The offer of a reward on Mamata Banerjee's beheading reflects a dismal wider scenario. Fatwas to kill or injure, criminalistion of politics and general intolerance to opposing views have become common
BJP youth leader Yogesh Varshney’s offer of Rs 11 lakh to anybody beheading West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, is utterly revolting. It is not just a matter of ugly political rhetoric but a criminal act in that it calls for murder backed by an offer of reward. It has rightly been condemned by all political parties and right-thinking persons. But that is not enough. One must ponder the circumstances that have created the climate in which some people think nothing of making such statements.
There have been, over the past several decades, a number of announcements prescribing the killing of people, which, in some cases, were backed by the offer of a reward. There have been, for example, fatwas for the killing of authors like Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen, and one in April, 2016, by the Darul-Ulum Deoband, the pre-eminent Islamic seminary in the Indian sub-continent, against Muslims saying “Bharat Mata ki jai” (Victory to Mother India). That was in April 2017. Another fatwa, in January 2017, was issued by Shahi Imam of the Tipu Sultan Mosque in Kolkata, Maulana Nur-ur Rehman Barkati, for the shaving of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hair and beard and blackening his face with ink for the suffering demonetisation has caused to people. He promised a reward of Rs 25 lakh for the act.
Besides these, hundreds of fatwas have been issued on innumerable matters, some quite ridiculous and some very serious in their implications. This writer cannot remember a single case where a person, issuing a fatwa that is criminal in nature, has received a punishment proportionate to the offence. There has been no deterrent. As a result, fatwas have become a part of India’s politico-religious scene and issuing these, or some similar form of diktat, is tending to become increasingly common. Yogesh Varshney’s offer for the killing of Mamata Banerjee has to be seen in this context.
The second factor is the general climate of violence in the country. The Pakistan-inspired trouble in Kashmir, the Khalistan agitation which rocked the whole of northern India with unprecedented violence, the Maoist insurgency in many parts, the spreading shadow of terrorism throughout the country, the rising communal tensions, to say nothing of the explosion of crime, have all contributed to this. More than any of these perhaps has been the contribution of the growing incidence of political violence in many parts of the country, including West Bengal. Starting from 1967, the State has seen sustained violence in which many important political leaders like Hemanta Kumar Basu of the Forward Bloc and the Vice-Chancellor of Jadavpur University, Gopal Sen, were murdered. More recently, there has been violence in Nandigram and Singur. Now there are continuing clashes between supporters of the Trinamool Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) and TMC and the BJP, amid cries of collapse of law-and-order in the State.
There was a time when women and children were spared physical violence even in the midst of the most fearful clashes. On one occasion in 1971, this writer was witness to a clash between supporters of the CPI(M) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-leninist) in which both sides, arrayed roughly 100 metres or so apart at two ends of a road, were firing away from country-made guns. Suddenly, a child strayed into the road and an old lady ran after him to take him back to safety. Both sides stopped firing instantly and resumed it after the lady had taken the child away to safety.
Women are not spared any more. Recall what happened in Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal and what is happening in the same State and elsewhere now. This is partly a result of the deterioration of the country’s general political culture closely linked to the growing criminalisation of politics, underlined by the fact that an alarming number of legislators, including Members of Parliament, or leaders, have criminal charges pending against them. The practice of not launching abusive or physical attacks on women leaders and politicians has been defenestrated in the process.
In its turn, the growing criminalisation of politics has been a part of an alarming criminalisation of the wider society. The reasons are many and known. One is growing urbanisation and the influx into cities of rural migrants who are without the familial and societal restraints that work on them in the villages where, besides, different moral concepts and cultural and societal mores prevail. The other is the rise of the market economy, with advertising as the cutting edge, and the consumer culture. Women’s bodies are often used in many advertisements in a manner that is tantamount to projecting them not as human beings with feelings but objects of sexual pleasure. This conduces to the urge to take such objects forcibly if they cannot be possessed with their consent. This, in turn, conduces to an increase in cases of rape and molestation.
The urge to possess, that plays an important role in such crimes, is steeply enhanced by the consumer culture which defines one’s status in society by one’s possessions. What matters is the make of the car one rides or drives, the clothes and perfumes/ after-shave lotions, one wears, the kind of watches, pens, mobile phones and other consumer items one possess, or the vacations one enjoys or the restaurants one dines in!
Whether a person is wise and ethical is coming to matter increasingly little. If this removes such people as role models in society, the inadequacies of the criminal justice system, marked by low rates of convictions and long trials during which many offenders are out on bail after short incarcerations, severely undermine the deterrence mechanism against crime. Both the situation and the prospects are grim. Things continuing this way, utterly condemnable acts like offering a bounty of Rs 11 lakh on Mamata Banerjee’s head, would become increasingly common. The question is: How do we halt this headlong march to disasterIJ
The social, economic and cultural factors conducing to it are now so deeply entrenched in our country that it will take a long time to eradicate or radically reform them. The effort, however, should begin with the civil society playing an increasing role in upholding moral values and ethical conduct and pressing upon the Union and State Governments to discuss and formulate measures that facilitate the process. Also, political parties should stop sending persons with criminal records or charges pending against them to legislatures and elevating them to leadership positions. Finally, the criminal justice system should be revamped to make it far more effective than now. This will perhaps mark the beginning of a trek that will take years to complete.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)