Last month, around 9 people were killed by local villagers in different areas of Jharkhand as tribal mobs suspected them of being child lifters engaged in human trafficking.
However, one of these incidents of lynching was wrongly claimed as lynching due to ‘cow slaughter and beef’ and was given a communal colour, even though more Hindus than Muslims had died in these incidents.
Not just miscreants, even the mainstream media played its part in giving the unfortunate incident a communal spin and vitiated the atmosphere. This was used to incite communal passions, which saw violent demonstration by Muslims in Jamshedpur on 20 May to protest against the assumed targeted killings of Muslims.
The protests – based on twisting of facts related to the case that did not have a communal angle – turned into a pitched battle between a Muslim mob and Jharkhand Police, leading to arson and stone pelting that caused widespread damage to property and injuries to policemen.
Once the situation was brought under control, police arrested dozens of miscreants and rioters, and subsequent investigations suggested that the protests were well organised and not spontaneous reaction to the wrong news of beef related lynching.
Police has named local Congress leader Feroze Khan as one of the main conspirators who organised the mob and led them to attack the police. Apart from being a Congress leader, Firoze Khan is also a founding member of an organisation called “Muslim Ekta Manch” which is an organisation of local Muslim leaders cutting across party lines.
Other leaders of this organisation have also been named as accused by the police, which includes leaders from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and the Bharitya Janta Party (BJP). Most of these leaders are reportedly ‘absconding’ ever since police has filed the case. While on the run, the leaders have reportedly dissolved the “Muslim Ekta Manch”.
They are also trying to get bail for themselves from courts, and latest reports suggest that a district court has rejected the bail application of Feroze Khan and his associates. Court has also rejected bail applications of others already arrested by the police for being part of the mob that took part in riots.
On 22nd June, the prosecution for the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts in which 257 people died, demanded the death penalty for the 5 out of 6 convicts in the case. One of those convicts was Mustafa Dossa.
Mustafa Dossa who was in his 50s, was deputed to oversee the shipping and retrieval of of arms, ammunition and explosives, including 3,000 kg of RDX from Dubai to India. It was reported that it was actually on Dossa’s instructions that arms were distributed among the accused. According to the CBI, Dossa was the first to get the ball rolling by sending the arms and ammunition for the blasts.
Dossa had also reportedly attended meetings at his brother Mohammed Dossa’s Dubai home between December 1992 and January 1993 to hatch the whole terror conspiracy. These meetings were also attended by Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon among others. Other accused including Firoz Abdul Rashid Khan were flown in by Dossa who facilitated their pick-up, accommodation and other arrangements. He had also sent some youth to Pakistan to acquire arms training to execute the blasts.
On Wednesday Mustafa Dossa died at at a Mumbai hospital due to a cardiac arrest after he had complained of chest pain while being lodged in the Arthur Road Jail.
Incidentally this death prompted a peculiar reaction from shop owners of Manish Market which is situated at a 5 minutes walking distance from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
According to a report, after the word of Dossa’s death spread, the shopkeepers in Manish market started closing their shops. Apparently most of the shops in the market are owned, aided or financed by the Dossa family. According to a shopkeeper they had opened the shops in the morning but then shut it down in the afternoon after all the shopkeepers made an unanimous decision to do so.
A notice had then also reportedly been put up at the market complex which stated that all the shops in the complex would be closed for two days on Wednesday and Thursday. Many of the shopkeepers had also visited JJ Hospital to catch a final glimpse of Dossa.
Dossa was buried earlier today in Mumbai with over 200 people taking part in his funeral.
China’s attempts to construct a road on Doklam plateau have led to the current stand-off between Indian Army and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China. China recently accused India of aggression.
The 269-sq km Doklam plateau, which belongs to Bhutan, is strategically located at the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction. The plateau adjourns to the Chumbi Valley, which is shaped like a dagger jutting into India, separating Sikkim from Bhutan. Chumbi Valley faces Chicken’s Neck, a strategically-vulnerable and thin strip of land in Siliguri.
