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India Today
23-05-2025
- Politics
- India Today
My Name is Khan: Whither Justice in ‘New' India?
A few weeks ago, I broadcast a contentious video blog, 'My Name is Rahim Khan,' to reflect upon what it meant to be an Indian Muslim in the age of Hindutva political dominance. I was instantly targeted by the Hindu Right ecosystem, which accused me of falsely portraying Muslim 'victimhood' to escape confronting the real problem of rising Islamic extremism. In hindsight, maybe I got the blog name wrong: I should have titled the video blog, 'My Name is Ali Khan Mahmudabad'.advertisementThe recent arrest of the Ashoka University professor of political science for an opinionated Facebook post reveals all that is horribly wrong with a political establishment that has pushed the Indian Muslim to the wall. Ali Khan Mahmudabad's 'crime' was that he had chosen to express himself on Operation Sindoor by questioning what he saw as the hypocrisy of the right-wing commentariat in celebrating the presence of Colonel Sofiya Qureshi in the government's media outreach on the Indo-Pak conflict.'I am very happy to see so many right-wing commentators applauding Colonel Qureshi, but perhaps they could also equally loudly demand that the victims of mob lynchings, arbitrary bulldozing and others who are victims of the BJP's hate-mongering be protected as Indian citizens. The optics of two women soldiers presenting their findings is important but optics must translate to reality on the ground otherwise it's just hypocrisy,' his Facebook post Khan was effectively drawing a distinction between Colonel Qureshi as a token symbol of 'secularism' and the ground reality of growing discrimination against Indian Muslims. It was a sharp personal critique of the Modi government, but could it be perceived as an 'act endangering the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India' or indeed, 'word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman'? Since when did criticism of the government, however provocative, become 'criminalised' to the point where it attracts immediate arrest merely on a complaint by a village sarpanch who is a BJP Yuva Morcha worker, or indeed a notice sent by the Haryana State Commission for Women?When asked in a television interview to show how exactly Ali Khan had 'insulted the modesty of a woman', the Haryana State Commission for Women chief Renu Bhatia was clueless, struggling to offer a coherent explanation for any offending line. It was obvious that the Haryana State Commission for Women, like many a 'sarkari' institution, had simply jumped the gun under 'official' instructions to send a notice to the professor. Aided by a complicit and ham-handed Haryana Police, there was clearly no attempt to follow due process or even a pretense at protecting an individual's right to life and case raises several troubling questions. The first is the brazen abuse of power to curb free speech. This is not an isolated case. Almost every government, be it in the State or Centre across parties, uses its executive authority and total control over the police to muzzle dissenting how a Marathi actor, Ketaki Chitale, faced arrest in 2022 for allegedly sharing a derogatory post about NCP chief Sharad Pawar on social media. Or how the DMK government in Tamil Nadu was silent when Savukku Shankar, a YouTuber and vocal critic of the ruling party, was targeted when a 'group' entered his house and dumped sewage and excreta inside. Or how a Kolkata professor was charged with forwarding a Mamata Banerjee cartoon and eventually discharged only eleven years after his arrest. In a sense, the Indian political system has embraced the dictum of the infamous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who was once quoted as saying, 'There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.'Sadly, most state governments have only taken a cue from the Centre, where sedition laws in particular have been 'weaponised' to ensure that any criticism of the Modi government can easily be equated with 'anti-national' not only is the law being 'weaponised' to curb free speech, its application is wholly selective. Which raises the second urgent concern. Who comes under the purview of the law is dependent entirely on the whims and fancies of the power contrast the case of Ali Khan with that of Vijay Shah, a Madhya Pradesh minister, who made the most disparaging, sexist and communally-loaded remarks against Colonel Qureshi. Instead of sacking the minister or at the very least publicly upbraiding him, the BJP leadership in Madhya Pradesh rallied around their colleague. The Centre was conspicuously silent while the minister gave a token apology. It required the high court to insist that a suo motu FIR be filed against the minister and for the Supreme Court to describe his remarks as a 'national shame'. And while a court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been formed to 'investigate' the minister's remarks, the