Lalit: The organisation I read a little bit about the hindunationalist organisation that works with indigenous people. these run schools all over particularly in the north, educating indigenous people and basically making them hindunationalist. thats the organisation i know a little bit of.
the hindunationalist organisation actually goes by the name of The Sangh Parivar or the rss family of organisations. so the bjp which is the political party in india is the political wing of the rss. the rss has well over 100 organisations that together work in different sectors of indian social, cultural and public life. and one such organisation is vka, thats the akronym - vanvasi kalyan ashram. they work with indigenous people in india. the idea is really to deceive the indigenous people as being essentially hindu and actually bring them to the hindunationalist fold. one way they actually do this is interestingly the hinduwise indigenous gods and goddesses and leaders. thats sort of one way in which they bring them to the fold (herde/gemeinde) of hindunationalism. but there are many many other such organisations, that work with locals. not very successful as yet but they started an organistion that works with indian muslims. that doesnt work very well because theres so much antimuslim violence also that this hindunationalist organisation has been accused of orchestrating.

meike: pogromlike attacks on muslims in the last months isnt new, you told us the last time we spoke in february that whats new is thats its systematic. history of anti-muslim violence in india?

lalit: you know there been hindu-muslim clashes and riots of course happening for a long period of time. theres 19th and 20th century. the big conflagration (großbrand/flächenbrand) that happened is the violence that happened in the partition (Teilung) in 1947 where people you know crossing borders, going to their respect of lands theres a bloodbath that occurs on both sides. What is presently pakistan what was eastpakistan at that time bangladesh of course in india as well. after that very sporadic rioting that has happened between hindus and muslims an increasingly over a period of time we see it ceases to be - you know hindus and muslims rioting against each other - increaslingly it starts becoming hindus rioting and attacking muslims. Aided and abetted by hindunationalist organisations and even sometimes assisted with state power or state forces. a classic case of large scale violence that took place that was not hindumslim rioting any longer but really classified as a pogrom was the riots that took place in 2002 in the state of gujarat. interestingly these riots occurred under the watch of Narendra Modi as the (Regierungschef) des Bundesstaates Gujarat. initially he was even held as being complicit in the rioting but later on comiissions and inquiries could not find any direct evidence and he was given a clean (weiße weste) by the Oberste Gerichtshof Sonderermittlungsgruppe (SIT). however what is very clear is that this kind of rioting happended under his watch. in this rioting that happened in the state of gujarat, anywhere between 1000 to 2000 muslims were killed by hindunationalist groups who were clearly organised in order to do this rioting. what happens here is that the daily violence is that - both sides participate in the violence. but it was pretty much one side in the sense that the hindunationalist very organised. they have clearly come prepared, they had come with weapons. again there is evidence to suggest that state forces looked the other way or did not respond to the muslim victims they were not receiving and did not respond their cry of help. and ceratainly did not arrest the hindunationalist leaders who had provoked the violence. there is a lot of evidence to show that bjp leaders were provoking the violence an they pretty much threatened the peaceful protestors. i come to the context very soon but why this is happening or why it was necessary i think to escape this kind of violence under stable conditions but at this point i just like to say that the people who provoked the violence were hindunationalist leaders and were not brought to boook /zur rechenschaft gezogen) in fact until today they have not been arrested. ironically the instance that were receiving the violence, many more 50 out of 53 people who were killed were muslim. ironically most arrests of them has also been muslims. You know muslims are now being stirred to people who provoked the violence in some ways behind it. despite the fact that all the evidence by eye witness observers really points to it being organised by hindunaitonalist groups. so the police has to be shown as very biased in part and in role in favor of the hindunationalist state.
