New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing at the inauguration of the Synthetic Track of the USHA School, via video conference, in New Delhi on Thursday. PTI Photo / PIB (PTI6_15_2017_000222B)I worry for my country.

The Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo are establishing new norms for both the government and politics. For Modi, the machinery of government is meant for self-propagation. Government is a vehicle to announce, through means fair and foul, new water-marks of performance, whether or not they have any reference to reality. Ends justify the means. For Shah, the new idiom of politics is to belittle all that happened prior to 2014 and to build a larger-than-life image of the BJP. For both, facts are irrelevant, only perception matters. Politics must be muscular, majoritarian with a no-holds-barred campaign to invade the minds of citizens, embedding in them the mirage of change for the better.

The duo, with these ends in mind, attempt to cajole, threaten, and, if necessary, capture the narrative that serves their political objectives. They regard the CBI and other investigating agencies, including the ED, the NIA and the state investigating agencies where the BJP is in government, the departments of the Government of India or state governments, who do their bidding. The media, particularly the electronic media, is no longer a platform for disseminating news to allow viewers the freedom to decide for themselves, but a propaganda vehicle for the government as well as the BJP. Business houses, potential recipients of beneficial government policies, sing paeans for favours. Vulnerable to proceedings by taxmen, they are susceptible to surrendering national interest by doing the government’s bidding.

The Republic has been taken for a ride. The nature of the Indian state has changed since 2014.

On the ground, we see the rise of an intolerant, aggressive majoritarian mindset. Hindutva, which has nothing to do with Hinduism, is represented by vigilantes, ready to kill human beings to save a cow. Anti-Romeo squads, love jihad and the conversation on triple talaq embolden the embers of intolerance. Consequent fires are stoked by some electronic channels and the army of soldiers on social media platforms seconded, perhaps by the BJP, who run amok with threats and abuses to silence opposition. There is no scope for discussion or debate. There is no nuanced position on any issue.

Demonetisation was successful because the prime minister was decisive in his intent to target black money, even though millions lost their jobs and more than 100 people died in queues. Its impact is still felt by sectors of the economy which are struggling to recover. Surgical strikes epitomised nationalistic fervour and the commitment to punish those who seek to intrude across the border. This one-off was projected as a panacea, ensuring that Pakistan dare not foray across the border again.

We are told that the entire opposition is corrupt and the government is scandal-free. Three years of a BJP government, the duo says, have transformed India. There is hope for the common citizen. Shah says that what the BJP has done in three years, the Congress did not do in 70. The BJP, we are told, got rid of nepotism and caste-based politics, yet Yogi Adityanath provides soap and sachets of shampoo to Dalits before he visits them. Dalits at Una are flogged but that has nothing to do with caste.

The inauguration of the Dhola-Sadiya 9.15 km bridge, connecting Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, construction of which began in 2010, and the longest road tunnel (9.2 km) inaugurated on April 2, 2017, cutting the distance between Jammu and Srinagar by 30 km, for which construction started in May 2011, are photo-ops for Modi. They claim that GDP continues to grow above 7 per cent and the Sensex being at a record high are achievements of this government. The people, according to the duo, must celebrate every day for the transformation of India as it moves to be a $20 trillion economy in the near future.

It is as if the history of India started in 2014 and all the years before that, since Independence, were a washout. That there are no jobs for the 12 million kids who move out of school will never make headline news; nor will these be topics to rant about in a channel which is perceived as the alter ego of the government. That only 1.35 lakh jobs were created in 2015 and over 2 lakh jobs in 2016 is a matter of little concern because Shah now says that it is not for the government to create jobs. That a world moving towards automation will leave millions jobless in India is of no relevance since the duo’s politics is to win the next election. Thoughtless rollbacks in the education system will disempower our children. We need to prepare our children to compete in a global environment. That is not a matter of much concern, both for the media and government. That institutions of government are being saffronised with RSS pracharaks being selectively picked in utter disregard of the quality and culture of our constitution is disheartening.

Healthcare is for the rich; public health facilities for the poor are shoddy. The real estate market has collapsed; interest rates are down and the economy is stagnant. The offtake of bank credit is negligible and inventories in factories have dampened the prospects of enhanced productivity. The small and medium-scale sector, the backbone of our economy, is dormant and needs hand-holding. Black money is back in circulation along with fake notes. Demonetisation has not deterred terrorists. GDP numbers, no longer relied on, are for academics to debate. Yet the government keeps on patting itself on the back.

Both government and politics in India are far removed from the concerns of the common person. The brazen attitude of establishments to take their partisan agenda forward is disquieting. The state’s constitutional commitment for bringing peace and tranquillity is not a priority. This exclusive duo wants an exclusive India. That is their hope. We must get together to challenge the duo and ensure that in 2019, we start afresh.