Clearly, this is part of Beijing’s plans to gain strategic advantage in the region. Doklam plateau is Bhutanese territory. But China, which has named it as Donglang, wants to lay claims over this territory.
A desperate China has termed the construction of road in Doklam plateau as “legitimate” saying the road is being built in the “Chinese territory”.
“Chinese construction of the road project is legitimate and normal action on its territory. It doesn’t belong to Bhutan, nor does it belong to India,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said.
But does Doklam plateau really belong to China? We can find the answer in the pages of history. On 26 December, 1959, a Chinese Foreign document had admitted that the Doklam plateau belongs to Bhutan. But in 1988, China’s People’s Liberation Army had crossed into Bhutan and illegally took control over the Chumbi Valley, below the Doklam plateau. Since then, China has been regularly making incursions in the Doklam plateau by threatening Bhutan and claiming it as its own territory.
Meanwhile, Bhutan has issued a demarche to China and asked Beijing to restore status quo by stopping the road construction activities in Doklam plateau immediately.
India has strategic and defence interests in the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction. This is not to dispute that India will lose its strategic advantage in the region once the road is constructed in Doklam plateau. Through this road, China wants to enhance its military logistics in the region. It won’t be wrong to suggest China’s latest move aims at constant provocation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Sikkim.
China’s road construction in Doklam plateau has led to a standoff between Indian and Chinese troops. Since Indian Army and China’s People’s Liberation Army had confronted each other at Daulat Beg Oldi in 2013, this is yet another major confrontation between the troops of both the countries.
China, however, accused Indian troops of “provocation” and alleged that Indian Army had “entered into Chinese territory” and is preventing its “road construction activity” in Doklam plateau.
However, there is no official statement from Indian side so far. If that is true, Indian Army has absolutely done the needful.
Following the standoff, China has shut down the Nathu La pass entry for Indian pilgrims travelling to Kailash Mansarovar in a retaliatory move and warned India that future visits of its pilgrims would depend on whether it “corrects its errors”.
Amid the ongoing standoff, an editorial in China’s state-run Global Times said India needs to be “taught rules” of handling boundary disputes. “This time the Indian side needs to be taught the rules. India cannot afford a showdown with China on border issues. It lags far behind China in terms of national strength,” it said.
On Thursday, the Chinese Army conducted trials of a battle tank in in the plains of Tibet, near the Indian border. It now remains to be seen if the stand-off is resolved amicably or gets escalated.
The Manohar Lal Khattar led Haryana government has reportedly got involved in a tussle with the state Waqf board, which is facing accusation of mismanagement and has also denied information to the various RTI queries directed towards it.
The Haryana government’s information commission has reportedly found the first appellate authority of the Waqf board guilty of hiding facts from the public regarding all the Waqf properties and their current status. The authorities also observed in their 20 June order that the Waqf board deliberately delayed the furnishing of information to RTI activist Harinder Dhingra because of ulterior motives. The commission has also called for appropriate action against Imtiyaz Khizar, who is the first Appellate Authority of the Waqf board.
Waqf is nothing but a grant made by Muslims to religious or charitable institutions and can either be in the form of land or any other endowment. The Waqf is regulated and managed by various state Waqf boards who in-turn are answerable to the Central Waqf Council. According to the Indian law, the Waqf board’s possessions cannot be either sold or transferred and can only be used for the community’s welfare. Waqf boards also get government grants to carry out their activities.
According to RTI activist Dhingra, Waqf properties in Haryana have long been mismanaged and he wanted information regarding the manner and the people to whom the properties were leased out, which was ultimately denied to him. Incidentally it were Dhingra’s efforts which led to the Haryana state Waqf board coming under the purview of the RTI act in 2012.
This isn’t the only time state Waqf boards have been a center of similar irregularities.
