Once more, horror and hope are at each other’s heels in India. Some minds seem convinced that only a great error in how our universe has been managed has allowed 200 million Muslims to exist in India, forming a minority of about 14.3 percent. Any reduction in that number, no matter how it comes about, is to them cause for celebration.
On September 23, under a so-called eviction drive, police personnel in riot gear cornered an unnamed Muslim villager in the Sipajhar area of Assam’s Darrang district and battered him repeatedly with their batons. As the policemen moved away, a photographer, whose name has been given as Bijoy Bonia, ran towards the man’s fallen body and jumped on its chest. The police simply watched as Bonia continued to dance on the motionless body, presumably expressing his pleasure and/or ensuring that the unwanted man wouldn’t survive.
Yes, sir and madam, this happened, was recorded on video, and was widely seen.
Five days later, in another part of India, the decapitated body of another Muslim, 24-year-old Arbaz Mulla, was found on a railway track between two small stations (Desur and Khanapur) that lie about 30 km from the city of Belagavi in Karnataka. Here is what a report in The Wire says about Arbaz:
“Exactly a year ago, when Najeema Shaikh first discovered her 24-year-old son Arbaz Mulla was in love with a woman (name withheld) belonging to the Hindu community, she knew her son would be killed. In a desperate attempt to save him from trouble, she moved multiple houses and tried every trick in the book to keep the couple apart. “But they were simply inseparable,” she says.”
The story adds that several members of a Hindu extremist group, which has whipped up support in the region, have been arrested for suspected involvement in Arbaz’s murder and in trying to present it as a suicide. Arbaz’s relatives remain in danger.
The news of hope comes from West Bengal, a state with a 30 percent Muslim population, and one that has witnessed a sustained drive by the Hindu right to unite the Hindu population against an imagined Muslim takeover which, in the fantasy, neighbouring Bangladesh backs. Last May, however, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress soundly defeated the BJP in statewide elections, defying loud claims and unsparing efforts by Narendra Modi and Amrit Shah.
The cheering word on October 3 is that three by-elections in West Bengal have all been comfortably won by the TMC, including one in Bhabanipur, where Mamata herself was the candidate. Jakir Hossain won in Jangipur, Amirul Islam in Samserganj. Thus West Bengal has again underlined that Hindus and Muslims can win together, that polarization along communal lines is not the inevitable future story of Indian politics.
The BJP remains formidable in most parts of northern, western and central India, and the party’s “Hindu First” thrust remains an ominous anxiety. In India’s northeast, the large border region beyond West Bengal and Bangladesh where India, China and Myanmar meet, the mix of tribes and religions is exceptionally rich, and Christianity is a significant element. Here “Hindu First” gets little political traction except in Assam, which has a large Muslim minority (close to 40 percent).
Punjab, on the opposite border, is due to have elections in three months. In recent times, Sikh Punjabis who form close to 60 percent of the state’s population as also Hindu Punjabis have shown signs of leaving behind the binaries of the 1947 Partition, which now belongs to a distant past. The anti-Muslim card seems to hold little value in today’s Punjab.
India’s chief challenge, however, is not political. It is being played out in the minds and homes of policemen, judges, reporters, teachers, lawyers. They -- and their spouses, parents, siblings and children -- have to figure out whether horror becomes acceptable when practised against people of a particular religion.