Nupur Sharma Suspension: A Tactical Loss For A Strategic Victory?

Nothing has made BJP's core constituency more upset than the party's decision to suspend Nupur Sharma, a young politician, a feisty woman, and BJP's articulate spokeswoman for many months. I happen to believe strongly in corporate loyalty in the RSS tradition. This means I always frown upon supporters and workers going ballistic over matters that seem to be out of line with the ideology. However, perhaps for the first time in my entire political life, I too found myself rather peeved. I felt that people like me are being taken for granted by the leaders of the ideology.

The reason perhaps is the brazenness of it. Muslims are abusing our dharma openly, and a most reasonable counter rooted in Islamic scriptures, makes the entire ummah go violent. And mind you, I am not complaining about their behavior. I found it appalling that we, the supposedly militant, warrior-like ideologues, who mocked the "softness” of Hindu leaders from Gandhi to Manmohan Singh, we who bravely fought for Ram Janmabhoomi successfully against all odds, capitulated abjectly before murderous supremacists! This was really galling. Exasperated, here is what I wrote to a small group of committed Hindu Nationalists:

"This is unacceptable behavior by BJP. I hope supporters' pressure brings BJP to its senses soon."

However, I always lecture to all that politics requires us to be cool-headed, and perhaps slightly cynical too. In politics, we cannot go berserk with our emotions. We have to assess options coolly in every situation that comes before us. So, I too reflected on what might have happened, and here are the thoughts that followed:

    1. One thing is sure - both BJP and RSS really have ears to the ground. I am talking about top leadership. So there will be corrections.

    2. The only possible (not sure of this too) flaw in Sangh Parivar might be - they still have not developed a thorough knowledge of Islam. Of course they know all about Islamic behavior. But I am not sure if top leadership understands Mohammed and his doctrines so well.

    3. They knew how people would react to this move. Then why exactly did they do it? They are getting no additional vote or support.

    4. Gulf business does not mean so much to India that we should do such a thing. The only thing for which we depend on them is oil. I don't think these countries were going to stop oil supplies. India has a fair amount of diplomatic clout too. The international image doesn't matter anymore. Suspending Nupur Sharma actually worsens India's image.

    5. Then what did BJP expect to gain out of it? If Rahul Gandhi were to do something like this, we could ascribe it to his stupidity. Just can't imagine what BJP is thinking.

    6. Before this there have been only two major political defeats. The first was land acquisition bill. We could argue BJP was too new to push a major thing like that in the face of opposition. The second was Farmers Bills. That is easily explained with votes – we were losing Western UP which we could not afford to. But this suspension of Nupur Sharma?! Nothing seems to explain it.

As of now, I do not have any definite answer. But it is very reasonable to believe that there is some deal that we do not know about. And it is unlikely to be a pure capitulation to ummah's pressure. I would only urge all to bear patience and BJP will deliver something positive on this too. Remember the anguish we felt when Farm laws were repealed. It resulted in a sweet victory in UP. If you were deciding for BJP, and UP election results were to be jeopardized by sticking to the Farm laws, would you rather stick to those laws and risk losing UP to goons and jihadis or would you rather do as BJP did?

I rest my case for patience and forbearance.

Loss Of Favorable Narrative Worries Muslim Intelligensia

In the aftermath of the jihadi-inflicted bloodletting in the Kashmir valley, Rana Ayyub tweeted “we have screwed up Kashmir like never before”. That is as close to a mea culpa we are going to get from this jihadi sympathizer. We have other jihadi sympathizers like Beydoun and Werleman trying to appeal to the Hindu better senses by saying that India can learn from Indonesia. While that is wrong on many levels, what it tells you is that they are realizing that constantly attacking and trying to shame Hindus is not working.

Let's try to analyze these two thoughts. Have the Hindus become shameless? No, we have not. So something else has happened. As Thakur in Sholay tells Kaliya - jao ja kar Gabbar se keh do, Ramgarh walon ne pagal kutton ke samne roti dalna band kar diya hai. Yes, the Hindus (despite what their leader utter in public)  have realized that appeasement of Muslims or appealing to their better senses has never worked. So instead of ignoring a red herring name like Gyanvapi for a mosque, or a Hindu symbol at the bottom of a mosque wall or maqbara or living in cities named after genocidal maniacs, and accepting the status quo in the name of social harmony, the Hindus have said ENOUGH!!

