This is a total and absolute denial of the universal view of Mahatma Gandhi’s “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed.I can understand the Centre fearing that public respect for the military, especially in states labouring under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, might suffer if the National Human Rights Commission investigates human rights abuse allegations against the Army.The Ravin Sisodia case is too tragic for discussion in a newspaper column, yet some of its implications reflect on the body politic and the nature of the Indian State. If you seek evidence of the September 29 strikes, you are casting aspersions on our brave jawans. The egregious Donald Trump has threatened two abominations if American voters send him to the White House. No one thinks of these waves of rulers as foreign. The glibness with which anyone who questions any official decision involving Muslims or Pakistan is ordered to go and live in Pakistan implies the affirmation of a single-identity majoritarian state.
The incident at the Central University of Haryana in Mahendragarh when Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activists objected to a discussion of the Army’s human rights record after a dramatised version of one of Mahasweta Devi’s short stories had been staged illustrated that patriotism is seen as the monopoly of a single dominant ideology. It pre-empted the proceedings pending against the 18 accused. Loyalty has become a sectarian attribute. Anyone found responsible must be punished. He will impose a blanket ban on Muslim immigration and not only build a wall along the 3,201-km US-Mexico border but make Mexicans pay for it.It’s unfortunate having to argue a public principle where private grief is involved. By paying his respects to Sisodia, the culture minister called him a martyr. If you say Pakistani actors are not terrorists, you are a Pakistani stooge. But this is colonial logic. Several recent incidents warn us that India is moving away from the grand universalism of its past into a ghetto of the mind. The unfortunate Sisodia was one of 18 persons accused of the crime.V.