It has been alleged that if the findings of a Waqf board scam in Karnataka were made public, as many as 10 ministers of the Congress led Karnataka government would go to jail. It has been alleged that 40-50% of the land allocated to the Waqf board has been embezzled and over a whopping 2.3 lakh crore worth of land was denotified for either personal use or was sold to the land mafia.
In March, the Maharashtra government had suspended the Waqf Board Chief Executive Officer Naseeba Bano Patel, after she was found guilty of wrongly ruling that a 2500 crore Waqf board property was a non-waqf one. This resulted in the encroaches upon the land becoming legal heirs who were then compensated by a builder who is all set to build a township on that plot.
Even top political leaders have seen themselves involved in irregularities involving the Waqf board. Recently it was reported that SP leader Azam Khan had unlawfully transferred 3.5 acre of Waqf board property worth Rs 500 crores to his close friend Shahzeb Khan. Azam Khan then allegedly sold the property and as a result made crores of rupees.
Recently the so-called “liberals” and self-declared “concerned citizens” of the country came up with a new campaign called #NotInMyName, which purportedly sought to protest against the supposed rise in lynching the country is witnessing after Narendra Modi won the general elections.
The campaign idea was criticised, including here at OpIndia.com, because most of the people associated with the campaign had pre-decided to focus only on “Muslim” victims of lynching incidents, even though victims are from other communities too.
However, some still claimed that the campaign was about lynchings of all sorts, and did not focus on any religion or ideology. This claim was lynched by the mobs that gathered to protest, and it became clear that the campaign was a partisan political propaganda.
How insensitive and partisan the “protesters” were, was obvious when the following ‘lynch map’ of India was brandished as part of the campaign:
The alleged lynch map of India
As one can see, not only the protesters refused to include public killings of Hindu activists in states like Kerala, they even refused to include incidents where Muslims were killed because they were not seen as “Muslim enough” by Islamist mobs – such as lynchings of an Army jawan and DSP in Kashmir and a Muslim BJP leader who was hacked to death in Karnataka.
Apart from that, it included incidents in Jharkhand, which were known to have no connection with religion, because an almost equal number of Hindus were also killed by local villagers under the same suspicion of child theft. This lie was first spread by Huffington Post, which had later retracted, but the propagandists at the #NotInMyName decided to further the lie.
This map, almost a symbol of the farce that the campaign was, came under criticism on social media:
The ‘Map’ omits any reference to:
Dalit boy burned alive by Muslims in Pune.
Muslim BJP activist beaten to death by Muslim mob in Bangalore. pic.twitter.com/j0X2knmsGG
Read the thread. Did any of the lynching victims find a mention at #NotInMyName protests? Was it about lynching or political frustration? https://t.co/36MfTF4fbw
Apart from whitewashing crimes of Islamist mobs, the campaign was used as a platform to propagate Hinduphobia and fuel anti-Hindu bigotry, as was evident by a few posters at the events:
When you slander an entire community your protest shows up for what it is: hate-driven activism aimed at maligning all Hindus. #NotInMyNamepic.twitter.com/jX8YY6VRxj
There were other instances of how such law and order failures were stereotyped as “Bhraminism” and “Hindu Terror”:
Within 24 hours, #NotInMyName campaign became an anti-Hindu Terrorism, anti-Brahmanism, anti-Modi and blind-to-Kerala-crime campaign. pic.twitter.com/Nx5e7wgoej
Then there were others, who openly abused Hindus and Hinduism, and called for armed aggression from Muslims i.e. virtually calling for a civil war the way Jinnah had asked for ‘Direct Action’:
The tragedy is that despite it being a campaign of hate, the organisers, thanks to their connections in media and the elite class, will be able to paint themselves as “concerned citizens”. An example of how their hold on narrative successfully gets support even for their hate campaigns, was visible when young Bollywood actor Varun Dhawan tweeted in support of it.
I completely support the #NotInMyName movement. It was a peaceful protest and stood for the values of what our country stands for.
