http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/bjps-faultline-stands-exposed-hindutva-preaches-hindu-unity-yet-attacks-dalits-in-the-name-of-cow-protection/
BJP’s faultline stands exposed: Hindutva preaches Hindu unity, yet attacks Dalits in the name of cow protection July 30, 2016, 2:00 AM IST Pavan K Varma in TOI Edit Page A major fault line in BJP-RSS’s project of Hindutva, always present but relatively camouflaged, has come to the fore explosively. On July 11, in the town of Una in Gujarat, four Dalit men were stripped, paraded, tied to an SUV and publicly flogged by a group of gau rakshaks or self-anointed cow vigilantes on the suspicion that they had killed a cow (when actually the culprit was a lion). The irony was that these were Hindus attacking Hindus in the name of ‘protecting’ Hindu dharma. Attacks by cow vigilantes have spread like an ugly rash ever since NDA came to power at the Centre in 2014, and particularly in BJP-ruled states. The Dalits are being punished for pursuing their profession of skinning dead cattle to provide hide to the leather industry, which has a turnover of Rs 80,000 crore. Dalits do this job because no other Hindu caste will do it. For them it is their livelihood. Cattle slaughter is banned in many states of India, but skinning dead cows is not. India has the world’s largest cattle inventory. According to official figures, Gujarat alone has nearly one crore cows and buffaloes. Their mortality rate is reportedly 10%. When cattle die, their carcasses have to be disposed off. Their skin is the raw material for the thriving leather industry. In fact, the real irony is that those in Una who were flogging the Dalits could well be wearing leather footwear, made from hides provided by their victims. RSS has always seen Hindus as a monolithic bloc. RSS ideologues believe that the concept of ‘Hindu Rashtra’ overarches all intra-Hindu contradictions and unites Hindus against the ‘other’, the non-Hindu, who in this case is primarily the Muslim. For them, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam essentially means the Hindu Undivided Family. The assumption is that this family is, through a xenophobic loyalty based on faith, undivided. But the very public spectacle of Hindus attacking Hindus has shown that this assumption is flawed. Hindus may be vertically unified by religion. But they are horizontally divided due to the millennia old inequities of the caste system. The fault line of the Hindutva project is thus starkly exposed. In the past, the Hindu right could occasionally eclipse the issues of inequality. We saw this during the Ram Mandir-Babri Masjid mobilisation in 1992, in the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, and in the more recent love jihad and ghar wapsi campaigns. But, while these deliberately planned attempts at Hindu-Muslim polarisation succeeded at varying levels, the increasing political empowerment of the Dalits and other backward classes could never demolish their parallel attempts to secure greater equality from the very same people who were asking them to unite in the name of Hindu faith. RSS has always had an upper caste leadership and bias. Until recently, when the politically inspired project of Dalit co-option began, RSS was consistently critical of Ambedkar. On February 6, 1950, just a few days after the Constitution was promulgated, RSS mouthpiece Organiser carried an article by Justice Sankar Subba Aiyar, titled ‘Manu Rules our Hearts’. Aiyar was explicit: ‘Even though Dr Ambedkar is reported to have recently stated in Bombay that the days of Manu have ended it is nevertheless a fact that the daily lives of Hindus are even at present day effected by the principles and injunctions contained in the Manusmriti.’ Anyone even remotely familiar with Manusmriti knows with what contempt it treats Dalits and women. Muslims too have been targeted by gau rakshaks. On September 28 last year, in the village of Bisara in UP, Mohammad Akhlaq was publicly lynched and his son severely beaten by a mob of cow vigilantes on the suspicion of eating beef. Just this week, two Muslim women in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, were brutally attacked on suspicion that they were carrying beef for sale. Thus, both Dalits, who are Hindus, and Muslims, who are the ‘other’ in the Hindutva project, have become the common target of gau rakshak hate. It is no coincidence that both Dalits and Muslims are at the lowest rung of the socio-economic ladder. What does this mean for future Indian politics, and for the Hindutva project of Hindu unity against Muslims? Laws banning cow slaughter, where applicable, need to be followed scrupulously. But cow vigilantism, where largely upper caste Hindus take the law into their own hands and attack Dalits and Muslims on the mere suspicion that they have killed a cow, has become a pan-Indian metaphor for the ugly face of a newly resurgent lumpen Hindu fanaticism. This is happening with such widespread impunity because the perpetrators believe they have the benign protection of the authorities. In this context, our PM’s complete silence is truly regrettable. The anger of Dalits is palpable. In Gujarat they resorted to the unprecedented step of leaving cattle carcasses in front of government offices. Others attempted suicide. Many, in protest, are leaving carcasses to rot, raising both a stench and the spectre of disease. What gau rakshaks and their fundamentalist masters don’t realise is that, ultimately, their lawless and violent behaviour devalues Hinduism itself, the very faith they are seeking to defend. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