They have decided to ignore distorians like Habib, Thapar et. al. They have begun to question the very nature of Indian secularism which is founded on Hindus guilted into accepting the Mughal years as the glory days of India while ignoring our real history. They are noticing and rejecting movies with not so subtle pro-jihadi narrative with the evil Thakur, benevolent Maulana and kind Rahim Chahcha. 

This began in 2014 with the election of our first true Hindu conservative as the PM who rejected to toe the familiar lines, the tropes associated with that office. No iftar parties or wearing mesh topis or keffiyeh or taking the foreign dignitaries to Taj Mahal. To the chagrin of some, he does insist on “sabka saath sabka vikas” but that is a side effect of his love for the nation and propensity to look at the big picture. And in that light he cannot be faulted. 

Since then an awareness has crept into the Hindu psyche as it is clearly visible on social media and other arenas. A new generation of historians like the mysterious Bharadwaj or Vikram Sampath or J Sai Deepak et. al. have questioned and demolished what used to pass for Indian history. Griha vapsi programs run by RSS, Agniveer group, Arya Samaj have challenged and attempted to stem the demographic rot. Twitter handles like @GemsOfBollywood have changed the way people look at movies.

These are small changes but together they show a trend that is challenging the leftist-jihadi ecosystem and changing the Hindu consciousness. While that does little damage to the ecosystem the trend clearly worries them. This loss of pro-Muslim narrative built on the backs of selfish and useful idiot Hindus is a very scary specter for them. 

It is this loss of narrative and sense of control that scares people like Ayyub, Shahid Siddique and other so-called Muslim social leaders. That narrative made them relevant, rich, and powerful. They are not afraid of this so-called Hindu hate - they know Hindus are a pacifist lot. They are afraid of irrelevance.

Mera Wala Abdul Aisa Nahi ho Sakta!

Committed Hindu Nationalists often face this challenge - how to answer those who are outraged by the suggestion that common Muslims should not be insulated from non - Muslims’ justified anger against Islamic Jehad and terrorism, and that they should be held to the same standards of responsibility as any other community when it comes to behavior of their community leaders as well as extremists.

Mind you, you will hear this (leave common Muslims alone) not only from woke “secularists”, but also from those who otherwise sympathize with the nationalist view and have come to agree that something might possibly be wrong in the inherent nature of Islam. These people, because of the mounting incontrovertible evidence, no more argue that Jihadi terrorists are “aberrations”, “a tiny minority of extremists”, and “not real followers of religion”. Sheer weight of evidence against these opinions has finally made them admit that there may be some basic flaw in the “religion” itself. However, they still find it disturbing that we should view our Muslim neighbor or colleague with the same lens.

Let us say, you are, like me, more of an Islamo - realist (as I like to call ourselves). How to answer these well-meaning folks who fear that all decency and civility will die if we bring our view of Islam to seemingly decent Muslim folks around us who look and talk no different from us?

I have been in many such discussions, and I am always struck by the degree to which highly educated, otherwise intelligent folks change the standards of judgement the moment one is talking about Muslims. Really, the malaise seems so deep and widespread that I feel the need for mass scale training programs just so everyone holds all communities to the same standards. If we all did that, this whole challenge will disappear. We will be more clear - eyed about the nature of Muslims, even those Muslims who are well-educated and appear same as ourselves in all other respects.

Time for some specific examples.

Here is an experience I had multiple times: Being a student of Sanskrit and Ramayana, I have ended up mentioning the character of Shri Ram in front of friends sometimes. Occasionally, when my interlocutors were “secular” inclined, the very name of Ram aroused strong emotions! How could Ram treat Sita so shabbily, they asked. Doesn’t it show that our religion has some basic problem?!

To me, the questions they asked were of secondary importance. More important was the emotion they displayed. They were literally seething as soon as the name of Ram came up. It was as if I had hit a hornet’s nest simply by mentioning the name. And that got me asking - why are they so angry, so ready to heap odium on a man who lived perhaps 3 or 4 millennia ago? Even if you think he did some wrong, all you need to do is to decide you won’t do such things yourself. In any case, the modern

day Indian laws, promulgated presumably by his followers and descendants, negate the value system under which he is said to have done some wrong.