From 1st July, India would be starting a new chapter in its financial history after the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rolls out. There would be many challenges, which both the business owners and the government officials have to face, chief of which is having to adjust to the new taxation norm that does away with indirect taxes like service tax and excise duty among others.
The going might be tough for the initial 2-3 months and it is imperative that all those required to comply with GST regime go around learning about all the changes and inculcating them without any sort of panic.
While there is always a resistance to change, what is not helping the matter at all is the misconception and propaganda being spread by some in the “commentariat”, who while possibly seeking to discredit the GST, might end up piling unnecessary panic among thousands of ordinary businessmen and taxpayers.
These comments give a sense that businesses might end up investing a lot resources, especially man-hours, in just compliance. For example, reports claiming that businesses would need to hire dedicated professionals for GST management and upgradation. This isn’t something any business owner wants to hear, especially the ones who only have a turnover of about Rs 20 lakh per year.
This article aims to put some clarity about this issue.
Every month, 3 returns need to be filed by a business
One of the aspects that is scaring many is the claim that every company needs to pay 3 tax returns per month i.e. 36 tax returns per year, which will warrant a lot of paperwork and investment of man-hours.
Reality
The tax-payer has to only file one return per month and the rest of the details get auto-populated. This was explained by me previously on Twitter. The only return that involves actual data entry is your outward return, which will be easy to do if your account keeping is orderly and systematic.
The returns that get auto populated is your inward return, which fetches data from the return filed by your supplier. The other return that is auto generated is your monthly return, which fetches data from your outward return, which you fill in, and the inward return, which gets auto-populated.
All these monthly returns would then be added on while creating an Annual return. Here also, as all the data is on the server, things would get auto-populated. One simply has to log-in and double-check the data, and press submit.
Not everyone has to file 3 returns in a month
As we have seen, while technically there are three returns, in essence it is only one return that a business has to work upon (the outward return). However, not everyone is required to do it.
Different slabs
If you have a turnover of less than Rs 20 lakhs per annum, you literally don’t need to do anything. No need to file any sort of returns or even register under the GST, as you have been exempted under this act. Just concentrate on your business. Remember that in many states, the threshold for VAT was as low as turnover of Rs. 5 lakhs per annum, so GST actually does away with paperwork in many cases.
If you have a turnover between Rs 20 lakhs and 75 lakhs per annum and if you have availed the “composite scheme” (explained later in the article), you just need to file quarterly returns and not monthly returns.
Everyone else has to give invoice wise details of all sales of all transactions above Rs 2.5 lakhs. They also have to provide details of all sales and tax details: rate wise, inter-state wise, and intra-state for transactions below Rs 2.5 lakhs. This also would mean 1 return per month and auto-population follows.
How the auto-population of returns work
As clarified by revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia earlier, the monthly returns named GSTR-2 and GSTR-3 are not actually returns. They are a computer-generated account of all your invoices as furnished by your suppliers. So after filing the 1st return, the government would send back two computer generated returns which need your verification and approval. He also lamented the fact that they didn’t name the forms as GSTR – 1A, 1B, 1C which clarifies that they are just three parts of a single return and not three different returns.
This GSTR-2 form sample as present here [PDF] shows which details will be auto-populated:
It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to do any work. You do need to verify the entries and then approve those, which is not really a bad thing as we can see by the following example.
Suppose you are working at a company that regularly deducts TDS from your salary, which it then pays to the government. Now when you receive your 26AS form, which details the tax you have paid to the government, you the check it to confirm whether your employer has actually paid the tax which he/she had deducted from you. If the correct TDS amount isn’t reflected in your 26AS form, you can confront your employer.
The same applies to the GSTR-2 and GSTR-3 where the taxpayer would be able to ascertain whether if all the suppliers and dealers who had deducted the tax from him/her for paying to the government actually did so. Here there is no scope of editing or additions but its a mere reflection of the tax situation.
But yes, the tallying does involve some work but there is a sweetener in the form of higher input credit which the GST offers.
