Perils of flag waving
The Kasganj riots mark a new form of communal aggression
Manini Chatterjee Feb 05, 2018 00:00 IST
At first glance, it might seem a little far-fetched to draw links between a Supreme Court ruling delivered 14 years ago and a communal riot that took place in a small town of Uttar Pradesh late last month.
Communal clashes, after all, are not new to UP. Like "accident-prone" stretches on a tortuous highway, India's most populous state is dotted with "riot-prone" towns - Agra and Aligarh, Moradabad and Muzaffarnagar, Gorakhpur and Bareilly - which have routinely hit the headlines over the last many decades.
Even so, what happened in the little town of Kasganj on January 26 marks a chilling new phenomenon. Communal tensions usually arise when members of the Hindu and Muslim communities clash over religious symbols or festivities. When routes of two rival religious processions collide, it provides a field day to "vested interests" to instigate a riot. A love affair between youngsters of the two communities or an elopement has also been used as the pretext to set whole
mohallas on fire.
Neither religion nor love was a trigger at Kasganj. Compared to other riots, the casualties were minimal and the violence, too, was contained within a couple of days. Yet, the Kasganj riot was ominous because it sullied India's greatest secular festival - Republic Day; and it reflected an ideologically driven assault that is gathering strength.
According to eyewitness accounts reported in several newspapers, residents of Badu Nagar - a Muslim-dominated locality of Kasganj - had gathered at a spot called Veer Abdul Hamid Chowk and arranged chairs on the road in preparation of hoisting the national flag and celebrating Republic Day.
At this point, a large number of young men on motorcycles arrived, waving both the tricolour and saffron flags. The young men were taking out an unauthorized "Tiranga Yatra" to mark Republic Day and wanted to pass through the congested bylanes of the Muslim locality. They demanded that the chairs at the square be removed to allow their bikes to pass. The Muslims refused and asked them to join their flag hoisting programme instead. The Hindu youth then began shouting provocative slogans that are staple among groups owing allegiance to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideology - slogans such as
Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan, Hindustan mein rehna hoga toh Vande Mataram kehna hoga, and unprintable ones asking the local Muslims to go to Pakistan.
Youths from both sides started arguing and jostling one another. The police then arrived and separated the two groups. But the "Tiranga Yatra" participants regrouped and went to another Muslim-dominated area in the town where the residents feared an attack. According to the Kasganj additional superintendent of police, Pavitra Mohan Tripathi, "this triggered the shooting incident" in which 22-year-old Chandan Gupta was killed and another young man name Naushad received bullet injuries.
While Opposition parties have attacked the Yogi Adityanath government for its failure on the law and order front and even the UP governor, Ram Naik, described the Kasganj violence as "a blot" on the state, no one is willing to raise the central issue at stake: the growing and rampant misuse of the national flag, especially by individuals and groups championing the idea of converting India's secular republic into a Hindu
rashtra.
This was all too visible at Kasganj on Republic Day. A central tenet of
Hindutva ideology, explicit in the writings of its premier ideologue, M.S. Golwalkar, among others, is that the minorities are intrinsically anti-national and unpatriotic; that Hindus alone can be real patriots.
In Kasganj, they went one step further. Instead of rejoicing at the sight of their fellow residents celebrating Republic Day at a square named after Abdul Hamid - the army soldier who fought valiantly during the India-Pakistan war in 1965 and was conferred the Param Vir Chakra posthumously - the reaction of the motorcycle-borne men belonging to sundry rightwing formations seemed to have been: "How dare they?"
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In the
Hindutva world view, no Indian Muslim can be - or should be allowed to be - patriotic. The raising of anti-Pakistan slogans in Muslim neighbourhoods is aimed at reinforcing this message. And it is a message shared by members of the ruling regimes in both Lucknow and New Delhi. The Union minister, Niranjan Jyoti, for instance, told reporters in Agra that "the violence at Kasganj is proof that the anti-national forces are gearing up to oppose the Tricolour". And the Bharatiya Janata Party member of parliament, Vinay Katiyar, echoed her in Lucknow, saying, "Some Pakistan supporters didn't like the Tiranga Yatra. They respect the Pakistani flag."
That Kasganj is not an isolated incident became clear from the post on Facebook by the district magistrate of Bareilly, R.V. Singh, which he was forced to delete. The now-deleted post read: "
Ajab riwaz ban gaya hai. Muslim mohallo mein julus le jao aur Pakistan murdabad ke nare lagao. Kyun bhai who Pakistani hain kya?" (There is a strange new trend. Take out rallies in Muslims areas and raise slogans against Pakistan. Why, brother, are they Pakistanis?)
The truth, though, is the baiting of Indian Muslims as quasi-Pakistanis is not new. The RSS and its myriad affiliates have been doing that for decades. What is new is trading the saffron flag for the tricolour as the weapon of
Hindutva assertion. The RSS has always dreamt of adopting the saffron flag as the symbol of the Hindu rashtra some day and had little time for the tricolour. But after the ascendance of the BJP to State power, the national tricolour has been adopted with gusto - at least for the time being.
Over the last few years, the size of the tricolour is getting bigger and bigger; it is sprouting up everywhere, fuelling a frenzied hypernationalism that seeks to obliterate the differences and diversity that are the essence of India, stifle the questioning and the criticism that citizens of a democratic republic are entitled to express.
Apart from the rise of the BJP, one other factor that has facilitated this fervent flag waving is the Supreme Court order delivered on January 23, 2004 (Union of India
versus Naveen Jindal) that ruled all citizens had the fundamental right to fly the national flag.
The lengthy verdict by then Chief Justice, V.N. Khare, carefully weighed the arguments for and against lifting the restrictions imposed till then on flying the national flag. Under the strict flag code, the tricolour could not be indiscriminately flown by all and sundry and was restricted to official buildings and solemn occasions. The verdict noted that international practice was very mixed: while Canada, Australia, Brazil and Malaysia allowed free use of the national flag to individuals, several other countries including the United Kingdom, Japan, Italy, Germany, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Egypt and so on did not.
The judgment noted that one school feared that unrestricted use could lead to dishonouring the flag and "may result in commercial exploitation of the Flag". The second school contended that "since all Indians fought for freedom, it can never be the intention to deny them use of their National Flag - a symbol of their freedom in entirety".
After setting out both viewpoints, the apex court went with the latter opinion. Pointing out that the "National Anthem, National Flag and National Song are secular symbols of the nationhood," it said that even though not explicitly stated in the Constitution, flying of the national flag "may be held to be a part of the fundamental right".
It is perhaps time to revisit that decision. This Republic Day, "Tiranga Yatras" were organized by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Hindu Yuva Vahini and other like-minded groups across UP. For some years past, the "
kanwariya" pilgrimage undertaken by young men in north India to collect Ganga water in the month of Shravan is festooned with huge tricolours. It is common to see macho men on motorcycles holding aloft the national flag while shouting provocative slogans.
Even when it does not lead to the Kasganj kind of violence, the "
tiranga" is increasingly becoming a symbol of aggression and exclusion, fear and intimidation and not a secular emblem of unity and brotherhood.
In a country still riddled with so much poverty, inequality and injustice, there are many ways to build the nation; many ways to be patriotic. Flag waving is perhaps the least of them - and threatens to become the most pernicious too.
