The sudden monsoon that has hit Delhi recently has made it the wettest month of May in recent times as it seemed to give respite not only to the burning city but also washed away the most heated fight in the general elections that just passed by. Elections are over, nearly 815 million people have sealed the fate of the nation and if opinion polls and exit polls are to be believed, NDA's poster boy Narendra Modi is just inches away from claiming his throne at the 7, Race Course Road.
Clearly the entire elections divided the whole country into two camps- the Modi lovers and the Modi critics. Though I've no shame or fear to accept that I've always been on the latter side of the spectrum, it is important to understand what kind of India we will be living in if Modi genuinely comes to power. When I think about it, it's not the general rhetoric of sending people to Pakistan who doesn't support Modi that worries me. What worries me are the things which would not be otherwise so obvious and apparent with the help of 24*7 media gaze.
It would be indeed foolish to say that this election has been fought by the BJP only on the development plank. Those who tend to believe can happily continue to do so but we all know what the truth is. The very act of appointing Modi confident Amit Shah as the campaign chief of the politically significant state of UP is a testimony to the fact that how polarised the election has been. The Muzzaffarnagar riots just a year before the elections and statements like 'It's time to take' revenge by Amit Shah in his election speech at the same spot just further reiterates the point. They are back to the age old tried and tested formula of wooing the Hindus and ignoring the minority votes.
Certainly the fears of Modi indeed sending people to Pakistan who doesn't support him after coming to power is utterly stupid but that is not what I'm worried of. My fear stems from the time when we were shooting for our documentary 'The Gujarat Promise'. We travelled across Gujarat, met many people both Modi lovers, critics and normal civilians. And what really shocked us was the level of insecurity that exists in the state between the people of the majority as well as the minority. While in certain areas the growing insecurity has converted it into a tinderbox, others just simply have accepted that fact and continue to live in the politically polarised atmosphere.
While BJP might appear to be the one fighting this elections, it is not very surprising to know that the original decision making powers of it lies not in 15, Ashoka Road, the party headquarters but in Nagpur. We can well call it the political wing of the RSS or the extended Sangh Parivar as they themselves can't fight elections. It goes back to the time when RSS was banned by our then Home Minister Sardar Vallabbhai Patel after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse who belonged to the same outfit. The ban was only lifted later when they gave in writing that they would never enter politics and continue to work as a cultural organisation. Ever since then they've indirectly been into politics through different outings namely the Jana Sangh, Janata Party and now the BJP.
It is the RSS and the extended Sangh Parivar outfits that has been working since years at the grassroots inducing the Hindutva sentiments across the country through their shakhas. In Gujarat, kids going to bal shakhas of RSS after school is a common affair. The very thought of young minds which are so fertile and innocent getting imbibed with the supremacy of one religion over the other is petrifying. Not to forget the Gujarat social science textbooks which said that Muslims, Christians etc are all foreigners. Though due to long term struggle it has been recently taken back but the thought continues to linger. Fascists across the world have tried to tamper with history and the easiest way to tamper with history is to tweak and modify the history textbooks and the case in Gujarat is a testimony to that fact.
It shouldn't surprise many if I may say so that if such things continue to go on. Silently, away from public gaze but quite successfully we might see the emergence of a Hindu Taliban. As even in Afghanistan, it started with the motive of cultural promotion and was never taken very seriously by the citizens but today the reality is in front of us. And even if some of you think that I'm exaggerating, then trust me I'm not.
Indo-Canadian filmmaker Nisha Pahuja's powerful and brilliant documentary 'The World Before Her' is one such example which shows us in a paradox the ugly face of our country. While on one side it shows the journey of the Miss India contest, on the other it takes us through the Durga Vahini camps, an armed women outfit of the Sangh Parivar. The first and probably the last to get access to such camps, shivers went through my body when I first saw the film. It scared me and at the same time made me worried when I saw the kind of work such outfits of the Sangh Parivar is doing to the people of our country. There are thousands of such camps across the country and with the BJP coming to power, it is only going to increase manifold.
Today when I look back and try to contemplate the future, people ask me to leave behind 2002 and talk about development. But they fail to realise that even after 12 years of that horrific incident, poor Muslims continue to live in pitiable conditions and under utter neglect in the state of Gujarat. The condition is so worse that even after 12 years, the poor riot survivors of 2002 are rehabilitated in front of the biggest dumping yards of Ahmedabad. Yes I'm talking about Citizen Nagar which lies on the other side of the Sabarmati river, away from the hustling and bustling cosmopolitan city of the Ahmedabad.
So post May 16th, if this is the replica that we're going to see across the country, then I'm afraid we might just lose the sheer respect that we enjoy in the global fraternity for being the biggest secular democracy in the world. As the popular saying goes, 'Power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely' appears to be the most resounding phrase in a situation of a Modi sarkaar. But never be always very sure, as history teaches us that the Indian electorate has more than once thrown in a lot of surprises just when we thought that the game is all over.
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