Madhya Pradesh police didn't swoop in to arrest the minister as was the case in Delhi with Ali is why there is a third and more pressing issue that underlies the Ali Khan case. A professor with a doctoral degree from Cambridge University and impeccable academic credentials, Khan has one red mark on his CV: he is an Indian Muslim who is unafraid to speak his mind. That he comes from the erstwhile Mahmudabad royal family and his grandfather, Mohammed Aamir Ahmad Khan, was a key figure in the pre-Partition Muslim League makes him the perfect 'enemy' figure for a Hindutva-driven ecosystem whose prime objective it to 'demonise' the Indian Muslim as 'unpatriotic', pro-Pakistani and of questionable character. An opposition leader or an opinion page writer who is not a Muslim can get away by raising questions on Operation Sindoor, an articulate Indian Muslim does not have the same is why Ali Khan finds himself on the wrong side of the law. His 'crime', like that of so many other Indian Muslims facing the wrath of state impunity and discrimination, is not that he said anything that could be deemed violative of any law of the land; his 'crime' is that he is an Indian Muslim who is an outspoken critic of the present the other hand, a Vijay Shah can make communal remarks that prima facie violate the law, but he will remain untouched because he is after all, a leading member of the ruling party. That is the difference when your surname is Shah and not Khan: apology in one case, arrest in the other. That is 'new' The Supreme Court, while granting interim bail to Ali Khan, has appointed a SIT to look into his Facebook posts. Just what the SIT can 'investigate' is unclear. What is clear is that we seem to have a number of unemployed cops and a judicial system where the process is the punishment.(Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and author. His latest book is 2024: The Election That Surprised India)(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)Tune InMust Watch
Scroll.in
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Women and Operation Sindoor: The gap between optics and reality
On May 7, the Indian government fielded two women military officers to brief the press about the strikes carried out in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. One of them was Muslim – Colonel Sofiya Qureshi. For the international media watching India, the government's messaging was loud and clear: unlike Pakistan, India is a secular democracy with a professional army. But within a week, this careful projection has unravelled. Referring to Qureshi without naming her, Madhya Pradesh minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kunwar Vijay Shah said: 'Jinhone hamare betiyon ke sindoor uchala… humne unhi ki behen ko hamare jahaj mein bhej kar aise ki taisi karvai.' The ones who wiped off the sindoor of our sisters, Modi ji sent their own sister in our plane to teach them a lesson. 'You widowed our sisters,' he continued, rhetorically addressing the terrorists, 'so we sent your sister to strip and humiliate you.' Shah's crass and communal remarks drew outrage, criticism and an FIR. The apology that followed was just as revealing. 'Sister Sofia has brought glory to India by rising above caste and religion,' Shah told The Indian Express. 'She is more respected than our own sister.' Not only did the Madhya Pradesh minister perceive an accomplished and senior military officer as the 'sister' of Pakistani terrorists merely because of her religious identity, when criticised, his only resort was paternalism – that he respected the woman officer more than his own sister. This paternalism isn't limited to Shah. In his speech on May 12, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Operation Sindoor – code-named after the vermillion mark that is a symbol of marriage for Hindu women – represents the emotions of Indians. 'I dedicate Operation Sindoor to every mother, sister and daughter,' he said. Now every terrorist knows the consequences of 'removing the sindoor from the foreheads of our mothers and daughters', he added. In the ideological framework of the Hindu Right, only some women are seen as worth protecting or celebrating: the behen who lost her sindoor and the behen who avenged the sindoor. Not the women who dare express opinions different from the establishment narrative. Online abuse against women is rampant across India's internet. Except that this fortnight, the targets included the daughter of Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and Himanshi Narwal, the widow of Naval officer Vinay Narwal, who was shot dead in the Pahalgam attack. War-mongers, disappointed at the announcement of a ceasefire, directed their ire at the foreign secretary by picking on his daughter Didon for writing an article in independent news outlet The Wire and for apparently providing legal assistance to Rohingya refugees in Myanmar. Even as diplomats, Opposition politicians and associations representing the Indian civil and police