How does it all compare to the existing (pre-GST) tax regime?
Currently, businesses need to file CST or central sales tax returns. Then they need to file VAT returns as per the laws prescribed by the state, which in most cases differed from state to state. So if a company operated in 20 states, it would have to keep in mind the 20 different VAT laws, and in order to do so appoint different consultants who have the knowledge of each state law before filing the return in each state. On top of it, there used to be entertainment taxes, road taxes, and others such taxes, which differed for state to state.
In post-GST era, if a company is operating in 20 different states, it still have to file returns in each state as per the turnover slab it falls into. However, GST does ensure that all the state laws like VAT, entertainment tax, road tax, etc. which were different in each state, have been subsumed by a centralised GST law. Hence the company, while filing the returns, can very well refer to that single law to get things done rather than going through different state laws.
So no more needing to appoint state specific experts for simple tasks like transporting machinery from one state to another, which earlier required the filing of road taxes in both the states having completely different road tax laws. Now just learn the GST law and you are good to go for everything.
So finally…
Even though GST may not completely simplify things, it is definitely is a step forward into a simpler tax regime. Also instead of spreading half truths and sensational stories, the critics can attack the government for last moment push and preparation.
The sensational stories and various WhatsApp rumours are getting traction because the government has not managed to do enough when it comes to educating the citizens about the effect of GST and how they need to adapt to it. Now there are reports of the Finance Ministry setting up a war room when it comes to clarifying the doubts of state and central government employees after GST launches, but it raises the question as to why the employees are not already thoroughly versed with the inner-workings of the new tax.
Also the government has set up GST awareness seminars across the country but the first one seems to have been held just this March, which is only 3 months before the actual launch date. The government should have launched awareness campaigns, put out educational advertisements in various regional dailies, set up GST information kiosks in every sub-division well before the launch date to nip such fear-mongering in the bud.
Price of life saving medicines – including the drugs to treat HIV, cancer, Crohn’s disease, pneumonia among others – will come down as pharma pricing regulator National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has stepped in to keep the medicines affordable after the GST roll-out on July 1.
It is pertinent to mention that after the GST rollout, the price of a number of drugs would increase as around 80 per cent drugs have been put in the 12 per cent tax bracket, up from the current 9 per cent slab. The increase in price of these drugs, after the GST roll-out, would be marginal. But life-saving drugs, however, have been put in 5 per cent GST bracket.
According to reports, the NPPA has notified the revised ceiling prices of 761 drugs which are part of the Schedule-1 of the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO), 2013. NPPA notification means reduction in prices of the life saving drugs. Accordingly, prices of the most of the life saving drugs will come down by a few hundred rupees.
The prices of stents will not increase under the GST regime as the NPPA has kept the prices of drug eluting stents at Rs 30,800 and bare metal stents at Rs 7,400. Prices of immunosuppressants like cyclosporine and drugs to treat leukaemia will remain unchanged. Prices of Erythropoietin, Filgrastim and Hepatitis-B vaccine will also remain the same.
The NPPA list has deducted the excise duty element and VAT from the existing ceiling price of the drugs. In the case of scheduled drugs, where companies have been exempted from paying the excise duty, the NPPA has not revised the ceiling price.
Deepanth Roychowdhury, president of Indian Drug Manufacturers Association (IDMA) was quoted as saying, “Ceiling prices of scheduled formulations have come down and are on expected lines.”
The relationship between RJD and JD-U continue to be blow-hot-blow-cold. On Tuesday, JD-U general secretary KC Tyagi said something that surely is not going to amuse RJD. Tyagi reportedly said that JD-U was much more comfortable with the BJP during their 17-year-long partnership.
“We were much more comfortable under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime. But we have ideological differences with the Narendra Modi government on issues like Article 370, Uniform Civil Code and Ram Janmabhoomi,” the JDU general secretary said.
