“As I have joined BJP, now the Kerala people will join (like a flow of water) in large numbers to the party i.e BJP”, said E Sridharan the ‘Metroman’ of India, if translated from Malayalam. Even though probably he is the most regarded individual in the history of modern Indian railway, the state of Kerala has never heard such an ideal political blunder so far. In a moment when the linear southern most state of India is stepping into state’s Legislative Assembly elections 2021, let’s have a detailed look onto the history of the party which he preferred to join.

To begin with, he is the man of successful saga of carefully and ingeniously designed project management that realized some of the world’s most difficult stretches of railway projects, like the Konkan Railway; or some other most prestigious projects in India like that of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation – DMRC or Kerala Metro Rail Limited – KMRL. But he has totally failed to assess the political scenario of the tiny state of Kerala which is entirely different in many aspect from the whole India; in terms of Human Development Index – HDI, religious tolerance and coexistence especially between Hindus and Muslims, decentralization of power with a large scale participation of maximum communities living in the state, distribution of government schemes without communalism playing its role to a large extent and so on; so in terms of the political determination of the people in state. The Hindu Caste system or Chaturvarnya instituted by the Persian Aryan White Supremacist hegemony (Brahmanism), if described right, along with religious fundamentalism of any group of any religion, have little roles in Kerala politics until recently, as I have to admit that the Liberal-Hindutva-Aristocratic Christian nexus is on a gigantic do-or-die mission now, to radicalize the people here to maneuver the votes on one hand, and to sustain the enormous wealth that the aforesaid Christian establishments have been holding in the face of growing Enforcement Directorate raids across the country on the other.

Caste in India & Male chauvinism of Hindutva

E Sridharan, once a great technocrat of India having a permanent reputation in the minds of millions here, and now a poor man without much relevance, presented himself as a paramount example of loose talks as well, when he joined Bharatiya Janata Party – BJP, astonishingly for good reason. For the beginners, it is the official Hindu theocratic nationalistic, pro-religious fanaticism party of India, having thousands of paid members online and unpaid masses of Hindu fanatic ‘fascists and male chauvinists’
¹ being nurtured by Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh – RSS, its mother even more chauvinistic in theory and practice, and the mother of all Hindu terrorist outfits across the world ranging from Russia to America and in Australia and the Europe with very good presence in the Scandinavian, if not in Africa. The RSS chief Mohan Bhagavat has created rows multiple times by reinstating the ethos of his organization (and not just loose talks) such as ‘women should not go out and rather should be confined to their homes’ where they will be ‘just housewives or homemakers and their husbands will be the breadwinners’ ^2
3; or his common threat to the whole people of India, as he bragged of the might of RSS as they have gotten thousands (of religious militias) who can be deployed within three days in order to fight the enemies, if the Indian military is not sufficient ⁴
being it is one of the most effective infantry troops in the world!

The former Chief Justice of India Mr. Bobde, a well-known BJP sympathizer, also joined with him by saying that women should not participate in the (democratic) protests ⁵.
And even more supporting the women, and out of his sincere care probably driven out of the ethos of Aarsha Bharat doctrine ‘as interpreted by’ BJP, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the CM of Madhya Pradesh and a senior member of the state BJP committee, asked for ‘working women to be tracked’⁶desperately softening it as it was suggested ‘for their safety’.

Similarly, the Ministry of Culture of the Government of India posted on its official Twitter handle recently, a sincere admiration to and commemoration of MS Golwalker, one of the very fathers of Hindu nationalistic religious fanaticism in India, who not only ‘glorified Adolf Hitler’ but also ‘justified Chaturvarna or the Hindu Caste system’
⁷.It is the most inhuman tradition of a labor-based full-fledged religious discrimination apparatus, which is found explicitly written in Manusmriti, one of the holy books of Hinduism and widely practiced even today among Hindus across the world. He called it “the first, greatest and the wisest lawgiver of mankind”.⁸
“Hindus who adhere to the Caste system believe that cosmic forces have made one caste superior to another. (Actually,) these hierarchies were not really created by gods, instead they were invented by humans in Northern India 3000 years ago” (Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind). He believed that Muslims, Christian and the Communists – and in that order – should be considered the ‘enemies of Hindus’, and the maximum they can avail in India – a Hindu Rashtra or a Hindu theocratic state as per his doctrine, similar to that of Taliban in Afghanistan or ISIS in Iraq and Syria – is a second-class citizenship without enjoying any constitutional right.

