Where Sangh spins narratives of victimhood, belligerence and patriarchy
Prashant Jha
‘Loving Jehad’ is the new technique, says a grave-looking Chandra Mohan Sharma. But it is a ‘difficult art’, picked only after ‘madrasa-conducted training.’
“First, good-looking Muslim men are identified. They are given neutral names like Sonu and Raju.” These boys, Mr. Sharma says, are then given jeans, t-shirts, mobiles, and bikes and taught to behave. “They stand in front of schools and colleges and woo young Hindu girls. The first few times, our girls snub them.” But then, he says resignedly, they fall for it. “This jehad is about pyar se fasana – entrapment through love.”
The bespectacled joint general-secretary of the Meerut division of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), ‘which covers all of western UP’, he points out with a wee bit of pride, is wearing a grey safari-suit. We are sitting in a small office next to the Khatauli railway station, off the main highway, in Muzaffarnagar district late on Tuesday afternoon.
Being the protector
“Look at police records. Out of 100 girls who elope, 95 are Hindus who go with Muslim men. It is rare that Hindu boys get Muslim girls.”
This, the VHP leader says conclusively, is proof of a conspiracy to ‘expand Muslim population, using Hindu girls as machines. ‘We need to protect the honour of our daughters, bahu aur beti.’
Ignore this as meaningless rant at your own peril, for Mr. Sharma was at the “mahapanchayat”on Saturday. The protection of ‘our women’ was the a common theme in many speeches, as video recordings of the event, shown to The Hindu , reveal. There is now recognition that this event added to the agitational mood, added to the insecurity, and eventually led to clashes and violence.
“On August 27, a Muslim boy teased a Hindu girl,” Mr Sharma resumes, “and that is the root of the tensions. Tell me, which brother can accept this?” While this is now a widely accepted version of the trigger for the violence, Muslim elders in Muzaffarnagar town dispute it and insist that it was motor-cycles colliding that provoked the initial fight between young men. The fight was later given a communal colour.
Playing the victim
The patriarchal narrative, which dominates conversations with Hindu extremists across towns of western U.P, is then seamlessly linked to the narrative of victimhood.
A narrow alley off the Surajkund Road in Meerut leads up to the Bharat Mata Mandir. On the first floor lives Sudarshan, VHP’s regional organisation secretary. It is early morning. A plump man, he first reads the local editions of Dainik Jagran ....
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