Neither governance nor dissent

In the context of the growing disquiet on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s nurturing of intolerance, I was surprised the other day when a well-known anchor asked me on a live TV show whether I prefer economic growth to the agitation on tolerance. My answer was that to posit the two as binary polarities is fascist. I did not choose my response casually, or on the spur of the moment. It was Hitler who progressively suppressed individual freedoms on the altar of economic growth. In fact, it was his argument that any voices that distract from the state’s professed march towards economic prosperity are anti-national and need to be suppressed. It was an expedient form of xenophobic nationalism that neither ensured economic prosperity nor individual freedoms, plunging Germany towards one of the most shameful chapters in human history.

I strongly believe that India is nowhere close to becoming a fascist state. But still, it is important to learn the right lessons from history. Undoubtedly, a democracy should have effective economic governance; but it should also allow the freedom to dissent and debate. The equation is not either-or. To critique the ruling party, or to disagree with its policies, cannot be construed, in a democracy, as an anti-national act. Nor should a subversive and mala fide motivation be ascribed to every act of disagreement. Unfortunately, this is precisely what is happening today. Anyone who criticises this government is either accused of having a political animus, or is considered anti-national, or is seen through the prism of his/her religion, or is dismissed as part of the regressive forces that are trying to sully the name of India internationally. This is, to say the least, both undemocratic and rather silly.

There is little doubt that ever since the BJP government came to power in May, 2014 the level of tolerance has seen a steady erosion. The brutal killings of respected scholars and thinkers like M.M. Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, and the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri, are only examples of a new breed of right-wing Hindu evangelism that self-righteously believes that any opposing opinion or critical voice has no right to exist. What is really worrying is that such forces seem to have the tacit or explicit support of the BJP government in New Delhi. Every time such an incident of intolerance occurs, there is a predictable lack of firm disapproval from the BJP leadership, and the silence of an otherwise loquacious Prime Minister is particularly deafening. This only further emboldens and encourages such elements. The net result is an increasingly brittle nation perpetually in danger of fracturing into violence.

The BJP’s defence of recalling the acts of intolerance in the past is disingenuous. The Prime Minister in one of his rallies in Bihar mentioned the gruesome pogrom against the Sikhs in 1984 as a means to corner those who are protesting the growing intolerance of today. His opponents fell to the bait of recalling the genocide in Gujarat in 2002. This form of competitive communalism is hardly the sign of a mature nation. All acts of intolerance in the past are emphatically condemnable. But, what happened in the past, on either side of the political spectrum, cannot become a reason to condone what is happening today.

Moreover, automatically and arrogantly dismissing the returning of awards by a host of eminent writers, scholars, scientists and artist cutting across regions and languages, as an act of political partisanship —as the BJP is doing — is extremely short-sighted. Many of these intellectuals have not been averse to the BJP, and not all are pro-Congress. Collectively, they reflect not so much a political animus as a genuine cry of anguish at the verifiable erosion of the space for dialogue and dissent. Nor is the artifice of blaming only the state governments credible. Of course, law and order is the responsibility of state governments, and the government of Akhilesh Yadav, for instance, must bear some of the responsibility for the Dadri lynching. But it is equally a fact that the lumpen religious fanatics emboldened by the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh represent a pan-Indian phenomenon. States must try to prevent them from taking the law in their own hands, but the BJP too must do more to rein them in.

As a proud Hindu, for me the most distressing thing is that these fanatics claim to act and speak for Hindus. The militant, intolerant and illiterate Hinduism that such forces represent is a blot on the refined, eclectic, tolerant and sophisticated philosophical foundations of Hinduism. Hinduism was and will remain, in its true sense, a dialogic religion. This can be seen in the Upanishads, where even a shishya or pupil had the right to question the guru. Those who are seeking to reduce the grand legacy of Hinduism to intolerant hate and violence would do well to remember that Shankaracharya, arguably one of the world’s greatest philosophers, revived Hinduism in the 8th century AD, not by lynching or killing his opponents or throwing ink on their faces, but by a series of shastrarths or cerebrally persuasive arguments conducted across the length and breadth of Bharat.

When those who rule stop listening to the people, one can be sure that “bure din” are ahead. When those in power begin to dismiss anything they don’t like as partisan, motivated, unrepresentative and irrelevant, one can be sure that the spirit of democracy is in danger. When those who run governments begin to believe that the nation should only mirror what they believe is right, the plural and composite fabric of India is in danger. The debate on intolerance will not go away just because the government can organise counter-demonstrations by its loyalists. The debate will cease when they begin to understand that in a country like India, good governance and religious and social harmony are essentially two sides of the same coin.

Author-diplomat Pavan K. Varma is a Rajya Sabha member