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INDIA CIRCA 2007
A memory frame
yours for keeps
Kalam Nishan Singh
 Every
year ending is a precursor to hopes for a new dawn, occasion for new
resolutions and a realistic stock taking of the year gone by. As the
world soaks in the Yuletide spirit and clock ticks towards the
moment when we would be singing Auld Lang Syne, the Punjabi
Diaspora, and indeed the entire South Asian community is crestfallen
at the developments in India. Everyone wants to preserve a
photoframe for keeps, but where will one keep the framed memory of
2007 from India? On your mantlepiece, it will look very shameful.
Come, have a look.
We
are ending 2007 with right wing hoodlums of VHP killing Christians
in Orissa because they wanted to celebrate Christmas. Good sense of
timing for a communal riot.
In
Gujarat, one termed as Maut Ke Saudagar by leader of the country's
ruling party was elected Chief Minister. Narendra Modi, the poster
boy of Hindutva and the author of Gujarat's communal carnage, the
man whose masks became a symbol of loathing and fear, defeated the
Congress which had blinkers on its eyes.
This was the man whom the United States of America did not allow to
enter and refused visa because of his track record of being a gross
human rights violator and mass killer, and who was described by a
majority of secular opinionators and liberal civil society in India
as a dictator, merchant of death, and promoter of Hindu terrorism.
Shame also died by the time 2007 ended. Within hours of his win with
a 117-59, vast sections of Indian mainstream media were attributing
the victory not to the communal rhetoric but to the so-called
development in Gujarat. Someone had changed the prism overnight and
media was now getting a different image. The allusions to a Modi
swinging down to Delhi and swallowing up even the national
leadership of the Bhartiya Janta Party showed what kind of a wolf
was on prey.
What could you deduce from a photoframe of a year which brought to
you the excruciatingly painful details from Tehelka sting operation
of Modi's men tearing apart a pregnant woman's stomach and plunging
a sword through the foetus? What could you deduce from the fact that
the Congress campaign in Gujarat did not even refer to the Tehelka
sting operation?
Thankfully, photoframes make deductions simple. India's ruling party
could not decide whether it wants to be totally secular or partially
communal, and it sunk. It could have done little else. Communalism
is a beast that often haunts if you hunt with it.
And
Congress had hunted with it. When mobs led by Congress leaders were
hunting down Sikhs in Delhi -- voter lists in hand, burning tyres in
abundant supply, police that looked the other way and a leader that
proclaimed on national TV his distilled wisdom about earth shaking
and trees falling -- it had thought the haunting ghosts of politics
were merely a myth. Now these ghosts are turning up on camera, on
newspaper pages and in books. Even before a probe commission could
clear him, Jagdish Tytler was made India's minister, and when he had
to resign amidst shame, the CBI worked overtime to hand him a clean
chit. Till of course enterprising journalists tracked a key witness
Jasbir Singh in California. One poor truck driver living as a
refugee refuses to be cowed down by the entire might of the Indian
sleuthing agency's stratagems. And then another witness is caught on
a hidden camera narrating how Tytler led mobs who killed people and
burnt them half-dead and half-alive after carting them to a spot in
front of a gurdwara in hand-pulled garbage carts (See Special Report
P 14-15).
Kill 2,000 Muslims and become Chief Minister. Kill 3,000 Sikhs and
become Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs. You
 may be haunted, you
may escape. Good luck. That’s Indian politics for you, circa 2007.
How do you like it? Plain communal ‘burn the Sikhs’ medium rare with tyres or spiced with Gujarati xenophobia sprinkled with saffron
chutney?
The
Hindutva end game can have only two results: Either the ultra
rightist agenda will rule or fighting nations like Kashmir, Punjab, Nagaland, Assam that are not Hindu and can mobilize on non-Hindu
icons and culture will look for another alternative. The year 2007
brought a secular party called Akali Dal to power – secular because
it no more wants to be panthic – but only as secular as one can be
in a tie up with RSS-BJP. That Parkash Singh Badal often describes
the Akali-BJP alliance as one between brothers will help you
calibrate the secular component. Did you say we were making the 2007
photoframe more depressing? Well, we haven’t even started talking
about Sukhbir Singh Badal’s rise, not to mention his plans to rule
for 25 years!
This was the year when even the country’s Prime Minister, the
I-won’t-show-emotions-on-my-face-come-what-may Manmohan Singh, also
conceded that economic disparity may have something to do with the
fact that the writ of the Indian government was challenged in vast
swathes of the country, but his only prescription was to set up
joint force to end the menace. Quick translation: Kill the Naxalites.
Forget disparity argument. That was a speech writer’s adulteration.
(See report page 7)
But
amidst all of this, people’s movements continue in full swing. The
representatives of the Sikhs, Kashmiris, Nagas, Manipuris etc who
met in Chandigarh recently under the aegis of a seminar on human
rights resolved to keep up the fight. Bhai Daljit Singh Bittu showed
sagacity by extricating his party from the one-man leadership system
and making an experiment with collective leadership. There is hope,
after all. Photo frames aren’t complete without hope. One H.S.
Phoolka refuses to give up the fight, one sole witness with a threat
to his life refuses to back down, some are simply not giving up the
fight in the Khalra kidnap and murder case, one Khalsa Action
Committee leads the charge against Dera Sacha Sauda’s Gurmeet Ram
Rahim, there was always one police officer near Sis Ganj who could
dare to shoot and kill the killer mob, there is one New Jersey which
dared to hang the noose. If you ever feel disheartened, remember –
there will always be WSN. Steadfast, uncompromising, and dedicated
to Sarbat Da Bhala. Happy 2008.
26 December, 2007
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