It could be noted that Nitish Kumar’s JD-U had snapped its 17-year-long ties with the BJP in the run up to the 2014 general elections, after BJP announced Narendra Modi as the Prime Ministerial candidate. It subsequently joined hands with the Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD for the 2015 Bihar assembly elections.
But much water has flown since then. Nitish Kumar supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi over demonetisation. In return, PM Modi praised and supported the Bihar Chief Minister for his prohibition policy. Last month, Kumar had skipped Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s ‘unity lunch’ to attend a luncheon meeting with PM Modi. And now Nitish Kumar’s party has gone a step further by announcing its support to NDA’s Presidential candidate Ram Nath Kovind.
“We have made it clear that our decision to support NDA’s Presidential candidate is a one-time affair. I do not know why some ‘friendly parties’ want to make it a permanent affair,” Tyagi reportedly said, which hints at the possibility of JD-U going back to the BJP due to attitude of RJD.
Earlier RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav had termed JD-U’s support to NDA nominee for the Presidential election “aetihask bhool (historical blunder)” and appealed Kumar to mend the “historic blunder” by supporting “Bihar ki Beti” Meera Kumar, who is the Opposition candidate for the Presidential election.
“We have taken this decision after thinking on all aspects. And as far as JD-U is concerned, it has always taken independent decisions,” Nitish had retorted. “There is no doubt about the result. I have great respect for ‘Bihar Ki Beti’ (Meira Kumar). But the Bihar Ki Beti has been nominated only to lose,” the Bihar Chief Minister had said.
Ever since Nitish Kumar announced support to NDA Presidential nominee Ram Nath Kovind, both Congress and the RJD have been taking swipe at Nitish Kumar. Lalu Prasad’s son and Bihar’s Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav has launched veiled attack on Kumar calling his decision “unprincipled” and “ego-centric”.
There has been a barrage of corruption charges involving Lalu Prasad and his family members, which is not helping the mahagathbandhan either as Nitish Kumar wants a clean image for his tenure.
In the beginning of this month, the NIA had conducted raids across as many as 23 locations across Delhi, Haryana and Kashmir in connection with the Pakistani funding which the Kashmiri separatist leaders are believed to receive in order to spread terror in the valley.
The NIA in the process raided various hawala operators and traders and seized around Rs 1.5 crore from various locations in the Kashmir Valley. On top of it, the agency had also recovered a few incriminating documents.
The NIA had also conducted a raid on establishments of various prominent separatists like Shahid-ul-Islam, a prominent leader of Awami Action Committee of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference and Altaf Fantoosh who is the son-in-law of Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
Now it seems that the son-in-law of Geelani is in further trouble after it was reported that he had been detained by the NIA on Wednesday in connection with the terror funding probe. Two other Hurryat leaders named Ayaz Akbar and Mehraj ud Din Kalwal were also detained by the agency.
Fantoosh, the son-in-law of Geelani was also questioned by the NIA on 12th June with regards to his movable and immovable assets and the source of their funding. This has reportedly prompted Geelani to squeal that the NIA had crossed all limits and also claimed that there was no legal justification for such arbitrary measures.
This action by the NIA is a welcome change from the attitude of the administration, which has continued to pander to the whims and fancies of these separatists. Till date, the government continues to provide a security cover to these separatists.
Even though Geelani in particular has taken up a separatist stand, this doesn’t stop him from taking favours from the Indian government. It has been reported in 2016 about how the rules were bent to provide a government job to the grandson of Geelani under the tourism department of the J&K government.
It was also recently reported how while the schools across the valley had remained closed for 111 days due to the bandh called by the seperatists, the grand-daughter of Geelani was allowed to appear for a school exam at an indoor stadium under stringent security arrangements.
Indian National Congress, the grand old party of India, suffered its worst ever electoral defeat in May 2014. Reduced to 44 seats, it was staring at a risk of being pushed to the margins if immediate corrective steps were not taken.
The reasons for its defeat were pretty obvious – corruption charges, anti-incumbency, lackadaisical leadership of Rahul Gandhi, and ‘Modi Wave’.
