‘Absurd’ is the new ‘normal’

Apoorvanand

Professor of Hindi in Delhi University

Some well-meaning people have been appealing to the Prime Minister to condemn the ongoing killings of Muslims in different states of India on different pretexts. This begging must stop. One knows that it is not the person but the office of the Prime Minister one is looking up to. One takes this seat with the solemn oath to be a Samdarshi: protecting the rights of all human beings of the nation. Unfortunately, this has not been the case with the present Prime Minister.

His aversion for Muslims is well known to the Muslims of Gujarat. They are not surprised that he is scaring the Hindus by saying that Pakistan wants to make Ahmed Patel the chief minister of Gujarat.

A friend of mine, Hindu by religion, shivers while recollecting a meeting the then Chief Minister of Gujarat addressed in 2002 in Ahmedabad. The blood on the streets had not dried. He was in a Muslim-dominated are. Windows opened with curious women and men looking down to hear their CM. He theatrically swayed his hands with fingers pointed upwards and his first sentence was that he was there to make Mullahs of Pakistan to better hear what he had to say. Faces withdrew immediately and the windows started getting shuttered. Such was the power of violence in his language. But this is not about him. We know him well. He is in Gujarat again, creating a fear in Hindus of Muslims. Uttering absurd and white lies; that Pakistan has asked Mani Shankar Aiyar to get him killed.

People of Gujarat know that this is not about Pakistan. Hindus know that he is stoking a prejudice sleeping under their skin. He is using Pakistan and Ahmed Patel metaphorically. This time, they are forcing themselves not to be swayed.

Muslims of Gujarat now hear all this with indifference. So, to ask a man who is so full of venom against Muslims to condemn the killing of Afrazul is to insult him. Let us not do that. Let us not delude ourselves by extracting a condemnation which the media would present after each killing as a consolation to the Muslims. After all, how many times the poor PM is expected to issue statements? Nor is this about the BJP or the RSS. We know well that that anti-Muslim and anti-Christian hatred is their raison d'être. So, we should not have any expectation from them.

This murder is about us. Our response to this murder and our reflection on the earlier murders would decide whether India will live or not.After the first phase of shock and revulsion over the brutal and unrepentant manner in which the murder was committed and recorded will come its rationalisation. We'll start psycho-analysing the murderer. The family of the accused has advanced a theory of 'love jihad'. This time, fortunately, the police have not connived with them. There would be an economic reason: the murderer was jobless and, so, jealous of the labourer-turned-contractor. 

As time passes, we would be asked to understand that Hindus have a justified fear against Muslims. Even the Supreme Court and the High Court of Kerala have been persuaded that there could be an organised drive to convert Hindu girls to Islam by marrying them. Why blame this half-literate man then? Could he not be genuinely under the impression that the targeted man was after Hindu women? And he took a step to protect them?

This was the Supreme Court's argument when the quantum of punishment for the crime of the murder of Graham Staines and his sons was being decided. It awarded a lighter punishment to Bajrang Dal leader Dara Singh, arguing that his anger against Staines had to be understood as he was upset with the activity of conversion done by the Christian missionaries. Thus, the blame for making the murderer a murderer is put on the victim; otherwise good Hindus like Dara Singh would not have turned into murderers. This is how we seek to justify such killings.  

 A Rajasthan Government minister has suggested that the killer was of unsound mind. No normal human being would do it. We know that as well. But we also know that the definition of the word normal has changed altogether. Would a normal man, with his senses intact, ever argue that Ram was born at the spot where He was claimed to be born? Was it not a former Home Minister who led a whole mass of Hindus to Ayodhya with this belief to demolish the mosque standing at the spot he wanted them to reclaim for Ram? Was he in a normal frame of mind? Or will he plead that an abnormal passion had overpowered him?

We now have a new level of normal. Murders are being justified by the keepers of law and order. Our children are being taught that God Shiva had performed the first organ transplant. Teachers are being made to chant collectively talaq talaq talaq to China. Children and teachers alike are being told to believe that all Muslims rulers were plunderers and outsiders. The independence and autonomy of an adult woman is taken from her by the courts.

All this might sound absurd to those who think themselves as normal. But all this is normal now. It has moved from streets to our textbooks, to our classrooms, to our public and political discourse, to our courts. The murder of Afrazul would not have been possible without this normality that India has achieved. If we want no more murders like this, we would need to reverse all this. If we do not do it urgently, it would be difficult to pull ourselves out from the morass which is pulling us in.