Quoting from Martin Niemöller’s iconic poem ‘First They Came’, P Chidambaram in his column for The Indian Express, laments the surge of attacks on minorities in India and urges the reader to speak up before it is too late.
“The disruptions of Christmas celebrations, the hate speeches and the malicious apps (in reference to ‘Sulli Deals’ and ‘Bulli Bai’) have not evoked a word of condemnation from the Prime Minister,” writes Chidambaram. He also observes that those calling for genocide — “If you want to finish them off, then kill them…” (Haridwar, December 2021) — are not mad men. As per Chidambaram, there is a method in the madness, and an agenda: “Development and Hindutva are no longer to be separated…”
In the run up to the Uttar Pradesh (UP) assembly polls and amid increasing instances of communal hate across the country, Mukul Kesavan, in an opinion piece for The Telegraph, argues: “The hate conclave in Haridwar, the valorisation of Godse, the scarcely imaginable vileness of Hindutva trolls ‘auctioning’ articulate Muslim women online are ways of testing what is acceptable in the public square.”
He also observes that UP CM Adityanath seems to assume that majoritarianism works, and wonders “if his (Adityanath’s) government were to be re-elected in the forthcoming elections with a substantial majority, would it show that the BJP has made ground in achieving its goal: a radicalised, minority-hating majority?”
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