“To Brahmana he (means god) assigned teaching and studying (the Vedas), sacrificing for their own benefit and for others, giving and accepting (of alms). The Kshatriya he commanded to protect the people, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study (the Vedas), and to abstain from attaching himself to sensual pleasures. The Vaisya to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study (the Vedas), to trade, to lend money, and to cultivate land. One occupation only the lord prescribed to the Sudra, is to serve meekly these three castes” (The Laws of Manu, translated by G. Buhler, pp 3).

It shall be necessarily noted that many practicing Hindus, even though not invalidating the religious authenticity of this concept, never observe this tradition in their life and rather maintain an equal relationship with their fellow human beings, irrespective of their religion or cast to a great extent. The irony is that the so-called great technocrat E Sridharan chose to stay not along with these Hindus, but with the practitioners and imposers of Caste, which is enrooted within ‘the total fabric of Indian society’, as observed by the character of Dr. BR Ambedkar in the historical film ‘Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’.

Assassination of MK Gandhi

It will be a matter of tragic comedy is that the so-called Hindu nationalist RSS (and not ‘Indian constitutionalist’ nationalist) itself inspired the assassin of the Father of Nation, Mahatma Gandhi. When he was assassinated in January 1948 by Nathuram Godse, there was widespread apprehension that the RSS was involved. MS Golwalkar and 20,000 Swayamsevaks were arrested on 4th February, and the RSS was banned for promoting “violence” and “subversion”. Godse said that he acted on his own initiative, and no official connection between the RSS and Gandhi’s assassination has ever been made. However, Nathuram Godse’s brother Gopal Godse – also accused in the assassination plot – said that Nathuram never left the RSS and his statement was only designed to protect the RSS and Mr. Golwalkar (who were “in deep trouble” after the assassination).⁹
ONV Kurupp, a great Malayalam poet and critique wrote in 1991 about ‘Guruji’ Golwalker, as he is popularized by the RSS, that he was so critical about Gandhi ji in his speech delivered at an RSS organized (militant) camp at Thycaud, Trivandrum, and when he was asked some questions by college students including Mr. Kurupp who had gone there to know his opinions, they were beaten up with sticks by the predominantly Tamil Brahmin based RSS militants present there, off course at the orders of MS Golwalker. The most shocking was that the RSS militias were jubilant and even distributing sweets as he was walking along with his friends in distress and grief on 30th January 1948 at hearing the news of Gandhi assassination, which was just two weeks later from the speech.¹⁰

In a letter dated 27 February 1948, replying to Mr. Nehru the then Indian Prime Minister, Sardar Vallabhai Patel the Home Minister in his government, along with carefully describing the developments of the interrogation into the assassination of Bappu as was the sobriquet of Gandhi ji, mentioned that “from their statements it is quite clear that no part of the conspiracy took place in Delhi…it was clearly emerging from these statements that the RSS was not involved in it at all. It was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha directly under Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (or VD Savarkar) that hatched the conspiracy and saw it through”.
¹¹

Not only the political party that Mr. Sridharan joined stands as a political mask of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha along with other innumerous Hindu theocratic nationalistic, fanatic and militant organizations across the world, but also have been effectively tarnishing the image of Gandhi itself and vilifying other members of the Gandhi lineage persistently, thereby trying to destroy an internationally established legacy of a massive political leadership that Gandhi ji had provided to the Indian freedom struggle. It is a matter of no surprise that the BJP itself installed in the very Parliament House of India the portrait of the aforesaid VD Savarkar, who is known for begging the pardon of the British Empire multiple times in written form, and further offered them a deal of demotivating his friends in the RSS from participating in the Indian freedom struggle, and a loyal citizenship to the queen from his part.¹²

The serial pogroms & systemic rapes with impunity

The horror of the decision of Mr. Sridharan exceeds when we come to know more about the BJP and RSS, both in the past and present.

