Following up on the report Jerry forwarded on the massacres in
Gujarat, I am giving the Economic and Political Weekly website
address for a recent article by Jan Breman on "Communal Upheaval as
Resurgence of Social Darwinism". If one is interested in the full
analysis (excerpt below), he should probably go to the website soon
as this article will be removed.
rb
http://epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2002&leaf=04&filename=4360&filetype=html
The end of the Hindutva politics of exclusion is not yet in sight.
Before my departure from Ahmedabad, I acquired a pamphlet urging the
Hindu majority to avoid all economic transactions with Muslims. The
call for a total boycott - don't buy from their shops or engage in
business with them, don't employ or be employed by Muslims - is not a
new one and the same message of systematic discrimination already
circulated in previous rounds of communal rioting. There is also the
appeal in the text to Hindu men to keep their daughters and sisters
under close scrutiny lest they fall prey to the lust of the bestial
Other.
The hatred radiating from these sentences is as ignominious for the
targeted males as it is for the females belonging to the majority,
who are portrayed as lacking the will and the capability to be in
charge of their own virtue. One could, of course, argue that the
separate niches occupied by Hindus and Muslims in the labour market
militate against exclusion from economic life of a newly created
segment of untouchables. I am not so sure that such a plan of action,
contingent upon a more comprehensive blueprint and backed up by the
kind of intimidation we have already witnessed, would prove to be
abortive in the end.
The design does not seem to be so dissimilar from what happened
during the initial phase of the Nazi regime in Germany. Prior to the
actual elimination of Jewish people from mainstream society by the
state, their property was identified and either destroyed or
confiscated. In the latest orgy of violence in Ahmedabad, which
combined a killing spree with the selective and ruthless destruction
of Muslim shops, garages and other business establishments, I see a
notable resemblance to the Kristallnacht in the early 1930s when the
policy of German Nazification began in earnest. Seen from that
perspective it is quite
alarming to observe the complete absence of feelings of shame and
remorse among those who propagated or participated in the Ahmedabad
onslaught after the worst of the pogrom was over. The dominant mood
was rather one of glee and satisfaction, or even a sense of
fulfilment, expressed in statements such as 'they had it coming' or
'they got what they deserved'. The chairman of the VHP in Ahmedabad
went on record as proudly claiming that 'it had to be done'.5 What
sort of future does the Sangh parivar leadership have in store for
the religious minority in the country? As second-class citizens, as
the apex body of the RSS made clear at a recent Bangalore meeting:
'Let the Muslims understand that
their real safety lies in the goodwill of the majority'. Such
phrases come dangerously close to labelling them as Untermenschen.
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