Godhra or Dadri: Modi's silence raises questions
Violence is an expression of a mindset. There is something frightening as it follows the logic of classification and ideologies persist in justifying it. A man dies and we are subject to the rhetoric of beef as if it is a continuation of patriotism by other means. The killing of a 50-year-old man was murder most foul but what added to it the touch of evil was the way the event was consumed. The death of a Mohammed Akhlak is a tragedy.
What was elaborated was the logic of food as the logic of murder. To save a sacred cow you deny the sacredness of a human being, and murder him on sheer suspicion. Then BJP politicians arrive on the scene and enact its justification. One visit can be an aberration but two is a trend and Mahesh Sharma the Union cultural minister give a new Goebellian twist to politics. The cow as a symbol of non-violence triggers violence and democracy as a theory of difference signals majoritarian uniformity.
Even cynics would stop here but electoral politics of the Yadav region exploits the insecurity of victims for electoral ends. But then the creamy layer of evil comes from the prime minister himself. He maintains a studied silence, a designer quietness which adds an evil touch to an already worrisome regime.
Narendra Modi's silence deserves analysis. This was the man who laughed at Manmohan Singh's weakness as a politician but looks rather weak himself. As a campaigner, he created a bully boy style criticising Rahul's tentativeness. Yet today he has turned delay into a fine art. Modi's silence is not the silence of mourning that stems from solidarity or sadness. His is not the silence that is embarrassed by the noise of politics. It is the silence of indifference which becomes obscene, because it denies dignity to the victim.
The contrasting performances are mind boggling. The prime minister oozes sweetness that has all the sentimentality of a B-grade movie, virtually telling NRI's that they are more Indians than the citizens in India. Yet when a father of a serving corporal in the Airforce is murdered, he pretends it has not happened. In a way, it is Modi's behaviour that makes the Dadri murder as frightening as Muzaffarnagar.
Muzaffarnagar was a collective act of violence where the aftermath was frightening. Dadri was a single act of murder which became symptomatic of deeper divisions in Indian society. Food, which between festivity and fasting, allowed for the logic of difference and hospitality now provides the logic of murder. Food as politics gives rise to a new battle between insiders and outsiders as patriotism follows the axes of vegetarian and non-vegetarian. Food becomes the grammar of multiple exclusion as beef becomes the stigmata of the poor, minoritarian and marginal Muslims. One saw the death of language twice at Dadri. One was the dissolution of discourse where food as a symbol of non-violence was the basis of a new ethics. The other was the silence of the prime minister who has been indifferent to the murder, convinced that as a leader he owed the nation neither an account, an accounting or a sense of accountability. Sheer silence as indifference erased all sense of humanity and accountability.
In fact, the only sense of dignity in the Dadri event has been shown by the members of the victim's family. When politicians gathered like vultures at Dadri, the bereaved family told them that they could visit but not exploit the event. Horror and mourning need time and compassion, not the hypocrisy of a politician as an official mourner. The final stroke of dignity came from the victim's son who said that some people were evil and those that murdered his father should be punished. Justice demanded that, but despite the pain, he could still say "Sare jahan se accha Hindustan hamara". The Muslim as a victim and citizen provided a lesson in citizenship and dignity to Modi. The dignity of the Muslims spoke but Modi's silence polluted the very nature of the aftermath. A studied silence sometimes is the clearest statement of complicity.
First in 2002 and now in 2015, the prime minister's silence raises questions for which Indian democracy demands an answer. It is a silence that verges on complicity, indifference and grows in cynicism day by day. People talk of Dadaism in art, and from today, folklore will discuss a Dadriesque silence as something sinister and conspirational. Modi may not add to communal understanding but he has contributed to the languages of violence.