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Sunday Section
New
Delhi, 17 September 2018
Attack on Swami Agnivesh
HATRED TRIGGERS FEAR
By
Proloy Bagchi
“My
ideal of social justice runs counter to the casteism of Sangh Parivar,” wrote Swami
Agnivesh in the daily Indian Express
about the attack on him by BJP workers and the reasons for the same. He was
going to the BJP Party office to pay homage to the late former Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee last month when he was accosted by the roughnecks of the
Party and assaulted by them who tore his clothes and brought him down on the
road. Although Agnivesh escaped with minor injuries, the matter was reported to
the police and a few of the miscreants were arrested.
These party workers apparently called him a
fake swami and alleged he was defaming the Hindu religion. They had numerous
issues against him that prompted them to assault him. It is ironical that
Agnivesh was assaulted when he was on his way to pay homage to late Vajpayee ji
even as the entire political class, including that of the BJP, of the country
was acclaiming him as one of the finest liberal prime ministers and only the
second “statesman” that India produced after Jawaharlal Nehru.
Swami Agnivesh is a follower of Arya Samaj, a
well-known Hindu reformation movement started by Swami Dayanand Saraswati in the
19th Century. The movement promotes Vedic Hinduism and is against
Hindu superstitions and worship of images. It even shuns pilgrimages and
condemns, for example, worship of the ice lingam at the Amarnath cave in
Kashmir.
Agnivesh had once done just that i.e. he
condemned the Hindu pilgrimage to the Amarnath cave to worship the ice lingam
as a representation of Lord Shiva as he said it was just a stalagmite and had
nothing divine about it. Hindus were enraged by such disparaging criticism of
Hindu beliefs. Amarnath is reckoned as the holiest shrine of Hinduism and finds
mention in the holy Hindu ancient texts. Their belief is that it is here Lord
Shiva had, inter alia, explained the secrets of life and eternity to his
“divine consort Parvati”. The rabid Hindu groups were enraged by Agnivesh’s iconoclastic
talks.
It seems the ruling establishment and its
various subaltern outfits cannot stand any criticism of their religious
orientation. They cannot even stand thoughts that are rational – based on
science and reason. There have been numerous instances where rationalistic
proponents of analytical and logical thoughts have simply been eliminated.
There are organisations subscribing to conservative Hindu thoughts which train
people to kill rationalists. That they have lately been nabbed and are facing
music at the hands of the police investigators is another matter.
Nevertheless, recently a picture appeared in
the Facebook of a minister in a State government, who very brazenly said
rationalists should be shot dead. Such is the unmixed hatred among rabid Hindus
and their shadowy and sinister organisations for rationalists. In point of fact
they are no better than what is termed as the Talibans of Pakistan.
The silence on such incidents of the ruling
establishment, especially of its higher echelons, gives stimulation to the
perception that such acts are condoned by it. Some even think that these acts
are fostered by it. That is precisely why the ruling party and their various
outfits are accused of intolerance of contrarian opinions, especially insofar
as Hindu religion is concerned. In pursuance of this thriving intolerance at
least four persons acclaimed as brilliant rationalists have been eliminated. The
only consolation is that the murders are being investigated and the criminals are
being identified and arrested wherever possible.
While in respect of their cases the law will
take its own course, it is a pity that there has been no reprimand issued by
the higher functionaries of the ruling party to the organisations members of
which harbour such violent hatred for people – the rationalistic Hindus –
holding opinions based on reason and logic.
Such violent incidents have given rise to
fear in the society. People have become careful, guarded and refrain from
giving honest expression to their thoughts, Physical assaults or even
elimination from a bullet from the barrel of a gun tends to make one feel
diffident in expressing one’s opinion.
Even as I write this, I too have that lurking
fear that whatever I write could be misconstrued and I might even be assaulted
or killed. It is, therefore no wonder that after the ‘age of intolerance’ we have
quickly progressed into a “Republic of fear”, as Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an
intellectual and currently Vice Chancellor of Ashoka University has put it.
I am not inclined to go into the details of
Mehta’s thesis as it has been provoked by Modi’s failure to speak in his
Independence Day speech about the violent orientation of the Hindu extreme
Right-wingers. But, there indeed is a genuine fear among the thinking public,
the free-thinkers, about speaking out and ventilating their views that might
not match up with those of the extreme Hindu Right.
The arrest in a country-wide swoop of as many
as five intellectuals who also are human rights activists has caused further
consternation among people. Even the Supreme Court found the action of the police
extraordinary and ordered only house arrests for them. Each one of them is an
intellectual and most intellectuals generally appear as Left-leaning though not
every intellectual is a Left activist.
Some may sympathise with the marginalised
Left and even render intellectual assistance to them but they seldom work
against the State. Perhaps, for some act of this nature, the five individuals
were nabbed in country-wide raids and put in remand for alleged offences for
which the courts failed to find evidence. Even the apex Court extended their
house arrest and warned the government against “muzzling dissent”. The five
activists have now acquired the sobriquet of “Urban Naxals”.
Recall, Vajpayee ji stood for observance of “Raj Dharm”, which surely includes
tolerance of opposing views. If Agnivesh has beliefs that are contrarian to
general Hindu beliefs and attitudes it certainly does not mean that his voice
should be muzzled by inflicting bodily harm to him. He has the freedom to have
his own views and practice them just as the perpetrators of the crime have
freedom to have their own.
Nothing, therefore, could be more condemnable
when a devotee of Vajpayee ji is roughed up to pay his last respects to the latter.
There was nothing moral or ethical or spiritual about the treatment meted out
to the Swami. The BJP workers did not in any way serve the interests of their
own party and their government. In point of fact, they only gave expression to
their ‘fascist’ tendencies bringing their party and government in disrepute. ---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
New Delhi
13 September 2018
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