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Over 200 filmmakers, writers and artistes are staging yet another entreaty to oust the BJP in the 2019 elections. If there is one thing appreciable about the artistes, writers and filmmakers who call themselves “independent”, “progressive” and “liberal”, it is the alacrity and consistency with which they step up before any major election to provide intellectual horsepower to those they support. If you are openly naming and shaming a legitimate political party, how can you claim to be “neutral”?

This pattern has become so excruciatingly boring and predictable that common Indians look at them disdainfully. The misguided sense of self-importance that they know what is good for the country and that the unwashed, unlettered millions need their guidance is what adds to their growing irrelevance in India today. No one grudges their fundamental and democratic right to issue such appeals. But it is natural that those who do not subscribe to this propaganda want to counter it.

Also read: Modi’s 2019 mantra: Forget achhe din, fear terror, Pakistan, Muslim

Intolerant India slogan

Since the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office in May 2014, several people who were entrenched in the system under erstwhile regimes suddenly fell out of favour. And since then, their campaign has been relentless.

From December 2014, a ceaseless blitzkrieg was carried out when the terrible incidents of attacks on churches and rape of a nun surfaced just before the Delhi state elections. The shrill rhetoric of Christians being persecuted in India under “fascist” Modi had international ramifications, drawing the attention of foreign media and even former US President Barack Obama. The special investigation teams that probed these church attacks found that the reasons ranged from drunken ribaldry of miscreants to electric short circuits. The rape was committed by a Bangladeshi national.

But by then the lie had been repeated so many times that the smokescreen of “unsafe-India” was fully reinforced. Not a squeak of an apology came from any self-righteous “intellectual” or the media that spread this fake news that tarnished the country’s image.

And then they moved to the slogan that India had turned “intolerant”. Indignant artists and writers returned their awards. Wives of actors felt scared for their kids growing up here and wished to migrate.

The zeal with which narratives are quickly constructed with a pliable media is truly a case study.

Sources in the Sahitya Akademi, which bore the brunt of the campaign, reveal that some writers had not even bothered sending back their award plaques, let alone the prize money. But they had got their 10 minutes of fame in the national media – returning their awards caused more sensation than getting it in the first place.

An analysis of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s data reveals that under the UPA, crimes against Dalits rose by 17.3 per cent — from 33,594 cases in 2009 to 39,408 cases in 2013. This meant there was almost one crime every 15 minutes throughout its tenure. Moreover, five Dalit women were raped on an average every day in 2013. Are we to conclude these were at the behest of Sonia Gandhi or Manmohan Singh?

In fact, the NCRB data puts 2013 as the worst year in terms of crimes against Dalit women, SCs and STs as they rose by 27 per cent, 17 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively from the previous year. Taking the base year as 2014, when crimes against Dalits rose by 19.4 per cent as compared to the previous year, the figures for crimes against women, SCs and STs under the NDA fell by 3 per cent, 18 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively in 2015.

The latest 2016 NCRB report suggests that growth in crimes against women and SC/STs is well under 5 per cent.

So, what is the data source for all the screaming from the rooftops that the marginalised communities are increasingly being targeted? Do these “intellectuals” have their own NCRB? Or, is it just the way they “feel” or is it the result of some fake media reportage as seen in the church case? Can the narrative of an entire nation be set by a bunch of people sitting fearfully in their air-conditioned homes?

Also read: Modi is not a loved PM, he is a feared PM, says Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath

Cow vigilantism

If there has been any issue that has received immense media scrutiny, and rightly so, it is undoubtedly cow-vigilantism and related violence. Added to this, the idiocy of several ministers garlanding or getting themselves photographed with those accused of lynching makes it a justified case for severe condemnation.

However, one must also acknowledge that the issue of cow slaughter is an extremely sensitive one in India and not something that began on 26 May 2014. The rumours of beef-lard in the cartridges were one of the many reasons for the country rising in revolt in 1857. History is replete with numerous cases of Hindu-Muslim riots that the British governments had to deal with on this very issue.

The cow protection movement was championed by leaders like Mahatma Gandhi who wrote in Young India on 8 June 1921 that “no one who does not believe in cow protection can possibly be a Hindu. Cow worship means to me the worship of innocence”. Gandhian Vinoba Bhave went on fasts unto death to protect the cow from the butcher’s knife.

