Purnachandra Naik & Vinod Kumar
In this country, all the oppressed communities have been victims of the oppressive Brahmanical fascist religio-cultural hegemony. The inequality and oppression of the marginalised communities is sanctioned by the Brahminical religious scriptures. And the Sangh Parivar (RSS, BJP, ABVP) make a concealed yet concerted attempt to perpetuate and reinforce the religio-cultural hegemony over the oppressed communities. It has realised that it will have to devise new and more devious ways to tackle the traditionally subjugated people who have been asserting themselves.
The discourse of dignity and rights coupled with resistance and assertion on the ground by the oppressed communities has threatened the very existence of the Sangh Parivar. The following secret document circulated among its Shakas gives a glimpse into the agendas and inner workings of the Sangh brigade. The RSS secret circular no. 411 reads:
2- Scheduled Castes and other backward classes are to be recruited to the party so as to increase the volunteers to fight against the Ambedkarites and Mussalmans.
5- Hindutva should be preached with a vengeance among the physicians and pharmacists so that with their help, time-expired and spurious medicines might be distributed amongst the Schedule Castes, Mussalmans and Schedule tribes.
10- Special attention should be given to the students of the Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes so as to make them read the history written according to our dictates.
11- During riots the women of Mussalmans and Schedule Castes should be gang raped. Friends and acquaintances cannot be spared. The work should proceed on the Surat model.
15- All literature opposed to Hindus and Brahmans are to be destroyed. Dalits, Mussalmans, Christians, and Ambedkarites should be searched out. Care should be taken to see that this literature and writings do not reach public places. Hindu literature is to reply to the backward classes and Ambedkarites.
16- The demand by the Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribe for filling in the backlog vacancies in services shall by no means be met. Watch should be kept to see that their demands for entry into and promotion in government, non-government or semi-government institutions are rejected and their service records are destroyed with damaging reports.
18- Measures should be taken to make the prejudices amongst Scheduled Castes and backward people more deep-rooted. To this end, help must be taken from saints and ascetics.
The above mentioned points explicitly show the venomous agendas of the RSS. There has been a concerted effort by the RSS to keep the Dalits, Muslims, Adivasis and other oppressed communities subjugated and suppressed so that they do not speak up and revolt.
Recently the JNU administration commissioned a dossier whose contents are in sync with the larger RSS agendas enumerated above. This dossier, apparently compiled by Amita Singh and some other upper caste professors is highly racist, casteist, misogynist and communal in nature. It should be reminded it was Amita Singh who on record has said that Dalits and Muslims are anti-national. The content and narrative of the dossier can be well imagined without any efforts. In this dossier it has explicitly been written that people from North East have been engaged in sex-work in collaboration with some mess workers and professors in some nearby pubs which according to the dossier operate as the hub of sex works. The projection of women coming from the North East as sex workers is highly condemnable and misogynistic in nature and it needs to be fought with a firm resolve.The dossier also says that Dalits and Muslim students have been engaged in ‘anti-national’ activities.
Friends, it is an open secret that the Brahminical, Fascist Manuvadi administration has been harbouring highly prejudiced views against students from particular communities, religious background and geographical region. But to pander to the RSS Hindutva agenda, it would go to the extent of commissioning a dossier which explicitly says the students from North East and Kashmir are engaged in anti-national activities is the latest manifestation of the Brahmanisation and communalisation of campus spaces.
At this juncture it is imperative to see the larger RSS agenda and its stark manifestation in the dossier. The image of the nation is scripted in such a brahminical, casteist, racist, patriarchal way that the very existence of Dalits, Tribals, Muslims, Women and Students from the North East and other ethnic-linguistic background is projected as a threat in the university spaces. There has been a criminal denial of identity and space to the students of North East. The national and socio-cultural imagination of the nation is manufactured in such a brahminical fascist hindutva way that it outright denies the very identity and existence of students coming from a particular geographical background. The ethnic composition of bodily features, the language they speak and the food habits ipso facto exclude them from the university spaces as they do not conform to the larger homogeneous projection of the nation by the RSS hindutva brigade. Recently there have been cases where students from the North East were randomly asked for IDs and questioned whether they are from India. Due to this dossier, there has also been a constant surveillance not only on the North Eastern students, but also on Dalits, Muslims and students from other oppressed communities and nationalities.
Now, it is also important to understand the underlying anxiety inherent in the larger RSS agenda and the JNU Dossier. Why are the Sangh Parivar and its stooge, the JNU administration, so afraid of the oppressed communities and nationalities? It is precisely because they constitute the majority and hence pose a perpetual threat to the hegemony of the brahmanical minority. Less than ten percent people are controlling and enjoying all the power and privileges which are systematically denied to the eighty per cent marginalised oppressed communities/nationalities. These marginalised communities and nationalities are oppressed, suppressed and victimised by the common enemy i.e., the Brahmanical Fascist Hindutva. To fight against this common enemy, there is a pressing need for all the oppressed communities and nationalities to be united to wage a formidable battle. The unity of the oppressed is an ontological reality that needs to be actualized across the length and breadth of this country.
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Purnachandra Naik, Phd scholar in centre for Spanish Language and Literature in School of Languages, JNU. Vinod Kumar, Phd scholar in Centre for West Asian Studies in School of International Studies, JNU.
Illustration courtesy: Nidhin Shobhana.
