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Friday, September 28, 2018

Fomenting hatred in Uttar Pradesh..

From a May 2018 article : ‘The Muzaffarnagar riots in September 2013 changed everything. Village Lisad, where Hindus and Muslims had lived peacefully for generations, witnessed the deadliest violence. Thirteen Muslim men were killed in Lisad, and with the exception of one elderly man named Basheer, who refused to leave the home where he was born, the entire minority community fled and never returned. At least 60 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the religious violence. An estimated 60,000 Muslims were displaced.’

This was part of Modi and Shah’s winning strategy for the 2014 elections and widely seen as such at the time the violence took place. We have not seen the BJP or RSS cry about the 60,000 muslims displaced in western UP for five years, have we ?

An article at the the time of Kairana by election in UP in May this year : ‘The issue of pending criminal cases against the Jats has also divided the community over the RLD and the BJP. Those who are only concerned about the sugarcane crisis have been inclined to vote against the BJP, while those who have to worry about criminal cases believe it safer to vote for the BJP. The BJP had vowed to withdraw all "false" cases related to the riots if voted to power, and the Adityanath government has been making good on its promise.’

This reveals BJP’s ‘governance’ strategy employed I think by the Nazis also : 1. Precipitate a divide between society and incite hatred in the majority, for the minority. 2. Get them to participate widely in murder and mayhem against the minority. 3. Wed them to you for decades to come by the threat of ‘opening criminal cases’ for that period of mayhem !

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There is a poignancy in the reflections below on the Muzaffarnagar riots in September 2013 – and a harsh reality on why victims of violence from neighbours are often unable to come back to their homes, ever.

Malik and Singh talked at length about how much they regretted the flight of the Muslims from their village. It has cost the Jats both economically and psychologically.

The absent Muslims, who filled the roles of carpenters, farmhands, manual labourers, electricians, ironsmiths and welders, are sorely missed by the Jats, who now end up paying double for getting the same services from outside the village.

There are many Jats who remain convinced that their village had been cursed after the bloodshed. They talk about the animals that started dying, especially calves, a few months after the Muslims left. Those who have family members charged for rioting, murder and attempt to murder, have been living in a constant state of fear for their loved ones.

"A few hours of violence has cost us so much. The village had changed forever," Malik said, adding that he did not participate in the violence, "It makes me sad to see the empty houses."
Singh said, "It never should have happened."

But when the village was debating whether to bring back the Muslims, Mallik was against it.
"It's too late. It would have been too complicated, too messy, and too dangerous," he said. "Remember, there are still people with cases against them."’

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At last – in Black and White – how BJP is tearing the fabric of our country, mohalla by mohalla, just so it can be in power.. from an article analysing the recent UP bypoll win for the opposition :  'Yet, none of these factors are as important as a large section of Kairana’s voters uniting to counter the phenomenon of everyday communalism, a term which academicians Sudha Pai and Sajjan Kumar have coined to explain the ease with which the BJP turns every election into a Hindu-Muslim contest and wins. Kairana has, however, shown Jats and Muslims — despite being pitted against each other after the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots — sinking their differences to overcome the severe socio-economic implications that everyday communalism spawns.

This phenomenon involves, write Pai and Kumar in Everyday Communalism: Riots in Contemporary Uttar Pradesh, recruitment of local leaders for "using small, mundane but provocative local incidents to gradually create animosity and social jealousies between Hindus and Muslims who have lived together for a long time".'

The article continues : 'These issues could be as insignificant as a road accident, a game of cricket, a drainage pipe of one house leaking into the premises of another. The aim behind framing every minor issue as a Hindu-Muslim problem is to “create a permanent anti-Muslim social prejudice and make it acceptable in the popular discourse,” argue Pai and Kumar.

Before the grisly riots rocked the Muzaffarnagar-Shamli belt in August-September 2013, a clutch of petty issues was ingeniously turned to pit Hindus against Muslims. Take what happened in March 2013 in Buchakheri village, Kairana, which falls in Shamli district. There the wood stored for the Holi bonfire was set ablaze by no one knows who. Blaming the Muslims for it, Buchakheri’s Gujjars attacked a mosque, prompting police to open fire. Then BJP MLAs Hukum Singh and Suresh Rana descended on the village and linked the firing to Shamli then having a Muslim superintendent of police. A minor issue was given a communal turn and then escalated to become an election campaign issue.'

I dont know if you feel like vomiting on reading this.. but I do. We are witnessing the ongoing destruction of the idea of India.. no matter how much 'development' we do. Perhaps it was always so, even under the congress... what is critical to remember is that this discourse is NOT about muslims - but about creating an 'Other' from which a political party claims to protect you from. as the muslim card stops working, the BJP will need to create many 'Other' groups for you to hate, as that is the only politics it thinks, works. Gradually their polemic will descend into the North Indians against South Indians, Outsiders against Marathas etc., cards which have already been played regionally at different times.

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