Similar sentiments attached to animals are found in several countries. Being man’s best friend, dog meat is banned in countries like Germany, the US and in parts of Australia. The US has also banned horse meat on similar compassionate grounds.

Close to two dozen states, many during the Congress regimes, passed laws forbidding cow slaughter. But it is one thing to pass a law and another to implement them on ground.

Regular cases of cattle thefts get reported across rural India, where cows are the backbone of the agrarian economy. The resultant social unrest and the pathetic absence of effective policing to maintain law and order make this a potpourri for disaster. While no civilised society should condone lynching of any form, the intense visibility that these attacks have been attracting since 2014 is for obvious political gains. Extrapolating a few incidents in a country of 1.3 billion and calling India ‘Lynchistan’ is disingenuous and dangerous.

At the same time, in these five years, cow activists have been brutally killed too – notable among them is the murder of Prashanth Poojary in Karnataka’s Moodabidri. But such cases are hardly reported by mainstream media.

Similarly, during the last five years, cases of violence by Muslim mobs against Dalits have not made it to the headlines, nor have they led to an outrage by appeal activists.

Also read: Unlike Nehru, Narendra Modi has no army of intellectual elite and the RSS is to blame

Artistes under threat?

The “appeals” also allege that artistes and musicians who oppose the Narendra Modi government have been hounded. Public memory is short. Else, we would not have forgotten that celebrated poet-lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri spent two years in jail in 1949 for an “anti-establishment” poem that called former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru Hitler’s protégé.

Actor Utpal Dutt was arrested in 1965 for an article that was labelled seditious. Several of his plays were banned during the Emergency. Congress chief minister of West Bengal at the time Siddhartha Sankar Ray had famously commented: “He would politically confront the issue”.

Singer Kishore Kumar was blacklisted from the All India Radio and his songs were banned on AIR and Doordarshan after he refused to sing for a Congress government programme.

Incidents of books and films being banned by “progressive” and “secular” governments since 1947 are enough to fill a museum wall. A few films that were banned or faced censor board ire include Aandhi, Kissa Kursi Ka, Nasbandi, Amu, Sins, Rajneeti, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi and Tango Charlie.

Just a fraction of the books that our “liberals” banned include Nehru: A Political Biography, Who Killed Gandhi?, Dwikhandito, Nine Hours to Rama, Understanding Islam through Hadis, Ayesha, Himalayan Blunder, The Da Vinci Code, The Moor’s Last Sigh and The Satanic Verses. Sweeping notifications were imposed for bans on the import of books and reading material in 1960, 1964 and 1976.

Writers and activists like Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Taslima Nasreen, Sanal Edamaruku, and T.J. Joseph have been hounded. Shamefully, India became the first country to ban Satanic Verses even before Ayatollah Khomeini’s totalitarian regime did.

Threat to free speech

In more recent times, the UPA’s draconian Section 66A curbed freedom of expression on the internet. Someone tweeting against Karti Chidambaram could just be picked up and jailed. Content screening regulations were discussed with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook by then union minister Kapil Sibal.

In Congress-ruled Karnataka, arrests were made in 2016 in Koppala for posting “derogatory” content against Tipu Sultan and for “criticising” Siddaramaiah, while two journalists were arrested for defaming legislators. In Samajwadi-ruled Uttar Pradesh in 2015, mobs gathered allegedly demanding the head of Kamlesh Tiwari for his comments against the Prophet. The ripple effect resulting in the Malda violence was believed to be fanned by the Trinamool Congress supporters. Despite all these examples, we are made to believe that the “fascist” Modi government is out to muzzle voices.

An article in ThePrint spoke about how Modi goes to his voters by building a fear-complex. Is this fear-mongering any different? Their appeals remind one of what writer James Rozoff had said: “Sheep only need a single flock, but people need two, one to belong to and make them feel comfortable, and another to blame all of society’s problems on!”

The Indian electorate is surely wiser than what these worthies collectively think.

Vikram Sampath is an author/historian/political analyst and a Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, with an upcoming biography of Savarkar.

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