Notwithstanding Rahul Gandhi reiterating his absolute belief that ultimately truth had prevailed, as Supreme Court suspended his defamation conviction allowing him to return to Parliament, it would be sheer naiveté to believe that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would accept this humiliation lying low.
The manner in which Rahul was framed and convicted in the defamation case provides enough hint that a conspiracy was hatched out at the highest political level and, as alleged by the Congress leaders, had the abstruse patronage of Modi. The three-year-old exercise purely aimed at imprisoning Rahul, or at the very least, removing him from Parliament and taking away his ability to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, also exposed the high-decibel stake of the RSS and the BJP leaders.
Obviously, the RSS leaders and Modi could not visualise their efforts going down the drain as a combatant Supreme Court led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud upheld constitutional values, pouring cold water over the RSS-BJP machinations. It may sound obnoxious but the fact is Modi and his lieutenants had sensed that the eventual verdict would not go their way. Expectedly, Rahul Gandhi would be back with a vengeance at the centre-stage of the Indian politics, right in the heart of the Parliament. Naturally, to offset Gandhi’s political attack, they know they ought to be ready with their alternate strategy to counter him.
Undeniably, eruption and flaring up of communal violence in Haryana and Gurugram must be seen in this backdrop. An anatomical autopsy of the past incidents of communal violence would make it crystal clear that they were not spontaneous, but systematically planned by the riot-executing wings of the BJP-RSS, belonging to mostly Hindu, and some from Muslim communities. The Haryana violence was not in the nature of riot. It was a planned execution by the Hindu bigot militia of the VHP, Bajrang Dal groups.
Reports emanating from Haryana fail to correlate the violent massacres with any tangible communal fissure. The Hindu mercenaries, reportedly non-local, suddenly burst into action. It is also being publicised that just ahead of unleashing the violence, posters had appeared warning the Muslims that one Hindu criminal Monu Manesar would be visiting the area soon. The photographic evidence of the violence in action clearly show that the police remained a passive spectator, enabling the mercenaries and goons of Bajrang Dal to ruthlessly carry out their communal operations.
The locals of Nuh, one of the most affected areas, are finding tough to find a rationale as to why it happened. Hindus and Muslims have lived in harmony in Nuh for decades and have jointly accused “outsiders” of stoking violence in their city for political gains. The violence in Nuh erupted in after spread of the news that dreaded Hindu criminal Monu Manesar would participate the procession. A video making round on social media before the clashes showed Manesar saying he would participate in the “Shobha Yatra” (procession) in Nuh and asking people to join in huge numbers.
The Hindu mercenaries even killed a 22-year-old Muslim cleric Saad Ameen inside a masjid, which was later set on fire. People who were present say a mob of 150 people broke into the mosque and attacked the cleric and a few others who were inside. “Kill them, kill them, they kept saying, while shouting religious slogans,” says Sahabuddin, who was sleeping in the mosque at the time of the attack.
Shops in Gurugram’s Sector 70A and Sector 66 were torched on Tuesday evening, while Bajrang Dal members held a rally in Haryana’s Bahadurgarh city, shouting hateful slogans “Desh ke gaddaron ko, Goli maaro saalon ko” (“Shoot the traitors of our country”) – a chant that was initially used by BJP politician and Union minister Anurag Thakur in Delhi against Muslims during the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests in 2019 and 2020.
Around 150 migrant families saw their shanties razed on Thursday as the government sent bulldozers to a slum cluster in Tauru. These people have been staying there for as long as 10 years without being served any notice. Some of them showed their Aadhaar and PAN cards as proof of their nationality – many have come from West Bengal and Assam. For some time, the Bengali-speaking migrants belonging to both Hindu and Muslim relions have been the target of the Hindu fanatics in Haryana.
Members of Hindu far-right organisations have been protesting against Muslims offering Friday prayers in public spaces in Gurugram. Authorities have cancelled permits for most of the prayer sites, with the Anjuman Jama mosque being one of the few remaining places of worship left in the city. In Sohna town, south of the Anjuman Jama mosque, a stretch of shops belonging to Muslims in the town’s main road lay charred following the violence there on July 31.
‘Jai Shri Ram’ has emerged as a war cry by the Hindu far-right groups. Dozens of Muslims have been lynched in the state on the suspicion of being cow smugglers since Modi came to power in 2014. Muslim activists lament that “the only work left for Muslim activists in India is to count dead bodies, to crowdfund for rebuilding shattered and burned houses, to collect donations for employment for those who have been injured and to plead the police to file FIRs [police complaints]”.
The lingering threat of losing power at the 2024 election has turned RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, PM Narendra Modi, his lieutenant Union home minister Amit Shah and the entire BJP ecosystem so scared that Modi would not hesitate in carrying out any kind of assault on the body politick and the people of the country. Apprehensions are also being expressed that India may witness the worst ever mayhem and communal violence with the Lok Sabha elections approaching.
Communal violence was engineered in Haryana just a month ahead of global leaders meet in New Delhi for the prestigious G20 summit, that India is heading this year. This underscores the relevance of the meet for Modi, as he is evidently more concerned with the consolidation and polarisation of Hindu electorate. Like his deliberate silence on Manipur, Modi has refrained from commenting on the violence in Haryana that came a day after a railway security officer killed one of his colleagues and three Muslim passengers, in what is seen by many as a textbook majoritarian hate crime.
It wouldn’t come across as shocking if RSS and Modi once again implicate Rahul Gandhi in yet another fabricated case and arrest him. Though Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, leader of Congress in Lok Sabha, and other Congress leaders met the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and sought Gandhi’s immediate reinstatement to allow him to take part in a no-trust vote that the opposition parties have moved against Modi’s government, the chances are bleak that Birla would oblige the Congress. He would certainly not like that Congress led by Rahul inside the Parliament create legislative and political hurdles for Modi. The no-confidence motion is scheduled to be taken up for debate in parliament on August 8 and Modi is expected to reply on August 10 before it is put to vote.
Yet another case of defamation against Rahul for speaking against Narendra Modi is pending in Bombay High Court, though the HC has extended interim relief for Rahul from court appearance till September 26. The complainant alleged that Gandhi was making “defamatory statements against Modi and by calling him “Commander in Thief” made a direct allegation of theft against all members of BJP and Indian citizens connected to Modi”.
The complainant, who claims to be a BJP worker, had alleged that Gandhi’s “commander-in-thief” remark in the context of the Rafale fighter jet deal amounted to defamation. The complainant alleged that Gandhi was making “defamatory statements against Modi and by calling him ‘Commander in Thief’ made a direct allegation of theft against all members of BJP and Indian citizens connected to Modi”.
Modi in his quest to silence Rahul can go to any extent and resort to kind of machination. Look at the manner in which he has been desperately striving to humiliate and denigrate Rahul’s image in the eyes of the people of India. In his pursuit, he even used abusive and derogatory words against his family lineage; why was he not using Nehru in his name. This provides an insight into Modi’s twisted, deracinated psyche. Almost all his actions have been bereft of political sanctity and have strengthened the belief that he preferred blunt strong-arm tactics rather than behave like an astute politician.
Politicians using CBI and Income Tax raids aren’t a new phenomenon in Indian politics. But the way Modi repeatedly and shamelessly used ED against his political opponents exposes his real bent of mind. A seasoned politician would refrain from using the ED in the manner he exploited it, to retain a veneer of legality to the actions. Though the apex court has given extension to Sanjay Mishra, director ED, till September 15 to accomplish the task of FATF, the ED sending notices to politicians to openly threaten and humiliate them remains Modi’s modus operandi, however, now with diminishing political returns. (IPA Service)
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