MUSLIMS: The minority Muslim community is increasingly being targeted by the BJP. There have been instances of lynching of Muslims on the mere suspicion of slaughtering, stocking and consumption of beef.

By Rajan Narayan

Kangana Ranaut, the controversial saffron fanatic, has been claiming that India secured its independence only in 2014, after the Narendra Modi BJP government was formed. Implying that it was only after Narendra Modi became the prime minister that India became a Hindutva country. This is consistent with the propaganda of the BJP and the RSS that the population of the minorities in the country is growing at the expense of the majority community. That the Hindus should multiply so that they are not reduced to becoming a minority in their own country….

THERE is a systematic campaign by the BJP and the RSS to destroy the Secular Democratic Republic that the Constitution bestowed on India in 1950 when it came into force. One of the freedoms the Constitution guarantees is freedom of worship. The Supreme Court has confirmed that voluntary conversion from any religion to any other religion is totally legal and valid in the democratic republic of India.
LOVE JIHAD PARANOIA
NOT only the Supreme Court but various High Courts have dismissed claims of
“love jihad” – an expression implying that the Muslim community boys are pataoing Hindu girls with an intention to convert them to Islam. Ever since the Modi government came to power the attacks on the Muslim community have increased phenomenally in the country. To the extent that the Delhi High Court has given a verdict that all restaurants should specify ingredients used in every dish served.
Not surprisingly the petition demanding such information was moved by one of the Hindutva organisations to ensure that no beef or pork is included secretly in any preparation by a hotel. There have been attacks and lynchings of Muslims on the mere suspicion that they may be transporting, storing and consuming beef. Legally, there is no bar against eating beef though most of the BJP states, with the exception of Goa, have passed a bill banning the slaughter, transport and consumption of the sacred cow.
Those who systematically targeted the minority Muslim community after the Godhra incident in Gujarat are yet to be punished. The accused include Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah who were chief minister and home minister of Gujarat, respectively, when the “jihad” against the Muslims in Gujarat took place. Indeed, recently the National Electronic Media Commission censored the television channel Times Now for calling Teesta Setelvad a “Modi baiter.” It was Teesta Setelvad who gathered the extensive evidence against Narendra Modi and Amit Shah during the post-Godhra violence.

COLD-BLOODED MURDER
THERE have been instances of violence against the Christian minority community in the past. Who can forget the cold-blooded murder of Graham Staines and his young son in Odisha by saffron fanatics on January 23, 1989? More recently Pramod Mutalik of the Ram Sene in North Karnataka has been accused of vandalising and targeting young women enjoying karaoke nights in resto bars in Mangaluru where there are many call centres.
Even as we write this there are several cases of sacrilege of the Bible in Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka. The Christian minority community in Karnataka which accounts for less than two per cent of the population has been accused of trying to convert Hindus. It began with an allegation there was large scale conversion of Christians in Chituldurga district. But the Mamlatdar, who was asked to investigate, did not find any cases of forcible conversion. Even the few cases of conversion he found were totally voluntarily. Karnataka and several other BJP-ruled states ruled are planning to pass laws against conversion. The SC has made it very clear that there is no bar against conversion provided it is voluntary.
The latest instance of saffron intolerance is the sacrilege in the Golden Temple at Amritsar. It has been reported that the state police have filed a case against the young man who was butchered by angry Sikhs. Are we returning to the days of the Sikh terrorist Longewala? It may be recalled that after a sect of the extreme Sikhs took over the Golden temple, the then PM Indira Gandhi government had to send the army to liberate the Golden Temple. For which Indira Gandhi paid a heavy price as she was assassinated by two of her own Sikh bodyguards at the garden of her residence when she was proceeding for an interview with the famous actor Peter Ustinov.
It is not only religion which has become a bone of contention. The fight between Maharashtra and Karnataka on the status of Belgavi has flared up again.

BELGAVI WOES
AFTER a statue of Shivaji was damaged in Bengaluru, there were retaliatory attacks in Belgavi. The reorganisation of the state was done on a linguistic basis. On the claim that the Kannadigas were in a majority, Belgavi was allotted to Karnataka. However, there were a large number of the Marathi speaking community also staying in Belgavi. The Marathi community in Belgavi under the umbrella of the Maharashtra Ekvatt Samithi (MES) has repeated clashes with the local Kannadiga community. War has broken out again between Maharashtra and Karnataka with Uddhav Thackeray blaming PM Narendra Modi for dividing the country.
When the better three-quarters was on her usual marketing rounds in the morning on Sunday, December 19, she stopped to buy something from a vendor sporting a tilak. When she asked him how he felt about Modi being in Goa, his response was that if we had a PM like Modi much earlier, there would have been no Muslims in Goa! We are wondering if more and more Hindus are being encouraged to migrate to Goa to convert it into a saffron state?
Historically, Goa is perhaps one of the few states in the country in addition to Puducherry, where all communities have lived in total harmony. Indeed, in states where Muslims have been targeted, they have migrated to Goa and are still doing so. Which is why there are a large number of Muslims from Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh in Goa. Every time I visit a saloon for a shave or a haircut, inevitably the hair dressers are from UP.

POLARISATION OF INDIA
KANGANA Ranaut is right in that the polarisation of India along communal lines started after Modi came to power. As Prashant Kishor of I-PAC has pointed out, there is a conscious attack to convert the whole of Hindustan into Hindutva. Prashant has rightly pointed out that no party has a right to tell Indians how to dress, what to eat, what to post and whom to marry. Which is why it is all the more important that the BJP should be voted out of power in Goa and all the other states including UP, Karnataka and Punjab, which are going to polls soon.
Most important of all is that the BJP government and Narendra Modi should be voted out in the 2024 Parliamentary elections. We are all in favour of an alternative secular democratic prime minister who may or may not be Mamata Banerjee. Our only doubts are to do with whether Mamata Banerjee will be able to convert herself from a regional leader to a national leader in the remaining three years?
We certainly agree that the Nehru Gandhis have no divine right to the prime minister’s post! At the same time we doubt if without the support of the Congress, Mamata may become the prime minister of India in 2024. It is significant that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has congratulated Mamata on destroying the Congress party.