Kiska saath, kiska vikas, kiska vishwas?

I was saddened to see the picture in a newspaper of a poor Muslim family fleeing the city of Gurugram earlier this month. At the centre of the picture was a teenage girl walking with a suitcase on her head. Her left hand was tilted up to keep the suitcase in balance; her right hand held a packed plastic bucket and plastic bag. Her faded, corn-coloured kameez was wet with sweat, suggesting she must have walked quite a bit. To her left was a young man, perhaps her brother, carrying in his right hand a gunny bag jutting out in places with all kinds of stuff in it, and in left hand a handbag. Behind them walked a middle-aged woman, probably their mother, whose left arm clasped a plastic container and handbag against her body and in her right hand was a large plastic bag. In short, they were carrying their entire home in their hands. A few paces behind them, four or five policemen stood chatting near a parked, beacon-fitted police car, indifferent to their fate.

As I saw the picture, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words from a speech echoed in my ears: “I know what poverty feels like…I have got here by selling tea on a railway platform…I have not learnt of poverty from books. I have learnt of it from my life…I understand the pain of the poor naturally…”

They sounded like empty words. There was nobody in the “double-engine sarkar” of New Delhi and Haryana to understand the pain of the teenage girl, her brother and her mother in the picture, nor of the thousands of other men and women who fled Gurugram fearing attacks by Hindu mobs — neither Prime Minister Modi nor Chief Minister Manoharlal Khattar. These men and women had migrated from Bihar, Jharkhand, UP, MP, Chhattisgarh and other states to Gurugram, an iconic city of India’s progress, to work in factories, shops and homes, with a dream to improve their lives. Their dreams were shattered.    

Why? On July 31, a Muslim mob carried out a violent attack on a Hindu religious procession organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal at Nuh, a Muslim-majority district adjacent to Gurugram district. The procession, carrying arms, was meant to provoke, and it succeeded in doing so. In retaliation, Hindu mobs set ablaze several slums and shops of Muslims and a mosque in Gurugram.

The Hindu retaliation did not stop there. Calls were given by VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders for an economic boycott of Muslims. “Those who hire Muslims as workers or artisans or lease property to them or buy goods or services from their shops would be treated as traitors,” they warned. Their men went about on motorcycles to
warn Muslims to leave the city or face death and destruction. To show that they meant it, they even carried out a few attacks.

I heard echoes of Prime Minister Modi’s words again: “I feel very happy when I see poor people making efforts to get out of poverty…My method to eliminate poverty is to empower the poor. If we empower them, they would come out of poverty by themselves…”

The experience of the migrant labourers, who came to Gurugram to get out of poverty and who were hounded out by Hindu fanatics, was just the opposite. They were disempowered. They were barred from pursuing better livelihood opportunities than were available in their hometowns or villages. They were denied all their constitutional rights: equal protection under the law (Article 14), no discrimination on grounds of religion (Article 15), freedom of movement and the right to undertake economic activity (Article 19), and protection of life and personal liberty (Article 21). They were denied freedoms in free India to go anywhere, do any job to improve their lives. This was not elimination of poverty, but perpetuation of poverty.

True, it was not the ‘double-engine sarkar’ directly disempowering them. However, it was indirectly encouraging the Hindu fanatic groups that were disempowering them, and it amounted to the same thing. If the government was honestly committed to encouraging the poor to obtain better livelihoods, they would have dealt strongly with the fanatic groups. Instead, they allowed them to hold meetings, make hate speeches, take out processions and to call for economic boycott of Muslims. The ‘double-engine sarkar’ bulldozed hundreds of houses and shops of Muslims in Nuh merely on suspicion (no proof) that they were used by the Muslim attackers. The houses of the Hindu fanatics who burnt down Muslim settlements and shops and of those
who killed an imam in Gurugram were not touched.

The State’s double standards in dealing with Hindu and Muslim criminality can inspire anything but trust in the government. The Muslim migrants had no option but to flee. They could clearly see that the government was interested more in political profiteering than in poverty alleviation or bringing about peace and harmony between communities. Prime Minister Modi preaches economic inclusion. The VHP and Bajrang Dal practice economic exclusion. The Modi government does nothing to deter them. And why would it? The VHP and Bajrang Dal are siblings of the BJP. They work at the grassroots to expand the Hindu vote bank for the BJP. They had to be rewarded, not punished, and that is what they did. It was the empowerment of the Hindu fanatics and disempowerment of the Muslim migrants.

As I think of those who fled, the Prime Minister’s prime slogan — supposedly the kernel of his political philosophy — rings in my ears: Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabha Vishwas, Sabka Prayas. The poor migrants who had to flee the attacking mobs might well ask him: Kiska Saath, Kiska Vikas, Kiska Vishwas, Kiska Prayas?

(The writer is a senior investigative journalist and author, best known for his exposé of the Bhagalpur blindings)