Hate Speech Reaches a New Low in India with Ramesh Bidhuri's Derogatory Language Against a Muslim MP In Parliament
By
New Age Islam Staff Writer
23
September 2023
1. Muslims are routinely abused on TV
and social media.
2. They are showed as an enemy of the
society.
3. Their religious identity is under
threat.
4. They have been pushed to the wall.
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BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri speaks in the Lok Sabha during a special session
of Parliament in New Delhi on Sept. 21 (PTI)
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Samar
Halarnkar's article rightly reflects the agony, anxiety and helplessness of the
Muslim community of India in the backdrop of the abuses hurled against a Muslim
MP, Kunwar Danish Ali by Ramesh Bidhuri, a BJP MP from South Delhi in the new
Parliament building named Samvidhan Bhawan. As the nation celebrated the
shifting of the legislature to the new building, it had hoped that it will
usher into a new era of political thinking. The passing of Women's Reservation
Bill in the new building was a positive sign that India was making strides in
the right direction. But after only a couple of days, an MP made the nation
ashamed and embarrassed by his abusive language in the parliament defying all
the parliamentary norms and ethical values of the Indian society. Only a week
ago, the South Indian leader had made derogatory remarks about Sanatan dharma
which was protested by the followers of Sanatan dharma to which Ramesh Bidhuri
belongs but his remarks reflect his sick mentality and a distorted notion of
religion in his mind. That he used abusive language in the Parliament shows
that he does not also care for the image of India in the international
community.
Kunwar
Danish Ali had not abused Bidhuri or his party but he had simply praised ISRO's
scientists for making India proud in the field of space technology. He had also
praised the contribution of Nehru, Abul Kalam Azad and the present Prime
Minister for jointly and collectively providing support and resources to the scientists.
Still, he was abused and humiliated. Danish Ali has become a symbol of a
community that has continually been oppressed, humiliated and relegated to the
corner.
The
services of the Muslim community and their sacrifices for the freedom of India
and its scientific, economic and technological development has been ignored.
Not only that, efforts are being made to prove them an enemy of the nation.
Recently, a seven-year-old Muslim boy of Muzaffar Nagar was made victim of the
hatred of a lady teacher. A teacher in a school in Delhi reportedly said to the
class that the Muslims had no role in the independence of India. The truth
points to the contrary. The Muslims being in the minority in India, were in the
vanguard of the independence movement. The battle of Shamli in UP was fought by
the ulema. The leader of the 1857 revolt was Bahadur Shah Zafar and the first
journalist sentenced to death for writing against the British was Maulvi
Mohammad Baqar.
As the
first education minister of India, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad built the roadmap
for India's scientific and technological progress. He set up IITs and other
scientific institutions of India Scientist APJ Abdul Kalam is called the
Missile Man of India for developing India's missile system. In the latest moon
mission of India, many young Muslim scientists also contributed considerably.
Despite all
this, a section of media and political leaders continually make verbal assaults
against them and unleash false propaganda against them.
The mainstream
media has routinely spread rumours, misleading news, and provocative content
against Muslims. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the media showed them as
spreading corona.
The
incident in the Parliament is an indication that the Indian society has reached
a new low. More than reflecting the Muslim community's condition in India, the
behaviour of Bidhuri reflects how the majoritarian politics has thrown all the
ethical and moral values of the country to the winds.
For the
last nine years, the Indian media has been promoting a culture of abuse and the
culture of abuse has affected every household. Now this culture has become a
new normal. It was promoted under a planning. Many times, the anchors are seen
apparently speaking vulgar words by mistake. In fact, it’s not a mistake. It is
done deliberately to spread vulgarity in tje society. It is done on TV channels
in Pakistan as well under the same culture of vulgarity. The idea behind this
culture of vulgarity is that once a nation loses its ethical and moral values,
it turns into a community of animals and beasts. This culture of vulgarity was
promoted by Radio Rwanda and the world saw its consequences. That those
speaking vulgar words on the TV are not removed or punished is proof that the
culture of vulgarity is being promoted deliberately.
Kunwar
Danish Ali may not be the only victim in the Parliament or outside. The MPs and
MLAs from the Muslim community will increasingly find it difficult to speak and
live with dignity in this communally charged atmosphere. Mob lynchings have
become a new normal. Bulldozing of their houses by the state has also become a
new normal. So abusing Muslim legislatures may also become a new normal in the
country. Muslims will have to face Monu Manesars, Chetan Singhs and Bidhuris in
new India. Their contributions and sacrifices for this country will be ignored.
Their mosques, Mazars and houses will remain under constant threat. But they
will not be able seek redressal, justice and a dignified life in an
increasingly hostile society. They need to sit and contemplate on where they
went wrong.
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Ramesh Bidhuri And The Descent Of India
By
Samar Halarnkar
22 September
2023
In India’s
Parliament, Ramesh Bidhuri represents South Delhi, one of India’s most
prosperous constituencies, with the income of its people probably higher than
that of some states and countries. That they elected him says something about
them and their innermost feelings, which in these fraught, divisive times that
Bidhuri’s party presides over, are, often, freely, and unashamedly expressed.
The
feelings of Bidhuri and a great many of his constituents centre on the growing
notion that Hindus have first – and possibly the only – claim to this country.