services came to Misri's defence, the government was silent. Himanshi Narwal, despite being a 'sister who lost her sindoor', was subjected to sexual trolling because she had called for communal harmony and peace. The National Women's Commission was sufficiently troubled by the online hate to issue knuckle raps to no one in particular. In contrast, the Haryana Women's Commission has summoned Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad for a Facebook post pointing out the irony of Hindutva commentators praising Qureshi while Indian Muslims face mob lynchings, demolitions and persecution for their religious identity. Two things are evident. First, the official silence on Misri and Narwal sends the disturbing message that the trolling and online abuse come with tacit approval. This covert sanction allows online mobs to police the narrative by viciously attacking detractors and critics. Second, it is once again apparent that the ruling party invokes gender and women solely to further its narrative. Ideologically, Hindutva is intolerant of the religious pluralism that was put on display at the May 7 press conference. It was bound to come apart. Thirty years ago, scholar Amrita Basu had coined the term ' feminism inverted ' based on her research on women's political activism in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Basu contended that the BJP was accommodating of women and even tolerated a vocabulary of women's empowerment – as long as this served its 'electorally driven communal strategy'. The events of the past two weeks have confirmed this. Here is a summary of the week's top stories. Were migrants pushed out? The Supreme Court questioned a petition alleging that the Indian government had forcibly deported 43 Rohingya refugees to Myanmar by pushing them into international waters. The court also rejected a request to pass an interim order halting the deportation of Rohingyas. The bench sought material to be placed on record that would substantiate the allegations, stating that the petitioners were coming up with 'a new story every day'. 'Who is the person watching them?' asked Justice Surya Kant about allegations that the persons were taken to the Andaman Sea and dropped into international waters. The advocate appearing for the petitioners quoted a report published by the United Nations on Thursday, which alleged that the refugees had been 'cast into the sea from naval vessels'. The bench said it will comment on the report when 'sitting in a three-judge composition'. Vineet Bhalla explains . And Rokibuz Zaman reports about Bangladeshi police's claim that there were three Indians among 78 'pushed' off boats into the neighbouring country. The scope of the judiciary. President Droupadi Murmu has sought the Supreme Court's opinion about its ruling on April 8 that set timelines for governors and the president to grant assent to bills passed by legislatures. The president asked whether such timelines could be set in the absence of legal provisions. The court had ruled that Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi's decision to withhold assent to 10 bills, some of which had been pending since January 2020, and refer them to the president after they were re-enacted by the Assembly was 'illegal and erroneous'. The court also imposed a three-month deadline on the president to approve or reject such bills. Vineet Bhalla explains and why the BJP launched a bitter attack on the top court. Islamabad's funding. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that any financial assistance provided by the International Monetary Fund to Pakistan is ' no less than terror funding ' and should be reconsidered. He was referring to the fresh $1 billion financial assistance programme that the United Nations financial agency approved for Islamabad on May 9 as part of its bailout package. The defence minister claimed that a large part of the IMF's funding would be used by Pakistan on 'terror infrastructure'. New Delhi does not want the funds it gives to the IMF to be used for creating terror infrastructure in Pakistan or any other country, said Singh. Also on Scroll this week
The Wire
23-04-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
The Wrong ‘Miyan', Kentucky Fried Chhaap & Other Stories of Hindutva Overzealousness
