This month saw the major transition in the central Government. For the first time in Independent India, the Government of BJP, which is the progeny of RSS, got a simple majority in the Lok Sabha. Modi sarkar, while overtly played the development rhetoric, also subtly kept polarizing the electorate along religious and caste lines. With this Government coming to power, the Hindutva elements have become more aggressive, and many other are gripped by a sort of fear. This aggression of Hindutva groups got manifested in the violence in the victory rallies of BJP, the violence seen in Karnataka and Ahmadabad. The morphed pictures of Shivaji and Bal Thackeray by some mischievous elements led to the mob violence by Hindu Rashtra Sena. In this violence; the public lynching of Mohsin Sheikh, a techie shook many in the society. In Goa already a person was interrogated for a face book post critical of Modi. In Kerala a college student and his associates were booked for putting Modi’s picture along with Hitler and Osama bin Laden. In all these violations of the freedom of expression, and the brutal Hate Crime by Hindu Rashtra Sena, the silence of the Prime Minister speaks volumes about the shape of things to come.
Even before elections the ‘Book Police’ of RSS, in the form of Dinanath Batra succeeded in getting pulped the scholarly work of Wendy Doniger by Penguin. Now Orient Blackswan on its own has decided to withdraw the book by Megha Kumar’s book Communalism and Sexual Violence: Ahmadabad Since 1969, and the History classic, ‘From Plassey to Partition: History of India’ by Sekhar Bandopadhyay. It is time that such repressive atmosphere created by the electoral victory of BJP is combated against by all social movements and elements committed to plural, democratic, Liberal India. Ram Puniyani All India Secular Forum -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "humanrights movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/humanrights-movement. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
