Nuh violence: No matter what the ground realities are, Hindus can never be the victims

Two disconnected, back-to-back events involving violence and deaths have once again split open the fissures in India. Both took place on the same day, though the effect of one — considerably bigger in import and impact — has since spread to other parts of the country and the embers are yet to die down. On Monday, a constable from the Railway Protection Force (RPF) fired 12 rounds from his automatic service rifle on board the Jaipur-Mumbai Central Superfast Express, killing three passengers and his senior supervisor. On the same day, clashes erupted among Hindus and Muslims in Haryana’s Nuh district and adjoining areas resulting in widespread violence that has so far led to six deaths, including that of two home guards. Several policemen were injured, over 165 people have been arrested, and 83 cases across four districts have been registered. These numbers are likely to change. While the Nuh riots are a failure of the law-and-order machinery and perhaps that of police intelligence as well, leading to the spreading of the clashes in Gurugram, what the debates in the public sphere over these two disconnected incidents of violence and bloodshed have reinforced is that identitarianism is on the rise in India. Unlike its European roots, however, where it is largely a reactionary movement against the worrisome Islamisation of European societies, the concept has been coopted and even transformed as a social movement and a discourse tool by both the Hindu and Muslim communities for competitive victimhood. These are not neat divisions, and not even the only divisions. From the religious sphere, the tenets of identitarianism and its stress over the collective over the individual, overlap in the politico-ideological sphere, where the right is quickly learning from the left wing’s proficiency in identity politics (the terms are only loosely applicable in the Indian context). Downstream from the political parties and their ecosystems, sections of the conventional media, commentators, opinion-makers, social media, podcasters, civil society activists, action groups, advocacy groups and entire penumbra of socio-political influencers have taken sides in the battle to shape public conversation. Though ranged against each other, this is not a battle of equals. Competitive victimhood among Hindus and Muslims is skewed due to two reasons. First, the Muslim right (liberal Muslims are almost non-existent) is bolstered by the weighty intervention on their behalf of the left, ‘liberal’ and ‘secular’ Hindus — a group that suffers from a pathological self-hatred and has made a fetish out of religious pacifism. To this strange species, any outward expression of Hindu religiosity or faith, such as a religious procession (yatra), is an act of dire provocation, though it is normalized in the case of Muslims. And if the yatra is conducted in a ‘Muslim-majority area’ — an unconstitutional concept legitimised by a dialectical deceit — then according to the twisted narrative of Islamists, leftists and ‘secular liberals’ it is the Hindus who are to be blamed for ‘provoking’ Muslims into rioting. The intellectual dishonesty that signifies the phrase ‘Muslim majority area’ is stunning. It effectively gives one community quasi-sovereignty over the space it occupies where the law of the land or Constitutional guarantees, such as Article 25, seemingly does not apply. This is a dangerous argument. A reversal of this spectre would be disastrous. That it does not owe to the inherent tolerance of Hindu society. Lived realities of a post-Independent India — an oasis for minority communities in an intolerant neighbourhood — bear the truth of this statement. And yet the relentless propaganda against India on the handling of its minority communities (spearheaded by western media) owes, among other things, to the disproportionate political power wielded by Islamists in the West. The second aspect that skews the battle between Hindu and Muslim identitarianism is the phenomenon of Muslim victimhood. In the world of identity politics, Muslim victimhood is an institutional, perpetual, and unassailable position.

Sanctioned by the liberal West and amplified by the global ummah, ‘Muslim victimhood’ legitimizes all manner of transgressions, moral or legal, and any challenge to the theological supremacy — through which this community seeks special concessions from sovereign states — is neutered by the bogey of ‘Islamophobia’. For instance, in Britain it is a taboo to even utter the factual position that British Pakistanis are over-represented as a community in the infamous “ grooming gang” squad that targets minors for sexual abuse. For matters of political correctness stemming from a fear of “instigating” Muslims and triggering their victimhood, British politicians, media and civil society kept and still keep looking the other way. Combined by these two factors, the grievance narrative of Muslims is so strong that at least in the discursive space, one community has a hegemonic grip over narrative-shaping regardless of the ground realities. This is a maximalist position that accepts no blame for actions of Muslims and the onus of compromise lies always with the other side. And for the Hindus, everything they do, even their very existence could be a ‘provocation’. For instance, Bajrang Dal is to be blamed for its act of organizing a religious procession that passed through a “Muslim majority area”. The onus is not on the Muslims who indulged in pre-planned violence, but on the Hindus who “provoked”. The word ‘provocation’ provides legitimacy and moral justification for street veto and absolves the perpetrators of any culpability. The onus is permanently on Hindus to maintain peace, while the other side gets to maintain permanent victimhood. The germination of this grievance narrative lies in a fundamentalist society that has resisted reforms. IPS officer Najmul Hoda, writing in The Print, explains the Muslims’ “narrative of loss”. He writes that in India, Muslims “are far more numerous than