The journalists who happen to be Muslim

About seven Indian journalists were on April 3 beaten up by mobs and participants at a gathering of Hindu extremists in Delhi's Burari ground. The congregation organised by repeat offenders, foot-soldiers of the unfolding Hindu Rashtra, were yet again advocating genocidal acts against Indian Muslims. Many of the journalists who were beaten up and insulted, according to their own accounts, happened to be Muslims and have gone on the record to say that communal slurs were used against them.

Covering the unfolding phenomena of the Hindu right is now fraught with more risks than in the early days of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coming to power. During the Atal Bihari Vajpayee years of the coalition governments between 1998-2004, there was a difference between covering the party, the government and certain wings of the larger Sangh Parivar, but the pitch was never taken so high as to start thrashing journalists because they were not Hindus.

In the introduction to my book published in 2018, titled Shades of Saffron: From Vajpayee to Modi, I have written the following lines: Let me straight up address a question that I've been asked very often—how do you, as a Muslim, cover the BJP? Perhaps my identity has been in the back of the mind of some BJP leaders, but honestly, I have never perceived it as a problem. And given the access I have got over the years, my "Muslim" identity is therefore not an issue in my mind as far as political coverage goes.

I wrote those lines because I had indeed interviewed a sitting prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and frequently met and interviewed the hardliner of that era, L K Advani, plus the entire pantheon of leaders of the period. I met and spoke to Narendra Modi when he was in charge of the organisation in the BJP. It was after the baptism with the fire of the 2002 Gujarat riots that followed his move to the state that Modi actually began the trend of closing doors on the media except for selected loyalists - a trend that continues to date. I had even managed an interview once with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS chief K S Sudarshan, who was the sarsanghchalak from 2000 to 2009 and made frequent visits to Jhandewalan, where the RSS office in Delhi is located.

I had, through my two decades of covering the BJP and the Sangh Parivar, possibly imagined that there was a threshold beyond which the hate would not go. I was wrong. In 2014, I even imagined briefly that since a simple majority BJP regime had arrived, they would not stir the pot any further. I was wrong again. Now in 2022, as I write this column, I salute my young colleagues who are putting themselves out there to chronicle the age as the media must do, regardless of their being Hindu or Muslim.

I now know that things are bad and can go worse. My illusions are all gone.

The new normal is not just polarising on a temple issue or historical grievance but actually seeking the economic exclusion of Muslims, advocating their genocide and seeking to crush their way of life utterly. The new feature since 2021 has been the so-called mahapanchayats, where murderous calls seeking the annihilation of Muslims are made, and that's a step up from the random incidents of lynching, which was a step up from the temple agitation.

It's dangerous brinkmanship that the establishment in the BJP dominant age is allowing, with police and government looking the other way and courts easily giving bail to the guilty. We are moving from thoughts to words, and that usually results in action. We are living through an age of implicit and explicit violence against minorities: a no holds barred rhetoric against aspects of their dress such as hijab, their food such as halal meat, cultural motifs and indeed their very existence.

It's an obsession, and some subliminal notions are coming to the fore. Recently, the one-time feminist activist Madhu Kishwar, now metamorphosed into a Hindutva "intellectual", became the butt of some jokes when she tweeted the following:

"It's not Love Jehad. It's Sex Jehad. Sadly, too many Hindu, Christian, and Sikh girls fall for the sexual prowess of these trained stud bulls and mistake it for love. Wish government would issue a White Paper on this subject…"

Because there was a time when journalists with Muslim names could access the heart of the Sangh and even the VHP, let me reveal that Ms Kishwar was echoing some pretty old Bajrang Dal/ Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) propaganda. In the years when the contingent of BJP reporters attended VHP press conferences, I also met the late VHP leader Giriraj Kishore. The BJP's one-time star sanyasi, Uma Bharati, had taken it upon herself to introduce me to the VHP leader, and Giriraj Kishore sat back and looked at the name on my card and said that I must be told something important.

He went on to say that Muslim men were seducing Hindu maidens because they were circumcised and could give greater pleasure in seduction. As I did not know whether to laugh or cry, he turned to me with a kind expression and recommended that I use gau mutra (cow urine) soap and eat cow urine churan to get rid of visible pimples. He then gifted me the items. I would, in turn, gift those items to a former editor who is now a BJP member.

It was a laughing matter at the time and an episode I shall never forget. But today, excursions into the world of what now constitutes the hardline could be fraught with risk and no joke at all.

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.