However, if you think like a pragmatic and seasoned politician, especially one belonging to the Congress party, these reasons don’t warrant any “corrective” steps. They are transient in nature.
For example, Congress could simply shrug them off with the following responses, and the party won’t really be wrong:
Corruption charges: Those are over. We’ve lost the elections. Now let’s forget about it. Indian electorate too has a short memory and they will also forget about those soon.
Anti-incumbency: That’s also over. And it won’t be there in 2019. BJP will be facing it.
Rahul Gandhi: Really? If not a Gandhi, who? A Tharoor? LOL! Rahul Baba will improve. Let’s not lose hope.
Modi Wave: It will subside; just a matter of time. Nothing lasts forever.
So does that mean that Congress needed to do nothing after the 2014 loss?
No! Because we are missing one thing that the party concluded as the reason for their defeat. And it was pointed out by AK Antony, who chaired a panel to analyse the reasons for the massive drubbing in the polls.
In June 2014, barely three weeks after the loss, Antony had said that Congress was seen as “pro-minority” by an average Hindu, which could be one of the reasons party suffered electoral reverses. The party’s secularism was seen as “anti-Hindu” by many.
What Congress was discussing immediately after its defeat (source)
The statement by Antony made news back then, and many Congress leaders were reported to have said that the party will evaluate it as a senior personal like Antony won’t speak anything without proper analysis.
Soon after that, in August there were reports that Congress had decided to go for an “image makeover”. The party decided to celebrate all religious festivals in their offices. Up to that time, the only religious festival they were celebrating was Iftaar during the Muslim holy month of Ramzan.
It was clear that the statement by Antony was not one-off. The party was serious about what he had pointed out and if any “corrective step” was to be taken, it was on this front.
In December same year, it was reported that party had decided to seek feedback from its cadre if it was perceived as “anti-Hindu”. A Times of India report claimed that “in around 20 meetings with Rahul Gandhi, almost every group of leaders underlined the backlash due to Congress’s pro-minority stance”.
All this while, from June to December 2014, BJP kept winning assembly elections and Congress and its allies kept losing. Among the elections the party lost to BJP was in Maharashtra, where the incumbent Congress-NCP government had declared reservations for Muslims in government jobs and education (something BJP scrapped later after). Party must have wondered if the “pro-minority” image hurt them again.
Basically in 2014, Congress knew that it had a “pro-minority” problem and it needed to find a solution.
The solution couldn’t have been stepping away from minorities. That would be suicidal. In India, “minorities” form a big chunk of voters, and one can say it without a sense of irony. Not only that, the “intellectual” support system would have also deserted the Congress.
So becoming a little less pro-minority was not at all the solution.
In essence, the problem was – an average Hindu thinking that Congress preferred minorities, especially Muslims, at the cost of welfare of Hindus. That the party was unfairly and unreasonably obsessed with minority issues.
Keywords being “unfairly” and “unreasonably”.
Bingo! That’s where the solution lied!
The party didn’t need to shed its pro-minority stand, but all it needed to do was to convince the average Hindu that its obsession with minority issues was not “unfair” and “unreasonable”.
And there you know what to do – convince the average Hindu that the minorities in India were being unfairly and unreasonably targeted. From attacks on Churches to Muslims lynched by Hindu mobs – such narrative help the Congress find the solution.
This narrative started towards end of 2014, when we started hearing about gharwapsi and later about attacks on Churches in Delhi – events that suggested that the minorities in India were being unfairly and unreasonably targeted.
Remember, gharwapsi was not any new event, as I had pointed out last year here and here; and even the attacks on Churches were all found to be either hyped or fabricated. But they helped create a narrative.
Every stray incident needed to be magnified, every loose comment needed to be mainstreamed, and every misrepresentation needed to be reinforced.
The end message – minorities were not safe, and the majority had to do something.
Essentially, the average Hindu was sent on a guilt trip.