Today, most Hindu men in India will not exile their wives because any of them had to spend nights in some other man’s place against her will. I cannot imagine even a half educated Hindu doing such a thing. Then why all the anger against Lord Ram?

Anyway, coming back to the point - we can see the standards to which many of us hold Bhagavān Ram. Unless he and other revered figures of Hindus followed, even 10 millennia ago, the most modern of Human Rights, they are worthy of the severest condemnation. It doesn’t matter that their behavior was not exceptional for the times. They were supposed to still know what was coming millennia later and act accordingly.

Contrast this with Muslim attitude towards their revered figure. Mohammed carried out multiple genocides, committed / sanctioned rapes, and married and had sex with a 9-year-old child when he himself was 54 years old. I suggest all to google and read about Bani Qurayza (a brutal genocide approved and supervised by Mohammed), about Saafiya and Kinana, about the fate of Bani Khyber, and so on and on.

And what is the attitude of Muslims towards this man? If you so much as write a Facebook post mocking him, there is arson, violence and beheadings. Literally.

You say that all this is done by extremist elements?! Fine, why don’t you sometime check the attitude of your educated Muslim neighbor towards Mohammed? You again say - but he is not like those woke Hindus who hate Bhagavān Ram. Maybe he is like devout Hindus who revere Bhagavān Ram. Well, how many devout Hindus do you find in the same social set as this Muslim person who is supposed to be “just like us”?

Even so, for the moment I accept that too - that our Muslim neighbor / colleague is like millions of devout Hindus in this respect. But let us dwell on it for a little more.

Imagine that you are part of a community in whose name a proper genocide is carried out. People of your identity, who are clearly driven by core aspects of that identity, brutally murder men, rape and murder women, force degrading behaviors on those of “other” identity. What would be your attitude towards those who do it? And towards those “others” who suffered it? Chances are, you will go ballistic at the perpetrators. And you will also take some action to support those “others” who suffered these barbaric crimes. Right?

And now, when was the last time you saw this kind of attitude in educated Muslim neighbors / colleagues who are supposedly “just like us”? I have never seen it. Indeed, whichever Muslims I have seen, are more likely to be outraged by a mention that such things happened, rather than by their coreligionists actually perpetrating these acts.

You know that I am talking about the genocide in Kashmir, which is now well known thanks to the work of Vivek Agnihotri. But the same thing happened, even at a larger scale, in many other places. In times which are still in living memory. Genocide by Moplas in 1921, Direct Action Day, Calcutta, Noakhali, cleansing of Hindus from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Any of these, even a fraction of these, would arouse revulsion towards perpetrators in a decent person. And I am asking this - why do we never see that sentiment in any Muslim.

The only Muslims who do show humanity enough to feel genuine outrage at all these acts are actually ex - Muslims. Maybe they did not announce their apostasy formally. But that is what they are at their core - apostates. I am not going to go into another big subject here, but I can demonstrate that it is haraam for Muslims to feel outrage at genocide of non - Muslims. Your neighbor may not actually participate in atrocities himself, but if it happens, he will shrug his shoulders and walk away. He will not be outraged. Indeed, he has been like that all the while! You are the one who missed the significance of his attitude!

Which brings me to what I started with - we all have learned to hold Muslims to very different, and I daresay very low standards. We have thus made ourselves party to genocide of non - Muslims wherever Muslims are in majority. We think of ourselves as decent, civilized folks. It is time we applied principles of decency correctly. We have already agreed that those who perpetrate heinous crimes don’t deserve our sympathy. Now, let us also agree on our view of those who observe such atrocities, and have no visible problem with them.

If your Abdul was any different, he would not only have been outraged long back, millions like him would have gotten together, and you would see a political movement that genuinely fights extremism in his community. There is no such political movement, and there is no movement towards one. Indeed, your Abdul will be outraged by this article, but not by an actual genocide of non-Muslims.

Ergo, aapka wala Abdul bhi waisa hi hai. Face this brutal reality in the eye.