Creeping intolerance in India? Jay Panda is right

Scientists and academics have joined writers to raise a battle cry: “creeping intolerance” in India could throw the country into chaos.

More than 135 scientists have drawn a picture of apocalypse, saying peace and harmony in the country are being “threatened by a rash of sectarian and bigoted acts that have recently escalated”.

The scientists write that today’s highly polarised society can be compared to “a nuclear bomb close to criticality”. The situation, the alarmed scientists add, “can explode anytime and drive the nation to  utter chaos”.

Baijayant "Jay" Panda, a Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MP known for being level-headed, in a nuanced editorial page piece today (October 28) in The Times of India puts the matter in perspective: “It has been some months now since news reports of attacks on churches in India disappeared from the headlines. And thank goodness for that! Yet, for a while late last year and early this year, such reports had seemed to dominate the news, at least in the mainstream English media if not in its much larger vernacular cousins nationwide. In hindsight, it can be useful to examine what happened, as well as assess other allegations and reports of intolerance that have now taken centre stage.”

Why did reports of the church attacks that filled newspaper headlines and dominated TV debates before the Delhi Assembly elections suddenly disappear after the polls?

Panda answers that with a question: “Is it the case, as argued by many equally prominent voices, that a handful of isolated incidents, some of which were clearly not of a communal nature, had been played up into something worse? The latter argument is bolstered by the fact that even larger numbers of robberies, vandalism and desecration of other places of worship rarely get reported in the media. For instance, on Christmas Eve last year, there was a rather spectacular robbery and desecration of a famous temple in my constituency. Despite creating much consternation locally, the incident barely registered in the regional media, and didn’t get even a passing mention nationally. Fortunately, it was not communal in nature and, equally importantly, no one tried to claim it was.”

He adds pointedly: “But discontinued stories of church attacks have given way to a sustained and broader narrative of intolerance against minorities, again much more so in the English rather than vernacular media. Then, as now, the allegations are the fringe elements with political connections to the government have become emboldened and are fanning confrontations, from the controversies over beef, to ink attacks, all the way up to a mob lynching.”

Now for some facts. The number of communal incidents from 2012 to 2015 has averaged two a day – around 700 a year. The 25 per cent reported spike in such incidents over the first five months of 2015 is statistically insignificant. Larger spikes – and troughs – have occurred in earlier years.

This doesn’t mean scientists, artists and writers railing against “intolerance” don’t have a point.

I’m married to an artist. I’m a writer. And I have a background in science. I know all three creative communities first-hand. What they think and say matter. They – especially artists – have their hearts in the right place but can often be misled by clever propaganda. Scientists and writers are rational but sections of them – and I stress the word sections – can be moulded into pawns by political machinations.

And make no mistake. The current campaign heralding the rise of “intolerance” to levels “not seen since the Emergency” is utterly political, apart from being utterly false.

Here is a part of the statement signed and circulated this week by six artists, one photographer and one art critic (Geeta Kapur, Vivan Sundaram, Ram Rahman, Sharmila Samant, Tushar Joag, Atul Bhalla, Gulammohammed Sheikh and Nilima Sheikh): “The remit of social violence and fatal assaults on ordinary citizens (as in Dadri, UP; Udhampur, Jammu & Kashmir) is multiplying. There are numerous incidents of repression by Hindutva forces operating through their goon brigades. The warnings and regrets issued by ruling party ideologues are merely expedient.

"The Sangh Parivar and its cohorts, who form its support base, and the government itself, are complicit in their attempts to impose conformity of thought, belief and practice. And "fringe" elements are in fact the other face of this government’s developmental rhetoric.

“The ideology of the ruling party has revealed its contempt for creative and intellectual work; bigotry and censorship will only grow. As in the past, we must challenge the divisive forces through varied forms of appeal and protest, articulation and refusal. Our demand can be nothing less than that the entire range of constitutional rights and freedoms of the citizens of this country - freedom of expression and speech, right to dissent and exert difference in life choices including culture and religion - be ensured.”

The language used by the artists is instructive: “goon brigades”, “cohorts”, “repression”, “contempt”, “bigotry” and “social violence”.

These sentiments were conspicuously absent during incidents of communal violence and brazen corruption under the Congress-led UPA government in 2004-14. As Jay Panda sensibly observes: “In any event, it is surely no coincidence that, real or exaggerated, this narrative of rising intolerance has been peaking around elections. Just as in the earlier phase of reported church attacks bunched around the Delhi state election, so too now the crucial Bihar election is undoubtedly a catalyst.”

The prime minister has not handled the political campaign to “delegitimise” his government particularly well. The campaign is so transparently mendacious that it could have been exposed long before it reached – to use our scientists’ colourful phrase – “nuclear criticality”.

The progenitors of the campaign to delegitimise the government have their war room in the heart of Lutyens’ Delhi where important opposition leaders still reside.

What these Machiavellians and their media henchmen don’t realise is that using artists, scientists and writers to raise the cry of intolerance can backfire. In one telling opinion poll, 60 per cent of respondents hold the media responsible for creating an atmosphere that sparks sectarian and communal violence. The more the media distorts the narrative, the greater the polarisation.

The Bihar elections may be an immediate target of the Opposition and its media underlings. But the collateral damage their campaign might cause to the national interest and to India’s global image could rebound on them. When 2019 rolls along, the Machiavellians may discover they’ve overplayed their hand. The electorate could surprise them.