Representational Image. (Express Photo: Oinam Anand)

Everyone has likes and dislikes. They concern food, clothes, books, friends, neighbours, politics and practically everything else. That is why it is said ‘one man’s food is another man’s poison’.

Family, culture and religion have a profound influence on one’s likes and dislikes. One may argue for what one likes (“vegetarian food is sufficient for a strong body”), or one may argue against what one dislikes (“English must be replaced in the conduct of official business”), but one cannot kill or cause injury.

Violence Everywhere

India has become a killing field, not only because of militants and Maoists, but because of likes and dislikes. There is actual killing, taking a life, an act that the law describes as murder. Akhlaq, a poor farmer, was killed by a mob because the mob believed that he had kept the flesh of a cow — beef — at his home. Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, and his sons had bought two cows and were transporting them to their farm. They were stopped by a group of self-appointed gau rakshaks (protectors of the cow), beaten and Pehlu Khan was killed. In both cases, the mob or the group did not like the idea that someone may be eating beef.

There is violence short of murder as well. A crowd led by an elected representative defied the law, took out a ‘religious’ procession, was stopped by the police, went on a rampage, vandalised the home of the superintendent of police and terrorised his wife and small children. In this case, the crowd and the elected representative did not like the fact that another religious group had a long custom of taking out a procession.

There is vigilantism. A young couple (not married) rode a rickshaw to a cinema. The police apprehended them, took them to a police station, questioned them for hours, and finally let them off with a severe ‘warning’. The police personnel belonged to a group officially designated as ‘anti-Romeo squad’ and they were tasked to prevent young couples from using public streets or spaces. Non-police groups did the same thing in Kochi and elsewhere. An outfit called the Hindu Yuva Vahini became the enforcer of morals in Uttar Pradesh.

Also read: That sinking feeling – 1

Wither Secularism?

There are communal clashes. There are caste clashes. Leaders jumped into the fray, not to condemn the clashes or to make peace, but to find ‘reasons’ why the clashes were justified.

There is fear. Places of worship are desecrated. Religious minorities live in fear. Dalits live in fear. A Dalit is damned if he does (skins a carcass) and damned if he doesn’t (refuses to skin a carcass). Rohith Vemula wrote “My birth is my fatal accident”. Girls live in fear of harassment if they are seen with boys or wear jeans or have a drink at a bar. Tribals live in fear that they will be deprived of their land and forest rights.

There is polarisation. Without a shred of evidence to support the implied charge of discrimination, it was declared “if land is given for a kabristan, equal land must be given for a shamsan” and “if there is electricity for Eid, there must be equal amount of electricity for Diwali”.

Rise of Intolerance

There is intolerance of dissent.

Mr Sitaram Yechury was dis-invited to a scheduled lecture in Nagpur. My talk at IIT Delhi was cancelled a day before it was scheduled. Ms Priya Pillai was stopped from boarding a flight to London where she was due to address British Parliamentarians on human rights. Lest they become too vocal, non-government organisations are threatened with investigations or cancellation of registration under the FCRA or the Income-tax Act.

There is ideological profiling. RSS swayamsevaks were appointed as governors. Heads of educational and cultural institutions were selected from a small group of right-wing, conservative intellectuals. Text books in Haryana were screened by a committee headed by a self-confessed Hindutva ideologue.

There is insult. Some religions and their followers were ridiculed. Agents were paid to troll journalists and columnists. There is little or no counter-argument, only abuse in the filthiest language.

There is the spectre of an Orwellian state. Aadhaar has transformed from voluntary to mandatory. It was conceived as an aid to Direct Benefit Transfer schemes, it has become a precondition to exercise legal rights such as travel or buying property or paying taxes. Citizens’ data is collected by numerous agencies without a law on data security or data privacy. Data-leak is commonplace.

The government brazenly told the Supreme Court that no person has an absolute right over his or her body!

In the ranking of 198 countries on religious intolerance, India stands at fourth from the bottom. In the World Press Freedom Index of 180 countries, India’s rank has dropped from 131 to 140.

It would be foolish to attribute all of the above to the period after the NDA government assumed office in May 2014. These ills were indeed present before. A hierarchical society is inherently authoritarian and intolerant. The difference is this: then, when these ills manifested themselves, persons holding positions of high authority condemned them and the nation bowed its head in shame; now, there is scant condemnation and absolutely no shame.

Secularism is derided. Liberalism is challenged. Dissent is sedition. Questioning the government (or the Army Chief or the RBI governor) is anti-national. The path to sabka saath, sabka vikas is paved with authoritarianism, uniformity and implicit obedience to the will of the rulers.

