Abbu and Ammi

In early April in 2023, in Deharadun, India, a father lodged a complaint with the district magistrate of the city.  The complaint intended to seek a ban on a second-grade school book Gulmohar 2.  The complainant’s seven-year-old son, interested in reading books, had picked the Urdu words Abbu and Ammi from Gulmohar 2, and had used them at home.  The book had explained that the words Abbu and Ammi were used for father and mother.  The complainant emphasized that it was a deliberate and severe attack on their religious beliefs and customs, and hence such books should be banned.  The complainant was a Hindu parent.  Ten years ago, use of Abbu and Ammi by a child in a Hindu household might have evoked just a surprised curiosity, followed by a gentle conversation with the child.  But not anymore; this is New India, where Hindu sentiments are at the same time paramount and fragile, they can get hurt at the drop of a hat, and must be violently protected, whether in words or deeds.

Zooming out of this microcosm in Dehradun to the national level, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) that prescribes syllabi in Indian school books decided to remove the chapters on Mughal history from school history books.  Erasure of Muslim identity from all aspects of Indian life is being carried out at an accelerated and aggressive pace.  This is right out from fascist playbook.  Distortion and falsification of the past, and a permanent present, is an injection of amnesia that is being administered in the society, to make them forget everything, and raise a generation of ignoramuses.  Anybody familiar with fascist history in the world can immediately draw the parallels.  This is a precursor to genocide.

In another narrative, Gandhi, the father of nation, is under brutal, vicious and most unceremonious attack from Modi’s gang of fascists and thugs.  These include people from all sections of society, from academia, to lumpen foot soldiers of this fascist regime.  Gandhi is being portrayed as traitor, whose work for Hindu-Muslim unity was most abhorrent, and who was solely responsible for the partition of India.  The history of the Hindu Mahasabha, and the Muslim League, the two religion-based pre-independence organizations, who propounded the two-nation theory, and were ultimately responsible for partition of India, is completely submerged under the tsunami of lies, falsehoods and propaganda.  These Indian fascists, who originate from the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) are dutifully following the teachings of their fascist master propagandist Goebbels, repeating lies a hundred times to make them sound like truth.  A country mind-numbed by WhatsApp messages and criminally partisan mainstream media is lapping it up with no critical inquiry.

During recent Ramnavmi Hindu festival, mosques and madrasas were burnt and vandalized across India, the epicenters being the states of Bihar, Bengal and Maharashtra.  The ultra right-wing Hindu storm-troopers attacked the Muslim institutions with a daring impunity, being well aware that law-enforcement will not take its due course.  The pressures of electoral politics, and communalization of the Indian state machinery is so complete that there is no one to contain these rabid saffron dogs.  It’s a complete breakdown of law and order.  Modi chooses to remain silent in such incidents, by which he signals his tacit approval to his swathe of supporters.  They well understand the meaning of his silence.

The Abbu and Ammi incident of Dehradun cannot be seen in isolation, and represents deeper ramifications of the pan-India Muslims-hate project.  The different scales of anti-Muslim incidents are connected and reinforce each other, rapidly eroding the secular ethos of the country.  This is the India, which Modi has created – an insecure, communal, bigoted, reactionary and obscurantist India.