s ‘punyabhoo’ (Holy Land), one’s cultural affinity. Among the three the last one is the most important (M. S. Golwalkar: We or Our Nationhood Defined).
The above description of a purported Hindu Rashtra clearly defines who does not belong, by right, to this entity: those who were not born in the define landmass and the Muslims, Christians and others who consider their other places as their “Holy Land”. As for the Dalits or Shudras, they will be perpetually placed within their depressed status in Jati or caste hierarchy without having any hope of liberation. Their only option to escape caste bondage is through conversion to other religions such as Islam or Christianity (where, again, the demon of caste persists still in multiple ways) which will, again, throw them at once into a second-class citizenship in the Hindu Rashtra.
How this nefarious, apartheid style Hindu Rashtra ideology exhibits itself, in reality, is what Indian Muslims, Dalits, women and those who do not agree with this ideology are being treated in today’s India. If the frontline perpetrators of this sham are called Bhakts, the tacit supporters of this shame are the Middle-class Indians who vote for this ideology continually despite its known failures and India’s degeneration into a medieval society of lynching and caste atrocities, not to mention the economic degeneration to the bottom rung of development and prosperity.
Today, this legacy of Muslim hatred and “making Muslims second class citizens” is continued in an official manner by the RSS and the BJP government led by Modi. Under Modi, after the 2002 riots, Muslims were shunted to into ghettoes and the social exclusion practised by the Hindus of Gujarat has rendered Muslims unable to purchase land, houses or flats and even to rent a house in Hindu areas. This is like a modern-day apartheid practised especially in Hindutva ruled India throughout the country, but especially in BJP ruled areas. In this ethnocidal project none, including those staunch supporters of Modi, is spared, if he/she deviates from the expectations set to them by the Bhakt factory.
No one is safe in Hindu Rashtra
In the Hindu Rashtra of RSS/Modi-Shah-Yogi creation everyone, including the staunch supporters of the ideology as well as the personalities that symbolise this ideology (Modi-Yogi), is nothing but a “use and throw” object. Even though such persons have credibility of their own due to their excellence in the area of their work they would still be targeted just like others if they deviate even an inch from the Hindutva agenda. In other words, anyone who joins the bandwagon of Hindutva to support Modi or Yogi end up becoming perpetual slaves and lose all individuality and the right to have personal stance on any issue. This was clear from the two recent instances: Virat Kohli, the Indian cricket star and team captain, and Juhi Chawla, a renowned Bollywood star. Their sin: standing up for or by their teammates or industry-mates or friends who are Muslim.
As explained above, India lost a T20 final match against Pakistan and the Modi supporting Hindutva troll army started placing the blame on the lone Muslim player from Kashmir, Mohammed Shami. Every decent person in India was shocked at this hatred spewing trolls. This included even the so-called Modi supporting Sachin Tendulkar and even Hindutva supporting Sehwag. But when Virat Kolhi, though belatedly, took courage to denounce the Hindutva trolls in very strong words, despite his being seen as a Hindutva supporting icon, not even he was spared from vicious trolling and hatred. The trolls went even to the extent of expressing their happiness for India losing against New Zealand where Kohli was leading the team. A taste of this is here:
The second example is actor Juhi Chawla who stood as surety for her friend, Shahrukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan’s release. Juhi Chawla has been known to be a supporter of RSS/Modi’s majoritarian politics which targets Muslims for political gain. However, for her this act of being friends with a Muslim she was targeted and trolled on social media, subjected to name-calling and a wide range of baseless accusations, such as from seeking publicity to encouraging drug use.
All the above discussion points to one clear thing: a Hindutva mob is an irrational group filled with ignorance and rage against Muslims and Christians. In Modi’s India (Hindu Rashtra) where the ghost of the Muslim Rulers is being systematically excised from Indian soul Muslims are marked for ethnic cleansing. In this genocidal project not only the Muslims but everyone who stands with them or appears to be associated with them is targeted for abuse, smear and delegitimisation. In this purging project no one is safe, even though one is a cricket star, Bollywood star and even a party worker who has stood by Modi to promote his image and win BJP votes. How to understand this phenomenon of a Modi Bhakt more virulent in their hate and rage against Muslims than their masters (Savarkar, RSS, Modi, Yogi etc.) who manufactured this hate and rage to win votes? The second part of this article will explore this further.
Dr. Samuel Sequeira is a Researcher at Cardiff University, UK. A native of Karnataka, he had his MA at Mysore University (Karnataka) and an M.Sc. in Human Resources Management from Glamorgan University Wales (University of South Wales), UK. In Indian he has worked as Managing Editor of Konkani and Kannada newspapers. He has his PhD from Cardiff University where he researched on “South Asian Migrant Community living in Wales”. His current research is about the topic “Trauma of Civil War: Sri Lankan Tamil Experience.”