When the PM announced the Note Ban in November, he promised that the situation would return to normal in 50 days. By December, the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has declared that cashless, digital transactions are the ‘new normal’ for India. The Note Ban began with promises of rewarding the poor and punishing the rich and corrupt. By now it is clear that the real intention was to do the opposite. The Government would like us to accept as ‘normal’ the utter devastation of the cash-based informal economy, small traders and farmers and poor cash-dependent people – and the boom for corporates who benefit from ‘cashless’ digitalization.
In fact, throughout 2016, we can see how the Modi Government and the Sangh Parivar have striven to change the face of democracy as we know it, and establish authoritarianism, bigotry and trampling of hard-won rights as ‘the new normal’ for India.
2016 began with the institutional killing of the Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula by the Hyderabad Central University authorities after he was branded ‘anti-national’ by the ABVP and Modi’s own Ministers. Soon after, the JNU became the target, with students being arrested for ‘sedition.’ There was a distinct pattern at play: the Sangh Parivar and Modi Government were indeed seeking to make it ‘normal’ for students on campuses to be branded ‘anti-national’ and subjected to witch-hunts and violence. As the New Year approaches, another JNU student, Najeeb Ahmed, is missing after being thrashed by ABVP students. From Rohith to Najeeb, it has become ‘normal’ for Sangh-appointed VCs to protect ABVP violence and punish dissenting activists instead of protecting Dalit and Muslim students from persecution and violence.
In 2015 the lynching of Akhlaq by a saffron ‘cow protection’ mob shocked the whole country. In 2016, one of the Dadri accused who died was draped by the Sangh Parivar in the national flag at his funeral. Launching mob attacks on Muslims and Dalits in the name of ‘cow protection’ and even ‘patriotism’ became ‘the new normal.’
Saffron mobs kept bullying people in the name of chanting ‘Vande Mataram’ and the national anthem. By the end of 2016, a Supreme Court order has now put the seal of approval on such bullying by making it a crime for people to remain sitting during the national anthem in cinema halls.
In the Bhopal fake encounter, the police and the BJP’s Madhya Pradesh Government did not even try very hard to disguise the murder as an ‘encounter.’ The cold-blooded killings were carried out in public and in broad daylight, and disseminated through videos. The MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, like Modi when he was Gujarat CM, openly sought public approval for the custodial killings instead of denying it. By making the Bhopal killings a public spectacle, the BJP is out to remove any lingering stigma or shame from the execution of Muslims accused of terrorism.
The BJP is now attacking the hard-won land rights of the adivasis of Jharkhand by seeking to dilute the provisions of the historic CNT and SPT Acts.
Before the Bihar elections the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had called for a review of reservations. Now, again while speaking in Uttar Pradesh on the eve of polls, Modi Minister VK Singh (already notorious for comparing Dalit victims of atrocities to dogs) has called for a debate on reservations. These remarks are not slips of the tongue. RSS and BJP leaders are deliberately testing the waters – hoping to create a ‘new normal’ in which caste-based reservations, like the CNT and SPT Acts of the adivasis or the labour laws of workers, can be diluted.
In 2016, the Modi Government has introduced a new template into the Indian State’s dealings with Kashmir. It has abandoned even the fig leaf of dialogue or political resolution of the Kashmir dispute: and has instead made it ‘normal’ to respond with pellet guns to unarmed protesters and civilian population.
In 2016 Sadhvi Prachi, a VHP leader, declared that “having achieved the mission of making a Congress-free India, it is time to make India, Muslim-free.” Nor is hers a mere ‘fringe’ sentiment. The PM himself, quoting the RSS ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyay, called to Hindus to ‘treat Muslims as your own’ and ‘refine’ them. Reading the context of Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s words makes it clear that he was calling for Muslims to be assimilated into “Indian nationalism which is Hindu nationalism, and Indian culture which is Hindu culture” – failing which they would have to “driven out of India.”
The Note Ban decision is the most ambitious totalitarian project of the Modi Government so far. Trampling over the institutional autonomy of the RBI and mocking and bypassing the Parliament, Modi is seeking to test how far he can impose his own whims on the system, undermine facts and hoodwink people by emotional propaganda alone.
In their project of remapping India as Hindu Rashtra, the BJP and RSS repeatedly use the Brahminical metaphor of ‘purification’ and ‘cleansing’ for their fascist projects. The PM began by touting Note Ban as necessary to ‘cleanse’ the economy of black money; now he is silent on black money and he instead claims that cash itself is dirty and the economy must be rendered ‘cashless’ to cleanse and purify it. The RSS and BJP seek to cleanse the country and campuses of dissent. And of course they seek to cleanse the country of its diversity and plurality.
But if 2016 has been the year of unprecedented assaults, it has also been a year of remarkable resistance. The movement for justice for Rohith Vemula, the Stand With JNU movement, the powerful blow to the Sangh Parivar and to caste oppression by the Dalits of Una and Gujarat, the general strike in Kashmir that lasted several months, the ongoing struggle in Jharkhand to save the CNT and SPT Acts – all these showed that every assault by the fascists was an opportunity for the people to fight back and discover new strengths and solidarities.
2017 will begin with the task of thoroughly exposing the authoritarian, pro-corporate and anti-poor agenda of the Note Ban and channelling the resentment against it into robust resistance. The Note Ban must be exposed as not a mere economic policy of the Government – but an attack on democracy and people’s survival and livelihood. Building on the solidarities forged in the struggles of 2016, let us meet 2017 with a renewed resolve to fight fascism and defend democracy !