So, the Rath Yatra of LK Advani, a super senior leader of modern BJP always, former Deputy Prime Minister of India and the maestro of misinformation propaganda of Hindutva i.e Hindu fanaticism of 90’s, lead to the spectacular demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992. Even though he and other accused fanatics were acquitted by the Special Court on contrary to the ruling of the Supreme Court of India itself,¹³
it is his firebrand speeches and historical narratives like “all Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims” that principally laid the foundation stone for the modern Hindu nationalism, now established worldwide and controlled or guided from India, not only destabilizing the very Muslim identity in India but also aggravating all types of Hindu nationalist, revisionist and thus terrorist aspirations. The era next to him saw a steep, steady and systematic rise of the disinformation apparatus by Hindutva, facilitated by the ‘free internet’ spreading mechanism of Facebook and WhatsApp as observed by the Wall Street Journal, in the consecutive decades.¹⁴
The super horrible Nellie massacre in Assam broke out of a violence engulfed the state in those three months in the year of 1979 actually grew out of the Assam Movement agitation. Launched by the All Assam Students Union in the year, it facilitated a fast track mass murder of a whopping number of 1800 people, predominantly Muslims, within just three hours, being executed by the extremist offshoots of the agitation implementing it using violence, against the “illegal Bangladeshi immigrants” who had migrated to the state in waves, settling on land that was in short supply and entering electoral rolls.¹⁵
This ‘illegal Bangladeshi migration’ had started well during the British Raj when there was no the idea of a republic of India itself. Whether all of the people who were killed were of Bangladeshi origin for real or not, it is an identical BJP narrative that was strategically used to infiltrate this massacre, endorsing regionalistic, ethnic and religious fanaticism among the non-Minority tribal communities of Assam among the North East part of India.

The Gujarat pogrom 2002, the first full-fledged pogrom of India, that erupted after a skirmish between some Hindu fanatics and Muslim tea vendors in the Godra railway station and a shortly followed – highly disputed- burning of two compartments of a train which killed 58 Karsevaks (cadres of Hindu fanatic campaign by none other than BJP to construct Ram Janmabhumi temple on the Babri Masjid location); was a brainchild of the then BJP Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi and his Home Minister Amit Shah, amounting to a situation where Hindu mobs ravaged for three days torching Muslim homes and businesses, killing Muslim men, women and children indiscriminately including Ehsan Jeffri a Member of Parliament of India formerly,¹⁶ and erasing mosques and graves.

The rape was used as an effective weapon,¹⁷ where hundreds of women were systematically gangraped,¹⁸
if not killed consecutively by fire or other savage methods; many a time being left over the rape location partly or fully naked, or managed to reach otherwise the state run poorly taken care of rehabilitation camps or the camps run by welfare organizations notably like that of Teesta Setalwad of CJP. The Gujarat unit of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a leading Hindu nationalist organization, held the position that the riot was “the first positive response of the Hindus to Muslim fundamentalism in 1,000 years”! Instead of isolating those Muslim criminals who attacked the train and punishing them legally, as any law-bound and civilized government would do, the state government allowed revenge killings. Interestingly, in addition to the 2000 lives lost over the next few weeks, over 1,00,000 Muslims were pushed into the state’s ramshackle refugee camps, where basic amenities were minimal and living conditions abysmal. “What is unquestionable is that the state (that is the BJP government of Gujarat) condoned revenge killings.” ¹⁹
If I am going to describe all the pogroms and the riots caused directly or significantly but indirectly by the BJP all over India through decades, this essay will be a book of multiple volumes. The Hashimpura extrajudicial mass shooting of 42 Muslims in cold blood by the Public Armed Constabulary (PAC) of the Uthar Pradesh Police in 1987,²⁰ the Bhagalpur pogrom of Bihar in 1989 which erupted in the wake of the Ramjanmabhumi movement – off course a cherished plan of BJP and magnified by LK Advani – and killed 800 people ²¹or the Kandhamal anti-Christian pogrom of Odisha in 2008,²² where a nun was gangraped by 30 men or when the terrorists told a victim, as recorded by his brother, what they told every Christian they attacked: give up Christianity and say you are a Hindu; the mother organization BJP and the main Hindu terrorist umbrella Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was apparent or at least categorically instrumental behind the curtain.

The chilling account of the unparalleled heights related to the rape and murder of a Dalit girl by men of Thakur,²³
a so-called higher caste in Hathras of Uthar Prades, and the absolute complicity of the BJP Government led by Yogi Adithyanad the ‘militant monk’
²⁴
and the meticulous actions of his police and the Indian national law and enforcement agencies guided by the BJP to cover up the crime including facilitating the coercion of her family if not journalists;
²⁵the even more horrific account of the four day long sedation and gangrape very much inside a temple followed by murder of a 7 year old Muslim girl, by eight Hindu men including a juvenile
²⁶
who travelled all the way from Lucknow to Kashmir just to rape the girl in Kathua of Kashmir, where it had been not only strategically planned by the revenue officials and police personals listed among the criminals in order to oust the nomadic Bakkarwal community from their area just for their Muslim orientation, but also effectively supported by two ministers of BJP as they rallied in support of the accused,²⁷ utilizing the communal color of the horrible development; the rape of another Dalit girl, by Kuldeep Sengar, a BJP legislator,²⁸and the murder of her father and kith and kin, in Unnao of Uthar Pradesh;²⁹ or the 50-year old woman who was raped and murdered by a temple priest himself at Badaun in UP itself where Chadramukhi Devi, member of the National Commission for Women, had opined that had the woman not gone out alone this would not have happened!;³⁰
all add up to the horror of the Hindu nationalist politics of BJP.

