Atmosphere of permissiveness towards unleashing hate speech

In last few days a series of incidents of vituperous hate speech have come forth from different states. Even as the row around the open calls for genocide against Muslims issued at a so called ‘Dharm Sansad’ organized at Haridwar from December 17 to 19 refused to die, similar sentiments are said to have been articulated at another ‘Dharm Sansad’ on 27 December, 2021, organized at Raipur, the capital city of Congress ruled state of Chhattisgarh. It is noteworthy that the state Congress leaders had been actively involved in the organization of the latter event. Then there had been an incident of attack on a Church at Ambala.

On top of this, today morning’s papers have carried in headlines the statement by the BJP Member of Parliament from Karnataka, Tejaswi Surya’s statement who called for reconversion of Muslims and Christians to Hinduism (euphemistically called ‘ghar wapsi’) as the only solution to the communal problem as against adopting electoral tactics to neutralize their numbers. It is another thing that he later withdrew the statement.

Janhastakshep firmly believes that this is more than a case of some loose cannons firing by themselves; rather, these developments are a result of systemic and systematic effort at creating an atmosphere of permissiveness which seeks to rationalize and justify such dangerous utterances. Such permissiveness has been exercised at the level of politics and institutions such as the bureaucracy, the police, press and the Judiciary, including higher judiciary. These are supposed to check, restrain and punish such anti-social forces to defend the constitution.

While the RSS bandwagon unabashedly pushes the agenda of subjugating the religious minorities to the Hindu majority, even the dominant parties of the so called secular opposition are playing in tandem by adopting a seemingly softer version of majoritarian agenda. Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Bhagel justified the involvement of Congress leaders in organization of the Raipur ‘dharm sansad’ in the name of ‘preserving our ancient sanatan traditions.’

Not only that it failed to take action on these developments on its own account, but till the time of writing, the Supreme Court, which ought to be the foremost custodian of the Constitution, was yet to act on the letter written by 76 prominent lawyers of the court to initiate a suo-moto action in the matter. The Central government can hardly be expected to rein in the Sangh Pariwar brigands with our ‘bairagi’ (ascetic) Prime Minister, and his home minister having exhibited their uncanny ability to add fuel to keep the communal cauldron boiling.

While condemning the above instances in the most unequivocal terms, Janhastakshep places the following demands:

• That the Central government and the concerned state governments take strictest possible action under the law against the guilty whose identity and what they said is only too well known to the country. The governments do not have the liberty of rendering the Constitution as a plaything for their ideological predilections.

• The Supreme Court should immediately step in to ensure immediate arrest of the guilty in the matter under the strictest possible provisions rather than the whole issue being trivialized to mere formality of action.

• Janhastakshep calls upon the broad democratic masses and organizations to come together for organizing mass actions against these incidents which have put the entire country to shame.