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Don't Buy the Lie

There was a time when none of us in the media referred to specific communities while reporting a communal riot. Two feuding groups, we would say, fought over such and such issue and left behind a trail of violence and bloodshed. Our intention was not to stoke animus between communities. It was news and we left it at that. No one was particularly keen to identify how many of the dead were Hindus, how many were Muslims. All the corpses were Indians, as far as we were concerned, and all such incidents were aberrations. Unfortunate aberrations. Not political opportunities waiting to be exploited.

Things are entirely different today.

We not only report who did what and to whom, we often take a heinous crime and give it such a communal or casteist twist that it soon stops looking like a crime. In fact, I believe that this has actually led to increasing criminalisation. And, of course, more politicisation of crime.

Let me give you three examples.

One: The gang wars in Mumbai.

For years we looked at all the criminal gangs as a nasty, rotten lot who deserved to be shot dead. Whether it was Dawood Ibrahim or Arun Gawli, Chhota Shakeel or Chhota Rajan, Abu Salem or Ashwin Naik, no one had any sympathy for them. As far as the common citizen was concerned, they were just a bunch of desperate hoods waiting to be killed by the police.

After the bomb blasts, things changed. Suddenly Dawood was no longer a gangster. He was a Muslim gangster. Leader of the Muslim mob. Stories started appearing about how he masterminded the bomb blasts to teach the Hindus a lesson for instigating the communal riots in the wake of the assault on the Babri Masjid. The story did not end there. Gawli became the hero of the local Hindu boys who saw him as their answer to the Muslim underworld. Dagdi Chawl versus Bhendi Bazar. The fight for control over the criminal underworld became a fight between Hindus and Muslims and, depending on where you came from, a battle between the good guys and the bad.

Now I read about how Chhota Rajan, who is said to operate from a ship in Malaysia, is hell bent on killing all the Muslim gangsters involved in the bomb blasts. On the other hand, Chhota Shakeel, a Dawood henchman operating out of Dubai (or is it Karachi?) is supposed to be gunning for all the Hindus named in the Srikrishna Commission Report. Milind Vaidya, it is claimed, was one of his recent targets. Or so the cops say.

The crimes of these gangsters are slowly receding into the background. They are becoming politicians and businessmen, heroes to their own community. As a result, the real issues are being sidestepped and we are creating instead a communal war zone out of nowhere. The fact that these are all thugs, greedily fighting for a share of the prostitution, drugs, gambling, gun running, extortions or contract killings racket, has been conveniently ignored. They are now seen as Robin Hoods and we have politicians jumping to their defence and trying to make electoral capital out of them.

The truth is, of course, entirely different. Every investigation has shown that, behind the scenes, all these crooks work together. When the great Hindu guru Chandra Swami was jailed, investigations revealed his close nexus with Dawood. Similarly, the crackdown on Romesh Sharma showed how closely he was associated with Abu Salem. Proving the simple fact that when it comes to crime, only hard cash counts. Nothing else. Certainly not religion.

Which brings me to the second example: Laloo's Bihar.

We all know that Laloo runs a wicked and corrupt empire of crime in his home state. The Rs 9.5 billion fodder scam, which is growing bigger by the day, is just one example of how this seemingly comic apparition has looted the treasury of Bihar and brought it to the very edge of despair. But look carefully and you will see how smartly Laloo has transformed this into a battle for social justice. A fight between the upper castes who have traditionally ruled what was once India's richest state and the backwards, whom he claims to represent.

We read about the ongoing fight between the Ranvir Sena and the dalits. How one group guns down the other regularly. But look at the figures and you will see that the dead are mostly women and children and old people shot on their beds. Does this look like a caste war to you where people come at the dead of night and kill the defenceless? Is there a search for justice behind all this or is it plain and simple thuggery and murder that needs to be relentlessly hunted down and punished?

Yet not only has Laloo survived for so many years, despite all his corruption, his crimes but he has now successfully convinced Sonia Gandhi to take his side and make her first false step. Meanwhile, like the goons of Mumbai, Laloo has transformed his own battle with the law enforcement agencies into a battle for social justice.

The third example is the Staines murder case.

Here again, the terrible crime of murdering a man whose only mission in life was to improve the lot of the tribals in one of the poorest districts of India has been deliberately given a communal colour. The Sangh Parivar, in its sheer idiocy, is trying to defend the act as a popular response to evangelism and forced conversions. It is trying to take credit for a crime it did not have the nerves to commit?

To start with, forced conversions, if any, are reported to have taken place in Gujarat. Not Orissa. And if you look at the brilliant Indian Express article, most of the conversions of Gujarat tribals in that region were to Jainism, not Christianity. So the entire hypothesis is arrant nonsense.

The murder of Staines was a cowardly and criminal act, not a communal act. Since the state is being run by the Congress, they have to answer for it. There was no use asking J B Patnaik to step down. Every Indian knows exactly what he stands for. If you have any doubt, ask Anjana Mishra who has allegedly been sexually harassed by Patnaik's associates and repeatedly raped by his hoods. Would you put it past such a man to instigate and then communalise such a crime to embarrass the Vajpayee government?

My contention is simple. Let us stop trying to describe every crime that occurs in India as either communal or casteist. This benefits no one. Except the criminals. They use this as a pretext to politicise the issue and escape the dragnet of the law.

If India was so hostile to missionaries, how did Mother Teresa become one with the nation's conscience? Throughout her life, she was loved and admired and, you could say, almost worshipped. When she died, the entire nation grieved for her. The gun carriage that carried the last mortal remains of the Mahatma carried her to her funeral. It was the highest and most touching tribute this nation could have paid her. And make no mistake about it, Mother Teresa was an active missionary. Unlike the Reverend Staines who was a pure and simple social worker. Mother Teresa believed in people turning to God and Christianity and yet, for most of us in India, she was a true saint. The poor worshipped her. The state gave her enormous respect. The people of India, irrespective of their religion, their caste, canonised her three decades before the Vatican even considered her case.

If India was so communal, would we have so overwhelmingly supported Vajpayee's overtures to Pakistan? His bus diplomacy? The Lahore resolution? Would we have bought his plan for establishing peace and commerce with a nation we have for 52 years considered our Enemy No 1? Would every Indian's heart have swelled with such pride when our national anthem was played at the border?

No, we are not a communal nation. We are not even a casteist nation. But crooks and criminals are using communalism and casteism as an excuse to escape the law and we, in our foolishness, are buying the lie.

Pritish Nandy

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