The killing of the eight SIMI activists in an encounter in Bhopal is a horrific development. And not the least for the dubious circumstances that surround the incident but for the deeply troubling message that it sends across yet again about the direction India is taking. The eight alleged SIMI activists, were under trials in jail and therefore not the terrorists as the media calls them. The courts had yet to prove whether they were involved in any of the charges brought against them. Similarly, the circumstances surrounding their escape hardly inspire faith. How could they escape the high-wall prison? How could they change into regular clothes? How did they stay together and not go in different directions to escape notice. This way police would not have captured all of them. And then this police version that it killed them in retaliatory fire. How was it that the escapees got hands on the weapons, even though one version says that they had no weapons.
However, beyond these circumstances, it is the Government's and the media's approach to the encounter that is disturbing. BJP has brazenly justified the killings and even hailed the personnel who carried out the encounter. What is more, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Chauhan has announced the reward of Rs 2 lakh each to the personnel who killed the men. And the minister of state for home Kiren has told media not to ask questions. “We should stop this habit of raising doubts and questioning the authorities and the police. This is not a good culture", Kiren Rijuju told media.
This reveals a grim state of affairs. And this only looks set to get worse by the day. Because the ideological discourse that attends this violence is more justifying than condemning in nature.
As his two and a half years in power have proved, Modi hasn’t lived up to the hopes about him but to the apprehensions: his government may have taken a strongly pro-business line, but on ideological front, Sangh Parivar has gone for an unremitting assault on the idea of India. They have set about in right earnest to pursue an ideological makeover of the Indian state away from the Nehruvian idea of the country. The intolerance and hate against the minorities has been on a steady rise.
Is this the idea of India that Modi wants to institute in place of an earlier India which for all its serious flaws protected India’s ethnic and religious diversity? It seems so. The voices emanating from this government show the violence against Muslims as tolerable, something that can even be rationalised through insidious ideological arguments. This is taking India down a dangerous path. One hopes that the situation improves and the better sense prevails on the new minders of this nation. Further lapse will pose a severe challenge to India’s secular fabric. And it will be a pity if BJP’s monochromatic national vision becomes the reigning ideology of the country.
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