Kamal Haasan's outrage over 'saffron terror' is neither misplaced nor imagined
So Kamal Haasan's colour is not saffron, and he thinks terrorism has shades of saffron. Expressing such views in today's times invites tags of "anti-national" and "traitor", a barrage of online trolling, and barely veiled threats.
The actor got all of these, and by November 3, already had a defamation case filed against him for the "Hindu terror" comments he made in Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan the day before.
While BJP leader Vinay Katiyar said Haasan's "mental state is unstable. He should be getting treated in a hospital", the party's national spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao compared the actor with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed.
That the "off with his head" cries in fact proved Haasan's point of increasing intolerance seems not to have occurred to these people.
The virulent reaction also went on to show that bomb blasts or mass shootings - to some of which Hindu organisations, such as Abhinav Bharat, have been allegedly linked - are not the only means to spread fear.
Little wonder then that noted actor Prakash Raj, against whom a complaint was filed some time back for criticising the PM, once again took to Twitter on Friday to express solidarity with Haasan. And, as if on cue, "bhakts" duly tried to scare him into silence.
History of the term
"Saffron terror" has long been dismissed by the now ruling BJP as a non-existent narrative of paranoia against Hindu pride. In fact, Kamal Haasan is not the first to get into trouble for talking about the issue.
The term first entered public discourse in 2010, when then Union home minister P Chidambaram cautioned state police chiefs and intelligence officials against it.
"There is no let-up in the attempts to radicalise young men and women in India. Besides, there is the recently uncovered phenomenon of saffron terrorism that has been implicated in many bomb blasts of the past," Chidambaram had said, triggering a huge row.
In 2013, Sushil Kumar Shinde, who was the Union home minister then, had the BJP baying for his blood when he said: "We have got an investigation report that be it the RSS or BJP, their training camps are promoting Hindu terrorism." Shinde was later forced to apologise for his statement.
The two ministers had been talking about "terror" in terms of bomb blasts and mass killings, in the aftermath of the two Malegaon bombings and the Samjhauta Express blasts.
Terror and the state
Between 2007 and 2010, several "saffron terror arrests" were made, including that of Sadhvi Pragya and Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit (cofounder of Abhinav Bharat) in the 2008 Malegaon bombings case and Swami Aseemanand in the Samjhauta blasts, Ajmer Sharif Dargah blasts and Mecca Masjid blasts cases.
However, as power at the Centre changed hands, so did the fortunes of these accused. Amid allegations of botched-up probes and hostile witnesses, all the three are currently out on bail.
This has been used as conclusive proof by the BJP and its supporters to argue that the various swamis and sadhvis have been innocent all along, and implicating them was a "dirty conspiracy to defame Hinduism".
While the final verdict is yet to be pronounced in all of the cases, the quick bails to the accused, far from indicating their innocence, have led to questions that the current state machinery might be throwing its staggering weight behind certain shades of terror-accused, and in fact overseeing their social and political rehabilitation in a big way.
While arguing for his bail, Lieutenant Colonel Purohit had claimed he attended meetings of "radical organisations" as the Army's mole. Even if the officer is right, the fact remains that "radical" Hindu organisations had been meeting regularly before the Malegaon blasts.
It's another matter that Purohit has now donned the Army uniform once again, that too with television cameras rolling before him, and has been welcomed with open arms into the hallowed service despite his chequered past.
Many kinds of terror
The general understanding of a "terrorist activity" is of mass-scale, visible violence. However, increasingly, we see the word "terror attack" used for instances such as the attacks in Nice or Heidelberg, where vehicles driven by "lone wolves" mowed down pedestrians.
Therefore, terrorists are those seeking to create fear by indiscriminately killing innocent civilians, to get people to fall in line with an ideology or a way of living.
Killing a man on the suspicion that he might be eating meat the majority community disapproves of does exactly that.
Killing a 15-year-old boy because his clothes gave away his religious identity, which led people to assume that his tiffin box might have beef, does exactly that.
Killing a 55-year-old man transporting his own cows on the assumption that he was smuggling them, does exactly that.
Dismissing these as one-off, localised disturbances, and failing to find witness or evidence against the murderers, does exactly that.
In the past few years, people who have been vocally critical of the government, or of practices in the Hindu religion, have mysteriously ended up dead. The trials in none of these cases - Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M M Kalburgi - have reached anywhere.
The implicit message - that those who don't fall in line with the current dispensation have no one to protect them - spreads terror.
When a community is repeatedly given the message, in overt and covert ways, that they are mistrusted, that they need to be, and will be, "shown their place", it spreads terror.
The Uttar Pradesh government led by a Hindu yogi recently asked madrasas to not just compulsorily observe Independence Day, but video-record the celebrations. When the government so clearly tells you it does not trust you, it spreads terror.
Suddenly, people have a problem with the azaan played from mosques in the morning. When you are told that it has become acceptable to openly criticise and inhibit your faith, it spreads terror.
Government's job to integrate, not intimidate
The true hallmark of a democracy is to tolerate and encourage dialogue between different opinions, not stifle them. Instead of bristling at imagined offences, the government needs to examine Haasan's statements, and reassure citizens of a democratic country it has allowed to feel terrorised.