As that sinking feeling deepens, there is more.

Photo for representational purpose.The dismissal by a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court of an appeal by the Central government for recall of an earlier ruling by a smaller bench of the same court in the case of 1,528 alleged fake encounter killings in Manipur will go down as a landmark ruling. It has profound implications for the future of counter-insurgency strategies. If the government takes the judgment positively, it can be seen as anticipation of a special force fit for the purpose, armed and trained like the army, but attuned to doing civil duty and being answerable to the civil court of law.

The outline of such a force was quite distinctly visible in the dialectic between the government’s curative petition and the wording of its dismissal by the Supreme Court bench. Very briefly, the petition argued that the matter was urgent as the morale of the forces would drop if they were subject to investigation by the local police after every incident. The stress was on the need to give the army the freedom to use whatever means in its command to tackle what was described as “war-like” situations — and since threats of war were being tackled, the army’s actions should not be open to judicial review.

The judgment rejected the argument that “war-like” situations warrant a free hand to the army, noting that “democracy would be in danger” if the armed forces were permitted to kill citizens on the mere suspicion that they were enemies of the state. It was categorical that there would be “no absolute immunity” from legal prosecution for armed forces personnel on counter-insurgency duties if they are suspected to have caused deaths by the use of excessive and disproportionate force.

The intriguing phrase here is “war-like situation”, which is supposed to warrant the use of the military, which then deals with the situation as if in a war zone. The ambiguity of the term “war-like” speaks of a peculiar dilemma of the Indian state. On the one hand, the insurgency situations in Kashmir and the Northeast are being portrayed as akin to war, but because of the legal implications of calling them wars, the government refers to these problems as merely law and order issues, and therefore, a matter for domestic law to tackle.

The problem is, if this was war, it would imply a conflict of states, thereby giving the insurgents a status that all states would normally avoid. Moreover, if this was war, rules of war, such as the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions, would be deemed applicable, again a prospect no state would concede to. From the government’s point of view, insurgency is therefore definitely not “war”, the noun, but “war-like”, the adjective. But would such semantic acrobatics warrant the use of unaccounted force, as in war? The Supreme Court has said no, urging, instead, all stakeholders “to find a lasting and peaceful solution to the festering problem.”

International combat laws did attempt to take care of this grey area created by “non-international armed conflicts” when the Geneva Conventions Protocol II was conceived of in 1977. The protocol is aimed at bringing violence by non-state forces under the purview of international humanitarian laws. Here, too, because of what are deemed compromises to national sovereignties, few states with internal conflicts have ratified it. India, too, though a signatory to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, refused to sign this additional protocol. The ambiguity as to whether insurgencies are “wars”, or merely law and order problems, remains. The use of the military in civil unrest situations, as is being done under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), also remains controversial.

This ambiguity is what perhaps anticipates a new special counterinsurgency force, with combat capabilities of the military, but answerable to civil law for their action. In many ways, the Manipur police commandos, a unit responsible for a great number of the alleged 1,528 fake encounter killings, is one such entity. Although they are not covered by the AFSPA, they still came to be affected by the climate of impunity introduced by prolonged exposure to the AFSPA.

Before the July 2009 photo expose by Tehelka magazine on how a captured former insurgent, Chongkham Sanjit, was eliminated in broad daylight, reporters of local dailies in Imphal would vouch that there were practically daily body counts of suspects killed by the government forces, often police commandos. Some even have frightening anecdotal stories of how they may have saved some would-be encounter
victims.

In those days, commandos were wont to calling up newspaper offices to send someone to cover encounter sites where alleged insurgents had just been shot. On some occasions, some reporters were too punctual and reached the spot before the encounter happened, and the police had to be content with “capturing” the suspects. Those were also the days when gallantry awards for government forces in Manipur were the highest. After the Sanjit killing expose, and the judicial probe that followed, everything quietened down, suddenly. Practically no more encounters, much fewer gallantry awards, and surprisingly less insurgent activities too.

There is no doubt the police can be as brutal, or more brutal, than the military. But the difference is, the police is accountable to the same law as its victims, therefore, the victims do not feel completely powerless. The Sanjit case has demonstrated how much this one attribute can be a check on the impunity of the forces. A disciplined special police force to meet violent challenges to the state may therefore be the answer to easing the military out of counter-insurgency responsibilities.

The terrifying case of 1,528 alleged fake encounter deaths in Manipur is a consequence of allowing a lapse of this accountability. As Amartya Sen cautions in The Argumentative Indian, consequences can make victory pyrrhic and meaningless, and so, though Krishna convinced Arjuna as to why evil must be fought and eliminated, Arjuna’s fears of the consequences cannot be ignored.