The politics of BJP and other far right wing parties have brought the religious fundamentalism close to the politics that it now lavishly accounts on anything and everything the government does. The chanting of religious slogans on matters of secular interest and criticism against the government are the most common expression of this trend.
The whole nation, especially the watchful eyes of the politically aware, were looking forward to the Ayodhya verdict which put an end to a three decades of legal procedures on one of the most dreadful communal violence in the country after independence. Today, when the verdict comes into a finale, the court acquitted all 32 accused on the grounds that there is no evidence of a pre-planned demolition and mob-rule, and the accused were attempting to stop the violence whereas the fact was that the attack was a triggered one in which a huge number of ‘kar sevaks’ were executing it in a premeditated manner. What makes me more eager to look into this is not the verdict as such, as a case that failed to address the collective conscience of a nations which is secular, rather the way a crime of this sort which was committed on the daylight and tranquilized all the provisions of the constitution, was phrased and tolerated by the custodian of law.
I would call this scenario ‘a crime in not becoming a crime’ in the sense that this verdict has called into attention the new normal in justice in our country. Even though it has been in a gradual progress, the extent at which it materialises now is alarming. This new normal, in many ways, is a religiously oriented and politically manipulated one. Religiously oriented in the sense that the Hindutva has, by challenging the constitutional accountability itself, placed its religious ideology in a political position where it can neither be hardly criticised nor be differentiated. The religion, which once was settled back for a secularist socialist democracy finds its way into politics in such a hurry that largely defuses its countering ideologies through sensitizing the religious sentiments. In fact, to a certain extent, the public today has submitted to this. The way political oppositions sneak into religious favouritism in many instances, especially during elections, is exactly pointing at the dominance of this new public discourse. Hence, the agencies of political secularism are too conditioned to make a statement on religion in this special situation. Political manipulation is the second agency that relentlessly functions to fashion this new normal. The politics of BJP and other far right wing parties have brought the religious fundamentalism close to the politics that it now lavishly accounts on anything and everything the government does. The chanting of religious slogans on matters of secular interest and criticism against the government are the most common expression of this trend. There is this new religious apparatus that in a way regulates the law making of this county as such. Many would argue that these propositions are meagre and fictitious insofar as they don’t appear in scale, but I would caution them to notice that any news in the public sphere today, whether it be political or other, culminates its discourse on either religion or an ultra-nationalism. This is nothing but symptomatic of a premeditated public discourse logic currently in practice which channels every opinion and information towards a grand narrative which here is Hindutva ideology and their version of Hinduism.
This cosy historical numbness is the most important symptom of the justice’s new normal
This new normal is such a deceiving collective public conscience that it gives a special leverage to its stakeholders to normalise certain kinds of crimes, the likes of Babry Masjid demolition. A crime that is so visible to the public eyes is now taken for granted and more importantly buried inside the history as just vanished or settled forever. This cosy historical numbness is the most important symptom of the justice’s new normal. It is not the first time we see this happening, rather every contemporary verdict that concerns religious beliefs has in some way or other succumbed to this new normal, and fostered it. Even in the sabarimala verdict, a large scale of public convenience compromised on an exception which in the true face of equality has been a brutal violation of gender equality. When it comes to today’s verdict, I would say that this nation can any more claim that the secularism it guarantees as constitutional cannot be rationally pursued in the present time. Moreover, I would say that a great number of the public have already been into a belief, which has been historically nurtured by the Hindutva sects for decades that compromising minority religious belief is rational and normal. This belief, with all its vigour will not take much time to grow into a precarious conviction that India is historically, culturally and politically a religious nation and history will be largely deviated in this respect. It would seem fictitious to many light hearted, politically unaware citizens, in fact who are many, that their lives in their local settings are never prone to this proposition in any way. By fostering this ignorance of the majority, the political fundamentalism assumes its status as a custodian; the protector of the nation and the last resort of hope.
In the delirium of a cosy nationalism, the majority hopes to make a nation better, but the more better it becomes the worse it delivers. The cosy nationalism here is a wand with which the government silences the outcry of victims of rape, mob lynching and riots and voices of dissent. With this frantic pipe dream, they invoke the past, a past betraying history, to wage a war. Hence, what India had buried long back with the partition is revisited by the vested interests of those ideologies stems from the fascism, Nazism and 20th century political fundamentalism. In this matrix, the logic of crime is deeply confined to the logic of cast and religion and the latter has become the legitimising body. Above all, I believe that this sort of verdicts will recur insofar as the ignorance prevails. Hence, the hope is not in a change that is inherited but in the impending disasters that would unleash nothing but pain and truth.
Cover Photo: When the Babri Masjid was being demolished, many BJP leaders were at the site. Pictured here (from left): Murli Manohar Joshi, then-president of the BJP, L.K. Advani and Vijayaraje Scindia | Photo: Praveen Jain | ThePrint
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