In BJP's third term a picture is emerging of the adarsh or ideal Hindu. Hinduism is an umbrella term, which contains within it many Hinduisms. In the Hindutvavadi formulation, a single version should prevail, the sanatani one. The adarsh Hindu lives in a town with a Hindu name, forsakes meat and alcohol, and bathes in the polluted waters of the Ganges. One would have thought that the Hindutva project would have a closure of sorts at some stage, after all the imaginary wrongs of history had been corrected and the status quo restored. But no. It looks like the project will go on ad nauseam; it's a never-ending story. If one wants to stretch a simile and put a perversely positive spin on it, one can compare what's happening to improvisational jazz, with its spontaneous invention of melodic solo lines or accompaniment parts. It has reached a point where saffronists have run out of ideas; they are constantly inventing tradition, plucking things out of thin air, seeing a problem where none exists. In other words, they are losing their grip on reality. The eyes are seeing things and their ears hearing things that do not exist. Hinduism was always a jam band of sorts; in the hands of the monomaniacal BJP though, everything is reduced to the numeral 1: one nation, one election, one religion, one leader, one community, one God — the nationalised Ram. In the utopian saffronist world, Muslims and Christians would convert to the majoritarian religion, which has already subsumed Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Take the case of renaming towns and cities in Uttarakhand, the model Hindutva state, a lab for the Hindu Right project. Like Trump constantly fiddling with tariffs, the CM Pushkar Singh Dhami keeps adding more names to the list of renamed places. The renaming follows a simple pattern: erase all traces of Muslim presence. So McLeodGanj is fine but Mohammed Ganj is not. Its new name is Guru Govind Singh Nagar. More than 15 areas and roads have been renamed across four districts. Mohammadpur Jat is now Mohanpur Jat, Khanpur Kursali is Ambedkar Nagar, Idrispur is Nandpur, Khanpur is Shri Krishnapur, the wonderfully evocative Akbarpur Fazalpur is Vijaynagar, Nawabi Road is Atal Marg, Sultanpatti nagar panchayat is Kaushalyapuri, and so on. Dhami justified the exercise in fairly abstract terms: 'Renaming of the places is being done to align with the public sentiment and Indian culture and heritage, so that people can draw inspiration from the great personalities who have contributed to the preservation of culture.' Some questions: What exactly is public sentiment and how is it determined? A straw poll? What exactly is 'Indian culture and heritage'? 'Indian' stands for Hindu and has no room for Muslim culture and heritage. Wasn't Akbar a 'great personality' who worked for the 'preservation of culture'? So why is Akbarpur now Vijaynagar? Do ordinary citizens really draw inspiration from the act of renaming, and wake up enthused by renewed energy , or is it only politicians and bureaucrats? This brings us to the peculiar and comical case of centuries-old Miyanwala, a victim of Dhami's overzealousness – a dire affliction of the bhakt . According to bhakt logic, any name vaguely sounding Muslim has to be excised: 'sultan', 'nawab' etc… So why not 'miyan'? Except that, in this case, they got the wrong miyan. Residents have pointed out that the locality was named after 'Mian', a title for a Rajput clan in Uttarakhand, with no connection to the Mughals and Muslims. The historical name was a symbol of their heritage, honouring elders and ancestors. Local historian Ajay Singh Rawat told the TOI that the Garwhal kingdom was always independent, and that 'it even challenged the might of the Mughals. It never came under their influence. So Miyanwala has no connection to them.' Jitender Singh Miyan, a resident, is quoted as saying, 'They have not read the history and do not know anything about the Rajputs.' Historically, the Mians were recruited by Garwhali and Kumaoni kings for important do-or-die battles. In a letter to the DM, the residents wrote: 'Our identity has always been, and will always remain tied to Miyanwala…certain politicians have attempted to change the name of our home, and are trying to divide our society. Let it remain Miyanwala.' This is what I meant when I said that saffronists are now plucking things out of thin air, conjuring something from nothing. The state government doubled down with a bewildering defence: 'People are trying to create division. They claim the name is associated with Kshatriyas, but is there any Kshatriya greater than Lord Ram? He is the pride of the Kshatriya clan.' Lord Ram triumphs all in the new regime, but why change the name when it had no Muslim roots at all? Even repelling the Mughals militarily doesn't count. Let's do a thought-experiment. In India, our names have a religious underpinning. It's an unsaid rule that Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis – basically all Indian communities – name their offspring drawing from their own tradition. There is no law that prohibits breaking this rule; it's more a matter of convention. Suppose I was called Inzamam Krishna Mehrotra or Imaad Mehrotra. Will the Hindutvavadi then demand that I, as a Hindu, change my name? Will we extend this obsession with changing names to children born to interfaith marriages (now called 'love jihad' )? Let me plant a devious seed. If we really want to conjure something out of nothing, why not pass a new law laying down nomenclature in families: if a Muslim man marries a Hindu woman then at least one child will have a Hindu name. (The Pataudis would be in big trouble). As I said earlier, there is no end to the