ever. There are a much higher number of mosques, madrasas and maulvis, and a much greater display of religious symbolism in dress and appearance than ever. There has actually been an intensification of Islamic religiosity in the public sphere. As for the worldly matters, today’s Muslim is better fed, better clothed, better educated, and most well-off in history.” According to him, the “narrative of loss”, therefore, “emanates from an outdated theology, which lacks the conceptual tools to make sense of a world beyond the binary of Darul Islam and Darul Harb — that is, the lands already conquered and the ones yet to be conquered. In this narrative, the profession of faith and observance of rituals do not suffice unless the believer has a monopoly over political power.” The debate over the train shooting and Nuh riots demonstrate the gap between narrative and reality, and the skewed status of competitive identitarianism. No sooner did the news break of the shooting on a train, and facts emerged that three of the four victims were Muslims, did the Congress party come out with charges of a “cold-blooded” “hate crime” and blamed it on BJP and RSS with the usual suspects chiming in. The allegation rested on a purported video clip where the constable, who has a history of disciplinary issues, insubordination and is known as a hot-headed individual, was heard taking the names of “Modi, Yogi” and “Thackeray” during the shooting. There are enough gaps in information and contradictory statements from eyewitnesses, including that of Chetan Singh’s colleague, constable Ghanshyam Acharya, who recounted that the assailant was feeling unwell and in a fit of rage had tried to choke Acharya and snatched his rifle prior to the crime, to conclude that it was a “hate crime”. Though Singh eventually returned Acharya’s rifle, he ran into an altercation with his boss, ASI Tikaram Meena, pumped four bullets into him before killing three passengers, all of whom were Muslims. Information in the public domain, such as reports from India Today, which notes that after committing the crime “Singh got down from the train and started open firing on the train” or Economic Times, which reports that during the incident, “Singh moved through several coaches, firing at passengers. He killed another unidentified passenger in the pantry car and then shot Asghar Abbas Ali in coach S6. Passengers tried to hide as he continued firing, and some bullets shattered the train’s windowpanes”, indicating anger issues as the motivating factor. If uttering names of Modi and Yogi or Thackeray indicates instigation of violence against Muslims and examples of ‘Hindu terror’, by that logic frequent mass murders by Islamist radicals are instances of similar instigation and calling out Islamist terror is not Islamophobia. The Nuh riots have triggered a torturous narrative of persecution of Muslims by Hindus, a propagandist coup legitimised unsurprisingly by the Hinduphobic foreign media. Facts, though, speak otherwise. Details have come to light from FIRs and reports on the degree of pre-planning by local groups from the Muslim community in Mewat who were reportedly incensed over the news that cow vigilante Monu Manesar could be present in the religious procession, Brij Mandal Jalabhishek Yatra, organised by Bajrang Dal that passed through the region. According to a report in Hindustan Times “between July 21 and 23, local groups in Nuh held meetings and laid out a plan to attack the yatra, which, they believed will be attended by Monu. People who attended these meetings formed WhatsApp groups and responsibilities were allegedly assigned to each group leader for gathering stones and glass bottles to be thrown at the procession.” Quoting a local resident, the report further adds, “We managed more than 200 bikes and painted their registration plates with black paint to avert action by the police. Nearly 3,000 glass bottles were arranged. While most of them were meant to be thrown like projectiles, some of them were also filled with petrol. These items were then sent to different groups who were going to target the procession…” Harrowing accounts have been revealed from FIRs of an additional chief judicial magistrate of Nuh, Anjali Jain, and her three-year-old daughter, who had to hide in a workshop to escape the rampaging rioters who attacked their car and later torched it. Another FIR, filed by complainant Abid Hussain, posted as a duty magistrate during the yatra by Hindu groups, detailed how “35-40 people (ostensibly Hindus) were stuck at the temple with no means to step out. He stated in the complaint that 700-800 people of a community were pelting stones and using illegal weapons against yatris and police administration on Monday,” according to a report in Indian Express. Among the six people killed in the Nuh violence was one Abhishek Chauhan from Panipat who had taken part in the procession only to fall to a bullet from a rioter. His cousin Mahesh was quoted, as saying in Indian Express that “just as we came out of the Shiv Mandir in Nalhar, we saw a mob, armed with swords, guns and stones, running towards the temple. They started beating people, firing and setting cars on fire. A bullet hit my brother and he fell. I cried for help, but there was no one around there,” he said, adding, “I was trying to get Abhishek somewhere safe, but a man with a sword slashed his neck and fled…” Social media has thrown up videos that indicate the involvement of Pakistani individuals in the riots. At one level, this speaks of a massive administrative failure that a pre-planned communal flare-up at this scale, which sparked reactionary violence elsewhere, wasn’t anticipated or brought under control quicker. At another level, it is evident that even in a country where Hindus are in the majority, they don’t have discursive power or even the right to be called ‘victims’. This power differential, however, is forcing a counter-mobilisation by Hindus through movements such as identitarianism, even though the balance remains one-sided still. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.