Hindu-Muslim binary looms large

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi said last week: “If I do Hindu-Muslim, I won’t be fit for public life.” He was commenting on the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) notice to the BJP president on Modi’s statement at a recent election rally in Rajasthan, where he said that the Congress was intending to snatch the assets accumulated by his supporters over the years (including their wives’ mangalsutras) to redistribute the wealth among ‘infiltrators’ and their ‘large families’.

I hope Modi’s clarification that large families are to be found largely in poorer households is believed by his followers, especially in Gujarat.

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Every citizen of our great country knew who the PM was referring to. Caught in a bind, he said he was referring to the ‘poor’ of India when he talked of those with large families. But he refrained from explaining his simultaneous reference to ‘infiltrators’ when he spoke about the Robin Hood tendencies of his political enemies. He had crossed the limits set by the ECI’s model code of conduct and this was a possible escape route he was trying to explore.

In politics, some lies are to be expected. The problem arises when lies get rolled out every day, especially during election rallies. Take Modi’s statement that he would not be fit for public life if he encouraged the Hindu-Muslim divide. Then what is the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that he and Amit Shah boast about, if not an attempt to divide? Last week, we were regaled with the news of the first beneficiaries of the CAA.

A family of Gujarati Hindus, settled in Pakistan’s Sindh province, had applied for and succeeded in receiving citizenship in India. How was it any different from the million Hindus from Sindh and elsewhere in Pakistan who had crossed over the years to be with their co-religionists? Did any of them face rejection? It would be surprising if even a single instance of such rejection were quoted.

The CAA is a political ploy to demonstrate that the government is out-and-out pro-Hindu, which the BJP dispensation led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee was not. I do not see any motive for introducing the CAA except to needle the minority Muslims and tell them that they are not wanted in Bharat. Hindus crossing over from Pakistan, both West and East, were always welcomed. Why is the BJP trying to prove that it was otherwise, when it was not?

I am happy that Modi clarified in his defence of his Rajasthan speech that large families are to be found largely in poorer households, irrespective of the faith of the couples involved. I hope his clarification is read and believed, particularly by his followers in Gujarat. I had a friendly altercation with them in March 2002, some 15 days after the Godhra train incident and the riots that followed all over that state. I had gone to Ahmedabad to find out from my former police colleagues why they had failed to control the rioters. In 1985, I had headed the Gujarat Police for four months. The officers in charge in 2002 had worked as my juniors and knew what had to be done to control communal conflagrations.

Gujaratis have been my friends since my school and college days in Mumbai. The Gujaratis of Ahmedabad were well disposed towards me. I was invited to dinner by a respected doctor. He had two dozen couples as guests. After dinner, we sat down to discuss the happenings in Ahmedabad.

It was soon apparent that communal passions predominated at that dinner. The more vociferous of the guests asserted that every Muslim had four wives and, of course, four or more children from each wife. I asked if in Gujarat there were four million Muslim women for the million Muslim men living there. Of course, my question stumped them, but it did not stop a chorus of voices from asserting the veracity of the original claim. I pointed out to them that in Kerala, with a 27 per cent Muslim population, the community’s reproductive rate was reportedly no higher than that of Hindus or Christians because there was 100 per cent literacy among women and their men were gainfully employed in West Asia.

I cannot claim they were convinced. Communal passions were too high at the time of my visit. If Modi really means what he says, he should convince his followers in his own state and other states of India that large families are a corollary of poverty and illiteracy, especially among womenfolk. Religion cannot be blamed for that.

The PM’s assertion that he does not dabble in Hindu-Muslim dissensions puzzled me. When I returned from Romania in January 1994 and occupied my flat in the city of my birth, I was approached by fellow citizens concerned about the communal divide in Mumbai following the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and the riots that followed. Then Police Commissioner Satish Sahney conveyed to me the views of then CM Sharad Pawar that the alienation of the Muslims was a matter that needed the state’s undivided attention.

Sahney and I, with the help of Sushobha Barve of Rajmohan Gandhi’s Moral Rearmament outfit, started the Mohalla Committee Movement in the city’s slums where arson, loot and killings had taken place in 1992-93. Over the years, after numerous visits to those localities and the active support of the police, we restored a semblance of civility and understanding in the relations between the two communities that live cheek by jowl in those slums.

Just when we started licking our chops and patting ourselves on the back, the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 brought in a BJP government headed by Modi. By 2019, our workers on the ground reported a perceptible change, with fear followed by hatred taking root. Disheartened, the workers have reported that 20 years of positive progress in communal amity has been replaced by divisiveness and hate based on fear. Now, they would have to work much harder to get the two communities to understand each other.

The only saving grace, if one wishes to call it that, was that the probability of clashes between the communities had receded because those who usually engineered violence were now in the driver’s seat and those who organised defences felt the futility of doing so in the altered scenario.

So, the PM’s contention that he would be unfit for public office if he fuelled Hindu-Muslim discord will continue to puzzle observers like me.