Aurangzeb is not an Indian hero. He was a tyrant and a brute in the eyes of most Indians and certainly in the eyes of this columnist. But I found myself both appalled and alarmed when I heard Devendra Fadnavis say to TV reporters last week that in Maharashtra there had suddenly been born ‘many children of Aurangzeb’. When said in this way by a supposedly responsible political leader it is so clearly a dog whistle that Fadnavis should be censured publicly. His comment came in the middle of riots in Kolhapur that were caused by some Muslim teenagers posting high praise of Aurangzeb on social media.
No sooner did news of this post spread than the foot soldiers of Hindutva leapt into action and took to the streets to cause mayhem and communal tensions in a town that previously remained peaceful in times of intense Hindu-Muslim friction. It has been staunchly resistant to attempts by the BJP’s militant factions to make trouble over alleged cases of ‘love jihad’. But the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra seems determined to tear apart the social fabric of the city in the hope of electoral gains next year.
The Prime Minister is known to have personally chosen Fadnavis to become chief minister so why is he not doing more to keep him on a leash? Narendra Modi is very sensitive to international opinion because he sees himself as a member of that small group of statesmen who control the affairs of the world. Whenever there is the slightest criticism of him in the western media, the BJP unleashes its attack dogs on social media to declare that there is a conspiracy to defame India in the west. The newspapers and TV channels they charge with being the main conspirators include The New York Times and the BBC. The result usually is that more damage is caused to India’s image than the western media.
The main reason why Modi attracts criticism in the west is because he is seen as a majoritarian leader. Sometimes the charges are baseless but often they are valid as anyone who talks to the average Indian Muslim well knows. All Indians of liberal disposition, in which I count myself, are unhappy that Muslims have had to deal with having their homes demolished on unproven charges, being lynched in public on unproven charges and ending up in jail on unproven charges. These are things that somehow never seem to happen to Hindus as can be seen from the arrests made after a riot.
Having said this, I would like to add a caveat. Some of the hatred and discrimination that India’s Muslims have faced in Modi’s ‘new India’ is because they seem to be moving backwards. And seem completely immune to the changes happening across the Islamic world. In Iran, women are burning their headscarves as a form of protest against the murderous mullahs who have controlled that unfortunate country for too long. In Saudi Arabia, women are now freer than they have ever been. A Saudi woman astronaut has just returned from a trip to the International Space Station. In a country in which till just the other day women were not allowed to drive a car the changes that are taking place are miraculous.
In India, Muslim women are marching firmly backwards. In Srinagar last week there were problems at a girls’ school because the principal said girls should not be covered in Arab style robes and headgear when they came to school. There was so much resistance over this that the poor principal backed down and requested his students to at least wear burqas and hijabs that were in the colours of the school uniform. For this to be happening in a state where women were allowed to pray in mosques and where a burqa was almost never seen before jihadism arrived this is truly sad.
My liberal friends like to say that these things are happening because Muslims have faced so much intolerance in the past nine years. To them I would like to say that if they were liberals in the fullest sense of that word, they would object to religious fanaticism of all kinds. There is no point in blaming the Hindutva crowd for bad behaviour if we are prepared to put up with bad behaviour from Muslims or Sikhs. Speaking of which, as a proud Sikh I was ashamed last week to see that parade in Canada in which the assassination of Indira Gandhi was celebrated. Canadian Sikhs who dream of Khalistan should try and build it in the vast wilds of that country. It is never going to happen in India.
All religions have some lunatics in their flock and all religions nurture moronic, semi-literate priests who interpret religion with mindless rigidity. But they must never be allowed to take over the faith because it is then that you get the insanity that prevails today in Iran and Afghanistan. This does not mean that in India we should allow political leaders to get away with religious dog whistles of the kind we heard from Fadnavis last week. He should be publicly shamed for what he said. And, in keeping with the rules of ‘new India’, maybe a few bulldozers should be sent to demolish his home for having added fuel to the fire in Kolhapur. In any case, shame on him.