Hindutva project; it's pregnant with endless possibilities. * * * Speaking of plucking things out of thin air, take the fish market-and-Kali temple controversy in Delhi's CR Park. What was not problematic for decades is suddenly a no-no. Speaking about the group that visited the market during Navratri, fish-seller Dinesh Das told The Print : 'It was evening time when some people came to our market. These people came for two days and, citing Sanatan Dharma, asked that the fish market near the temple be closed. At the time, no one understood who they were and that it would lead to such a big controversy.' He added: 'We are also Sanatanis, but we eat fish because it is a part of our culture. The temple next to the fish market was also built by us and for the last 60 years, both the temple and market have been running without any dispute.' Another fish shop owner told The Indian Express that he opens his outlet only after offering prayers at the temple. Looks like the Hindutva revisionist history project is accompanied by a revisionist religion project. Forget about the Kali temple being adjacent to a fish market, offerings of meat have always been allowed in select temples. The Kamakhya Devi Mandir in Guwahati is the most well-known example, but there are others like the Patiala Kali Temple where devotees offer goat and chicken meat, ' especially when their wishes are fulfilled '. In his book, Folk Art and Culture of Gujarat , Jyotindra Jain lists the various goddesses worshipped in the region: Khodiar, Vindhyavasini and Mandavri. Each has a shrine ascribed to her. 'To all these goddesses blood sacrifices were offered,' Jain writes, 'and the number of animals to be sacrificed on the state account was fixed.' Seen in this light, the neo-vegetarianism of Hindutva seems like a top-down imposition. Ayodhya now prohibits the sale of meat along the Panch Kosi Marg, encompassing the Panch Kosi Parikrama – a 15-kilometre area around the Ram Temple. The Dominos and KFC there have gone 'pure veg'. Kentucky Fried Chicken might as well be called Kentucky Fried Chhaap now. * * * In 2019, Yogi Adityanath announced a ban on the sale of alcohol around temples . Liquor vends were shut down in a 250 metre radius. Our devotion is now measured by the metric system. The state decides the number of metres and kilometres of forbidden periphery. Earlier this month, the Madhya Pradesh government banned liquor in nineteen Hindu religious sites. One of the positives of these bans is that the metropolitan Indian is now aware of the names of places she didn't know existed: Datia, Multai, Amarkantak, Kundalpur, Salkanpur, Bandakpur, Barmankalan, Barmanpur (the renaming exercise would be purer if we also removed 'bar' from the names) and Linga. Not to be left behind, Uttarakhand announced its own list. In March this year, the government approved a new excise policy for 2025-26 that includes a mandate to revoke the licence of liquor shops near religious areas. This month, the Uttarakhand High Court, while hearing three petitions against non-renewal of six liquor vends in Rishikesh, on the grounds that these are located near 'holy places', said: 'It is an irony that a particular place is called a 'holy place' when the entire state is called Devbhoomi…The paradox in the approach is that if six shops are permitted to vend liquor, it would affect the sanctity of the holy town, but serving liquor in bars and restaurants would not affect the sanctity of the holy town. There cannot be anything more paradoxical and ironical than this.' The counsel for petitioners had argued that while licenses of restaurants and resorts were renewed, only his clients' licenses were not, because the six shops were located close to the boundary of the prohibited area . Reprimanding the excise commissioner, the court added: 'Prima facie there is negligence and abuse of power. There cannot be anything more high-handed than this. This is the height of arbitrariness.' The matter is subjudice. Leaving aside this particular case, there are temples in India where offerings of liquor are made: Kal Bhairav in Ujjain, Kali Mata in Connaught Place, Delhi, Tarapith in Birbhum, Bhanwal Mata in Jodhpur and Baba Bhairo Nath in Mumbai. The idea of prohibition around temples is clearly a post-BJP phenomenon. Eric Hobsbawm coined the phrase 'The Invention of Tradition'. What we are seeing in India under the BJP is the invention of agenda, ritual and lines of taboo. What's ironic is that many of those affected might well have voted saffron in the last election: the Rajputs of Miyanwala, the Bongs of CR Park and the imbibers of U.P., Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh. Their political choices have come back to haunt them. A bit like some of those who voted for Trump, who suddenly find themselves out of a job after Elon Musk's DOGE cuts. Reality bites. The writer is the author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India's Technicolor Youth , and the editor of House Spirit: Drinking in India
