https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/gujaratification-as-the-foremost-national-security-threat
Gujaratification as
the foremost national security threat
A commentator has it that
Kashmirisation of India is underway ever since methods law and order
maintenance tried and tested in Kashmir found their way into the national
capital with the invasion of the armed police into a university campus to rough
up students. Alongside, Gujratification of India is also underway, evident from
the foray of a right wing lynch mob to beat up students of another central
university in the national capital as the police stood by.
Gujaratification – the
hand-in-glove nature of the regime and police - is a recent phenomenon on the
national stage. However, conditioning Indians by the lap-dog media to
mainstreaming it is proving difficult. India’s liberal hangover appears to be
bestirring itself with a rear-guard action by assorted liberals and a besieged
minority hogging the headlines.
Clearly, the regime has
over-reached. Blinded by arrogance on being rewarded with another term by an
electorate fed on lies related to its military showing in the Balakot episode
and hoping to build on the momentum from its constitutional hocus-pocus on
Kashmir followed by its judicial coup in the Ayodhya case, unfurled – prematurely
as it turns out - its flagship enterprise turning India into a Hindu Rashtra.
The good part is that it has in
its exuberance spilled the beans on the ways and means towards the Hindu
Rashtra, Gujaratification.
The Gujarat Model commended
itself into middle class consciousness based on economic growth figures of the
state under Modi. The underside to the Gujarat Model – of abject socio-economic
indices - was lost in the beeline of the corporates to set up shop in Gujarat
and its self-interested endorsement by corporate honchos. Less visible was the
Gujarat Model’s blind side of Gujaratification.
Therefore when the electorate
opted twice-over for the protagonist duo – Modi-Shah – from Gujarat, they have
unwarily imported from Gujarat the odious dimension of their rule. This is
turning out the primary national security threat today.
Essentially, Gujaratification is
the internal hollowing out of institutions, in this case security relevant
institutions. The enervation of the Gujarat police is an example, with the easy
illustration being its custodial killings in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case that
was dressed up as preemption of a plot to ‘get Modi’. Apparently, the henchmen
were in constant touch with their minister, Amit Shah, even as they implemented
orders.
Shades of Gujaratification are
visible in the actions of the Delhi police, run by Shah’s home ministry, in its
conduct on the two university campuses. While at Jamia Millia they vandalized
the university campus without any permission even to enter it, in the case of
Jawarharlal Nehru University (JNU), they held back ostensibly for permission to
enter the campus even as the rampage inside the campus proceeded unhindered.
That they then allowed right-wing foot-soldiers to then vanish using the cover
of the dark, with street lights helpfully switched off for the purpose. This
has shades of Gujarat 2002, when it is alleged the police were told to lay off
while right wing goon squads were given 48 hours to do their bit.
As in Gujarat, where the likes of
whistle-blower Sanjiv Bhatt are in jail even as his counterpart the tainted DG Vanzara,
of encounter fame, is scot-free, Delhi is witnessing a similar inversion of
justice. No one has been proceeded against in the Jamia Millia episode, though
social media is awash with the evidence of disproportionate use of force by the
police. Supposed bus burning and stone throwing by protestors is taken as
enough to let off the perpetrators. In the JNU case, a first information report
has been lodged against the injured head of the JNU student union, while not a
single – easily identified - perpetrator has been arrested.
Gujaratification poses a more
insidious threat. The disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed, the JNU student, missing
for some three years, is a case to point. The ease of access by right wing
forces to the campus and impunity thereafter throws light on what might have
transpired the day Najeeb went missing.
For additional clarity, Uttar
Pradesh (UP) is example. The UP police’s handling of the largely peaceful
protests has been captured on camera. They are shown up as supplementing their
resources with right wingers. Where the crowds are shown as violent, it is
arguably because of the communalized police’s high-handedness combined with the
provocation from right wingers in their midst. The ensuing violence has been
taken as legitimizing the excessive use of force that resulted in over a score
killed. The chief minister, chosen for the job by the dynamic duo – Modi-Shah,
has since justified their choice by talking of ‘badla’ (revenge).
Gujaratification, the subversion
of institutions and instruments of law and order and justice, is a national
security threat since there is no distinction left between state and its
temporal steward. The threat is in such agencies ending up as handmaiden for
the advance of the footprint of Hindutva across India. Their trampling on the
political backlash in the guise of national security makes them complicit in
majoritarianism, besides setting the stage for authoritarianism.
The national security threat is
amplified in case it overruns the military – the last line of defence. On being
appointed Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, who has constantly over
his tenure as army chief through his political interventions flirted with the
ruling party, piously intoned: “We stay far away from politics, very far. We
have to work according to the directions of the Government in power.”
Security agencies – police,
military and intelligence - have a constitutional and official mandate, the
fulfillment of which requires beng apolitical and secular. However, if – as the
good general does – they follow orders without reference to their formal professional
obligation to the Constitution and normative obligation to the nation, they
stand compromised.
Therefore, directions received from
political bosses have to be gauged in light of their mandate, with illegal and
illegitimate orders ignored. Doing so alone can preserve national security from
being suborned by either ideology or an incipient authoritarianism.
