The enemy within

While the unrest stoked by JNU Student Union president Kanhaiyas incarceration on sedition
charges is yet to die down, two more public figures, Nivedita Menon and Gauhar Raza, have now
been tarred with the anti-nationalist brush. The right wing is hauling Prof Menon over the coals
following the airing of selective quotes from one of her lectures. Raza is in the cross-hairs for
participating in an Indo-Pak mushaira. In both cases a TV channel, indicted for featuring
doctored clips to fix Kanhaiya, led the field in raising mass frenzy against the two. The channels
high-pitched call was quickly lapped up by the right wing social media contingent.
The RSS annual stock taking session has now revealed the primary reason for the serial framing
of secularists. Under the guise of demanding strict action in universities against anti-national
forces and slogans calling for destruction of the nation, it wishes to close down the primary
channel of creative and reasoned opposition against its saffron agenda. The RSS has laid down
its agenda in plain view: A team committed to the Bharatiya philosophy is at the centre of
decision making and it should not lose time in its time-bound implementation. But Raza and
Hashmi have not been singled out randomly. Razas wife has been part of the campaign to hold
Narendra Modi accountable for the Gujarat riots. Prof Menon is also cut from the same
ideological cloth.
The targeting of dissenters and secularists also serves the cause of real politics after Western
pressure forced Narendra Modi to engage with Pakistan. This has necessitated the replacement of
the external enemy with an internal substitute. Sardar Patel, one of Narendra Modis most
favoured icons, had once forced the RSS to fly the national flag in return for lifting the ban
imposed on it after Mahatma Gandhis murder. Patel had counselled RSS supremo Golwalkar:
If anyone thinks of having an alternative to the National Flag, there must be a fight. But that
fight must be open and constitutional. Now that it is on the ruling side and no longer the
underdog, the RSS does not seem to be heeding the Iron Mans advice.