Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay | A Voice of Sanity Exposes Deep Divide Within India

In the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack, a voice of sanity came from a highly unlikely quarter, from the grieving “days-old wife”, Himanshi Narwal, whose iconic picture became the global image of the attack.

When everybody, from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the lowest common denominators in society, were speaking of “revenge”, the young woman, among those most personally affected by the tragedy, did not use the R-word. Instead, she said: “We don’t want people to go after Muslims and Kashmiris. We want peace, and only peace. Of course, we want justice.

The people who have wronged him should be punished.”

After her statement was widely circulated, the responses to it underscored the primary divide in India today. This schism has gradually widened over recent decades and is now more pronounced.

The completely divergent responses to Ms Narwal’s soundbite underscored the “two Indias” or two “types of Indians” out in the open. The first India reached out with moist eyes and from the bottom of the heart.

This India was epitomised by none other than Lalita Ramdas, who among her calling cards, must be first introduced as an extraordinary member of civil society. She has another calling card, displayed with equal pride: her father and husband were both Chiefs of Naval Staff, the first Indian to hold the post and the thirteenth. Her husband, it possibly needs just a nudge, the late Adm. L. Ramdas, dedicated himself to civil society movements on retirement, was a peacenik, a firm democrat and internal lokpal to the Aam Aadmi Party till disillusionment took him away. She posted a widely circulated letter, from the oldest naval wife to the youngest of that community. Ms Ramdas wrote that she was “proud” after she watched Ms Narwal’s video and appreciated her “extraordinary strength, patience and conviction” which appeared “truly remarkable” for her courage to “speak out against the hatred and targeting of Muslims and Kashmiris”.

In contrast to the India that Ms Ramdas and her words represented, were other kind of words embodying the “other” India: harsh, coarse, offensive, majoritarian and downright vulgar. These abusive posts began with Ms Narwal’s association with one of the favourite punching bags of the troll army: Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, JNU for short, where she studied. Vileness against her started with this, that she was “secular” while there (as if was such a crime), had Muslim or Kashmiri boyfriend(s) and “gotten her husband killed” with assistance from him/them, and would now walk away with all the compensation money and rewards, leaving her in- laws destitute.

Following the Pahalgam massacre, the official narrative, spelled out by Mr Modi and thereafter repeated by others, is that India would seek out the “perpetrators, backers and planners” of the attack. However, the response to Ms Narwal’s plea stems from these people wanting this “revenge” to be first and foremost being taken against those very people she urged being spared: Indian Muslims and Kashmiris.

From when the Sangh Parivar began agitating for the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya in place of the Babri Masjid, Indian Muslims were consciously projected as proxies of the Pakistan “Deep State”. This was done to electorally harvest the resulting Islamophobic sentiment. From the 1990s, especially after the onset of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, every Kashmiri Muslim too faced the “aren’t-you-a-terrorist” look. Since 2014, this campaign against Muslims began receiving state patronage at times and was accompanied by steeply declining democratic accountability in India. In the largest global dataset on democracy and its functioning in various nations -- produced by the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute of University of Gothenburg, Sweden -- India’s position has been on a consistent decline, especially since 2017 when it slipped into the category of “electoral autocracy”.

The Pahalgam attack was not the first large carnage in J&K. Harsh though this may sound, it may possibly be not the last one, even after the latest military conflict with Pakistan. But people’s responses to these have altered over the years. There are multiple reasons behind the sharp rise in societal hankering for inflicting “revenge” on the perpetrators, their backers and planners, as well as those considered as “proxies”.

One primary reason for this is the rise in values of multiple sentiments -- support for Hindutva, the “being Hindu” emotion, consolidation of muscular-nationalism and enhanced Islamophobia or just primal hatred for the passing Muslim. In an imaginary graph plotting the rise in support for Hindu majoritarian, its value on the Y-axis has constantly risen with every passing year, marked on the X-axis. The rise of these responses has electorally strengthened the BJP and Mr Modi, as the leader who brooks no challenge to his authority as India’s alpha-male, the benign protector, but only for his supporters.

The extent of offensiveness towards Ms Narwal for asserting that justice for the ghastly murder of her husband and the other deceased does not lie in “going after Muslims and Kashmiris”, who are “our own”, underscores the self-inflicted danger that India faces. Mr Modi and his government had fallen short on every occasion when this message had to be relayed to their macho brigades. But after launching the kinetic strikes on Pakistan, the government of India attempted to make amends and fielded a Muslim woman Army officer as part of the three- member briefing team led by foreign secretary Vikram Misri. The choice of Col. Sofiya Qureshi as one of the two women was an instance of double symbolism -- one, to convey that women were now an integral part of India’s armed forces, and two, to communicate the message that the Indian State considered that Muslims were an integral part of the nation and its defence. Mr Modi in his first address to the nation after the pause button was hit on the Operation Sindoor, also emphasised on the necessity of unity within the country in the face of challenges.

Importantly, he termed the terrorists’ strategy to determine the religious identity of the men before gunning them down as “a disgusting attempt to break the harmony and unity of the country”. He also concluded his speech by stating that the nation’s “greatest strength is our unity against all forms of terrorism”.

The communal discord has become all pervasive not in a day but due to steady efforts at polarisation on the basis of religious identity. If the government and Mr Modi personally wishes to work on toning down the sentiment of hate and prejudice, much more effort has to be made consistently than what has been seen in these recent days.

Author-journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay’s latest book is The Demolition, The Verdict and The Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project. He is also the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times. He tweets at @NilanjanUdwin