https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIGO%2F2018%2F06%2F27&entity=Ar01000&sk=BB3833A7&mode=text
Marcus Tullius Cicero died over 2000 years ago, but his penetrating insights survive immortal. This great politician, orator and philosopher of Rome most pithily summarized the utilitarian standpoint that root causes of historical events are reliably traced to the actions of those who stand to gain from them. This is ‘cui bono’ or “to whom it is a benefit”, which has become a basic conceptual component of systemic analysis. In today’s hyper-saturated media age, with its staggering blink-speed mass manipulation of emotions, that basic question is of constant paramount importance. Who benefits? Albeit deceptively simple, this line of enquiry is a highly useful means to assess the havoc and turmoil taking place in several countries at the moment. In the USA, the Trump administration imposed (then withdrew) a traumatic family separation strategy for illegal migrants and asylum-seekers that forcibly parted thousands of children from their parents and guardians, to place them in different facilities, sometimes across the country. Additionally, the president tweeted, “We cannot allow all these people to invade our country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.” Millions of Americans reacted with revulsion and incredulity to see Donald Trump questioning due process, the unassailable building block of all modern jurisprudence. But the more important question isn’t what nonsense the president spewed in the moment. It is why he did it. What was the gain? The short answer is what the rastafarians of Jamaica colourfully call “politricks.” The president of the USA is playing directly to his racist popular base, to seize advantage before the critical midterm elections later this year. The truth is he has not built a wall, and Mexico has not paid for it. But one thing Trump can do is victimize the powerless, and thunder abusively about made-up threats. Most likely this will be enough to get him the votes he needs. The politics of intolerance and atrocity work like magic. Adolf Hitler’s trusted lieutenant Hermann Goering described it breathtakingly succinctly, “it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” In the 21stcentury, Goering’s successors find it most convenient and effective to demonize dissent and difference, and so conjure up bogeymen from within. Thus the recent shocking statement by the new interior minister of Italy that, “we need a mass cleansing, street by street, piazza by piazza, neighborhood by neighborhood” to get rid of the Roma (popularly known as gypsies) who have functioned again and again as convenient scapegoats in Europe for centuries. Not content with expelling the undocumented, Matteo Salvini complained “as for the Italian Roma, unfortunately you have to keep them at home.” Unprincipled? Certainly. Unscripted? Definitely not. Italy has 60 million citizens, of which the Roma are barely 130,000. The extremist manoeuvre had the impeccable logic of the Nazis behind it. India has its own consequential election looming, with the Lok Sabha up for grabs following five momentuous years of Narendra Modi in supreme control. Here too, lofty promises of the campaign trail will stand exposed to scrutiny. This is the context to understand the perceptible nationwide rise in Islamophobic rhetoric, with special emphasis on the beleaguered, unfortunate citizens of India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir. Just this weekend, BJP president Amit Shah made a series of bellicose veiled threats at a rally in Jammu, including about revoking the state’s special status. These were obviously meant for mass consumption in the rest of the country, as is much talk about “iron hand” and “muscular policy”, which inevitably translates directly to incalculable strife and hardship accompanied by considerable bloodletting. Cui Bono. Who will benefit from further armed buildup in what is already the world’s most militarized zone? Who stands to gain from additional senseless violence in a state that has suffered so much already? Whose hearts and minds could possibly be won over by crushing another generation of rebellious youth under armoured vehicles? Hint: it has nothing to do with Kashmir.