Its minorities, especially Muslim, should live as second-class citizens and at
the sufferance of Hindus, who can say and do what they want to demean, insult,
attack and degrade.
Islamophobic
views and violence have steadily grown in India since Bidhuri’s boss was first
voted to power in 2014, sparking a flood of hate speech and lynchings, but
every time we think the bottom has been reached, someone from the Bharatiya
Janata Party or its allied Hindu-extremist ecosystem conjures a new low.
We have
never in Indian history heard a member of Parliament call another a “pimp”, a
“terrorist”, “Katwa” (circumcised), “Mullah Ugrawadi” and “Mullah
Aatankwadi” (Muslim terrorist) because he is Muslim. The target of
Bidhuri’s abuse was Kunwar Danish Ali of the Bahujan Samaj Party.
Weary and
resigned as Muslims have been to their deteriorating situation, the attack on a
Muslim MP for merely being a Muslim indicated hatred’s long journey – from
WhatsApp to street to television studio to Parliament, two days after its new
building, meant to represent the best of India, was inaugurated. Unless it is
arrested, there is an inevitability, an inescapability to India’s perilous
descent, and there is no sign that Indian society or politics is currently
capable of stopping the fall.
“… the fact
that it happened in a new Parliament building under your leadership is
heartbreaking for me as a minority member of this great nation and an MP,” Ali
wrote to the speaker, Om Birla, whose response was to “warn” Bidhuri of “strict
action” if he repeated such behaviour.
“People
keep saying “nothing even shocks us anymore” and yet there’s something this
country and its leaders do every now and then that comes as a gut punch,”
journalist Fatima Khan said on X, her anguish, like that of many Muslims,
escalating into new despair. “This country is not for Muslim politicians, or
Muslim activists, or Muslim citizens. This country is not for Muslims.”
That Birla
– known for suspending opposition MPs for far less, even switching off their
microphones –lightly admonished Bidhuri reflected not just partisan behaviour
but how Islamophobic abuse and violence have become normalised in Hindu
society.
The easy
acceptability of anti-Muslim feelings at the highest levels of government was
made clear as former BJP union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and former BJP
union health minister Harsh Vardhan spontaneously grinned and guffawed at
Bidhuri’s tirade. Obviously, they did not see anything wrong. To taunt Muslims
is now a national sport.
Bidhuri’s
tone is not unique. Similar language is frequently used by his party
compatriots and allies, with no consequences. The same week, Assam chief
minister Himanta Biswa Sarma suggested that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s house
be “burned down”. The Congress filed a first information report against Sarma
in Assam, but do not expect the police to act with alacrity or at all, in
contrast to the swift manner that they repeatedly have against Muslim activists
who called for peace during protests.
If
attitudes such as Bidhuri’s are to be combatted, the battle must be initiated
by his political opponents. There are those who stand against such virulence,
as indeed did Mahua Moitra, Trinamool MP, who first posted the video of his
rant on social media.
Moitra was
right when she said that “most now see nothing wrong with it”. Accusing the
prime minister of reducing “Indian Muslims to living in such a state of fear in
their own land that they grin & bear everything”, Moitra said, “Sorry but
I’m calling this out, Ma Kali holds my spine.”
Many more
must call out Bidhuri’s invective, in particular the Congress, India’s leading
opposition party, which in recent times has all too often vacillated, waffled
or stayed silent over abuse and violence against minorities.
In
Karnataka, which the Congress now runs, serial Islamophobe Pramod Muthalik –
once banned from entering Goa by a BJP government – feels emboldened enough to
threaten a mosque invasion to install a Ganesh idol there, “if Hindu society
was provoked”. Nothing stops the Congress from filing criminal cases and
arresting people like Muthalik, using some of the laws that BJP governments
routinely deploy against minorities, random political opponents and dissidents.
A day
before Bidhuri screamed at Ali in Parliament, Fernand de Varennes, United
Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, told a US Commission on
International Religious Freedom Hearing, that he and a number of UP special
rapporteurs had expressed “grave and growing concerns regarding the
deteriorating situation in India”.
“We have,
in the last decade, issued numerous communications and press releases…They show
a steady and alarming erosion of fundamental rights, particularly for religious
and other minorities from the review of communications from 2011 to now,” said
Varennes. “By 2022, almost all of them involve grave allegations of denial of
fundamental rights, particularly targeting religious minorities.”
“Let me
repeat: India risks becoming one of the world’s main generators of instability,
atrocities and violence, because of the massive scale and gravity of the
violations and abuses targeting mainly religious and other minorities such as
Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others. It is not just individual or local, it
is systematic and a reflection of religious nationalism.”
Bidhuri’s
attack on Ali shows that the time for strategic political silence against hate
speech is gone. The language of senior BJP leaders and their allies has gone
beyond dog whistles, as Sarma’s call to burn down Sonia Gandhi’s house
indicates. If the Congress continues to largely ignore and not stand against
what Hindu extremists say and do to Muslims and other minorities, there will
not be much of a country left to contest.
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Samar Halarnkar is the editor of Article-14.com,
a website that focusses on issues related to the rule of law and democracy in
India.
Source:
Ramesh
Bidhuri and The Descent of India
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