This works almost every time and everywhere. Two years ago, we had seen how an average European, who was not too sure about taking immigrants and refugees, was convinced that every European country should take them in after the shocking picture of the dead Syrian kid sent them on a guilt trip. They, as individuals, started believing that the poor kid died as they didn’t do enough.
An average Hindu had to similarly feel personally guilty for the man who was killed in Dadri, and recently a young man who was stabbed to death near Delhi.
The narrative pushers were not even keeping it subtle; perhaps they believe that Hindus are not “sophisticated” enough like the Europeans. They openly asked Hindus to feel guilty:
From ‘rising intolerance’ to ‘rising hate’ -the propaganda continuesThe tragic irony of the above article is that it uses picture of an incident where a Muslim police officer was killed by an Islamist mob as they mistook him for being a Hindu, and yet it sends Hindus on a guilt trip.
A sense of guilt is very strong emotion and it can overpower other senses, especially the logical or rational ones.
Congress may nor may not be directly involved with shaping and pushing this narrative, but those who are doing so are known to be anti-Hindutva at best and Hinduphobic at worst. Their acts are aimed at political endgame, nothing else. Back in 2015, it appears to have worked as BJP was defeated in Delhi and later in Bihar that year. Church attacks and growing intolerance were the flavour of the year.
However, the narrative slipped thanks to some stupid students at JNU, who in early 2016 ended up making “nationalism” the dominant narrative by toeing the Kashmiri separatist line. It is not that the narrative pushers did not try the “guilt trip” strategy even though the narrative had unwittingly shifted. They tried to highlight incidents like pellet gun injuries and an “innocent” Kashmiri tied to an Army Jeep, but thanks to Islamist elements in Kashmir, who are more honest about their intentions than these narrative pushers, this guilt tripping did not really work, for the average Hindu knew that the Islamist stone pelters were anything but “innocent”.
However, when you push a narrative that a 16 years old young Muslim man was killed over beef rumours, that indeed is death of an innocent person. There are reports that the fight was never about beef, but over seat sharing in a train that later involved throwing religious slurs at the victim, but these details become secondary, and you are branded “demented” when you try to get into these details. (update: even the court observed that the young man was not killed for communal reasons).
Scientist and columnist Anand Ranganathan has been facing a deluge of abuse of late just because he cited some data that doesn’t support this narrative that ‘lynch mobs targeting Muslims have suddenly grown up alarmingly‘’. His twitter thread can be read here.
But this was expected. When data did not back the claim of “Church attacks”, a senior journalist had famously claimed that mahaul (mood, or narrative) was more important than data.
There is also attempt to back this narrative with data after people like Anand showed them the mirror. An article by an organisation called IndiaSpend does a “content analysis” in “English language media” to conclude that beef related violence increased alarmingly after Narendra Modi came to power.
Can’t you see the dishonesty here? The English language media controls the content and they decide what narrative to push. They happily ignored such incidents before Modi came to power (you can find plenty of them in regional language media), but started hyping and even manufacturing such incidents recently. What else are you supposed to get after analysing a content that is influenced by an agenda?
This is so awesome. First you build a fake narrative, and then you use that fake narrative as “raw data” to prove “scientifically” that your narrative is backed by data! The thievery is marvellous!
All these just indicate, quite loudly, that the attempt to send Hindus on a guilt trip has started again. Various “citizen protests” have been called to protest against lynch mobs today. The same people, who gave “political context” when lynch mobs were butchering RSS workers in Kerala and elsewhere, have now got their conscience back. They are sure that no one will call them out. After all, who can afford to not protest against lynch mobs? This is the power you enjoy when you control the narrative.
But one can not remain silent for the fear of being branded bigots and violent. This narrative has to be countered, else a partisan political propaganda will achieve its end objective. This article is one small counter.
And obviously, the Congress is happy. The party is telling the narrative pushers – keep up the good work, but not in my name, dress it up under the garb of activism and neutrality.
(the article was originally published on my blog in December 2015; this is a slightly modified copy)