Now, what we can’t list out yet is only a legitimate reason by which Mr. Sridharan is completely innocent in choosing BJP as his party to join with his once a paramount figure, especially as he was away from politics and he is joining afresh. Can a Muslim form a political party for Muslim fanatics and then kill Hindus, and then can he ever contest in elections is the question of the hour, even though they never work for it in their own country, for they never need to do so. This discrimination applied to Christians as well. In a country where Muslims live, as pointed out firmly and reiterated by our Vice President and one of the most seasoned politicians alive in the country, Mr. Hamid Ansari, the great grandson of Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, the physician of Gandhi Ji; in a permanent feeling of insecurity,³¹
for which the Hindu fanatic organization named BJP masquerading as a political party has been categorically responsible, Mr. Sridharan stands out as a sympathizer of a historical tradition of religious terrorism.

(Will be continued in part 2)

1. 1.m.economictimes.com, 7th Aug. 2008
2. 2.The Hindu, 16th Feb,2020
3. 3.India Today, 6th Jan. 2013
4. 4.The Wire, 12th Feb. 2018
5. 5.Idiva.com, 13th Jan. 2021
6. 6.
   Scoopwhoop, 13th Jan. 2021
7. 7.The Wire, 19th Feb. 2021
8. 8.
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._S._Golwalkar#cite_ref-FOOTNOTEBipan_Chandra,_Communalism2008140_31-0
9. 9.
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._S._Golwalkar#cite_ref-FOOTNOTEBipan_Chandra,_Communalism2008140_31-0
10. 10.https://twitter.com/Advaidism/status/1335104204885479424
11. 11.https://twitter.com/yusufpore/status/1365327346803367940
12. 12. https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article30204154.ece
    
13. 13.
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14. 14. https://scroll.in/latest/974515/babri-demolition-verdict-vindicates-beliefs-says-lk-advani-muslim-leaders-left-criticise-order
15. 15.
    https://scroll.in/article/829682/why-was-assams-nellie-massacre-of-1983-not-prevented-despite-intimations-of-violence
    
16. 16.https://scroll.in/article/829682/why-was-assams-nellie-massacre-of-1983-not-prevented-despite-intimations-of-violence
17. 17.
    https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/one-thing-was-distinctly-rotten-about-2002-gujarat-riots-use-of-rape-as-a-form-of-terror/225511/
18. 18.https://caravanmagazine.in/vantage/rape-2002-gujarat-bilkis-bano
19. 19.2021.https://theprint.in/opinion/gujarat-2002-was-independent-indias-first-full-blooded-pogrom-delhi-1984-was-a-semi-pogrom/371684
20. 20.https://www.firstpost.com/long-reads/hashimpura-massacre-a-short-oral-history-told-by-survivors-3489933.html
    
21. 21.https://www.jstor.org/stable/4395922?seq=1
22. 22. 2021.https://scroll.in/article/891587/they-dont-feel-sorry-revisiting-kandhamal-10-years-after-the-violence-against-christians
23. 23.https://scroll.in/article/891587/they-dont-feel-sorry-revisiting-kandhamal-10-years-after-the-violence-against-christians
24. 24.https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/india-news-hathras-case-all-4-accused-charged-for-gang-rape-murder/367624
25. 25.https://scroll.in/latest/986673/hathras-case-ed-files-money-laundering-chargesheet-against-journalist-siddique-kappan-four-others
    
26. 26.https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/kathua-rape-murder-case-verdict-1546315-2019-06-11
27. 27.
    https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/kathua-rape-two-bjp-cabinet-ministers-quit/articleshow/63752377.cms
    
28. 28.https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/custody-death-accident-and-more-all-about-unnao-rape-case/story-ZT4rV9UFYWhn3j1hb6M8qM.html
29. 29.https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/city/lucknow/kuldeep-singh-sengar-convicted-for-death-of-victims-father-in-unnao-rape-case/videoshow/74473393.cms
30. 30.https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/national/main-accused-in-badaun-gangrape-murder-case-held
31. 31.https://thewire.in/communalism/watch-karan-thapar-hamid-ansari-hyper-nationalism-muslims

Abdulhadi Farooqi