i just like to talk a little bit about why these particular riots were important. and why perhaps they were used, instrumentally by hindunationalist groups. its important to note that from the time that the bjp government has come to power in 2019 they have been following an explicitly hindu majoritarian agenda. so i just cite some instances: on the 5th of august a year ago that is almost entirely a year ago you had article 370 being repealed (aufgehoben/widerrufen). That is the article stating that the special status to kashmir in the indian constitution. so this article 370 now reads down - is read down in parliament. and kashmir of course is now placed under army rule. kashmir national politicans are arrested, highspeed internet is removed. theres censorship. its almost you know like these people who are kashmirian leaders who are not even pointing to suceed for the indian union were still placed under house arrest. no cristicism from kashmir and kashmiran some about. so this is very much part of the hindu majoritarian agenda of this organisation i was talking about callled the rss. a second issue that was orchestrated by hindunationalist groups was the ram temple ruling, which effectevly gave the indian state the right to build a temple for the hindu god ram on the site of the Babri mosque, which was destroyed on the 6th of december 1992. interestingly the courts rule that the demolition of the mosque by hindunationalist was legal cause they handed over the rights to build a temple to the hindunationalists. in other words now you have the indian secular courts, mostly secular, saying that hindumajoritarism and hindu sentiments have to be accepted by the people. in fact again i brought up august 5th were the reading down of article 370 happened in kashmir. the day after is also the day they start building the ram temple in Ayodhya. this 5th day becomes a very very important date in the root of hindunationalism. its sort of imposition in the indian kontext. One more thing to the hindumajoritarian agenda. this is the whole nature of protest to the citizenship amendment act or the caa. what was happening that very spontaneously student groups across the country student groups primarily lead by muslim students groups and muslim women but they were supported by students and civil society from all over across villages, class, cast, gender divisions - these groups came out and peacefully protested the caa and threatened to expose the antidemocratic nature of the bill. so it has been anticonstitutional. muslim groups basically coming out an trying to protect the indian constitution, it was a very very powerful and motivating image. this actually caught the imagination of indian people by large. this was actually very threatening the hindumajoritarian agenda of the hindunationalist government. Which is why i believe this peaceful protest had to be broken up and a way to break this up is really to orchestrate a rioting that takes place. when the rioting takes place the peaceful side of protest of jamia milia islamia university and at shaheen bagh eventually destructed. You know the graffiti and the hindunationalist imagery that had been put up here its almost as if these protests never occured. i believe that rioting this particular instance had an instrumental purpuse which was to just get rid of these people protesting against the caa and therefore continue hindumajoritarian agenda. this was very interesting to me also because over this period of time, im talking about the period of the rioting, i was not in india that time, but i was filming during the peaceful protests the anti-caa-protests that jamia milia islamia university, which had been the receiving activists of police violence and also at shaheen bagh, which was very peaceful protest site. as an eye witness i can tell you that there was not one act of violence or provocation on the part of the student protestors and student organisors, there were tense to provoke them to participate in violent acts. Even young hindunationalist would go brandishing guns (schwingen) but there had been no response. These groups were incredibly disciplined and veryvery peaceful. they had to be projected as been people trying to succeed from indignation, people participating almost in terrorist acts and that unfortunately is the discours now that has come up on the hindunationalist agenda. today as we speak a lot student leaders protesting peacefully have been picked up by the police under charges of treason or working against the indian constituion - while everything actually points to the contrary. all the available evidence points to the contrary.

meike: antidemokratic nature of the bill: 8 opposing states announced to not implement it. unconstitutionality claimed at the supreme court? whats the status?
lalit: youre quite right, there are at least 8 states that have decided to not implement either the caa or its correlate correlator correlative the National Register of Citizens (NRC) which is supposedly this citizen list thats going to be compiled by the government of india. So 15:04 min a lot of these political parties that are against the bjp and the states would be Rajasthan , West Bengal , Kerala , Chhattisgarh,, Punjab, and Madhya Pradesh . The argument of course is that the caa is not constitutional against the constitution of india. It is certainly against article 14 of the indian constitution which suggests that there must be equal treatment applied to all the residents of india not just citizens. Thats actually article 14 of indian constitution going beyond the state of citizenship. So what does the caa does to big southern certain countries and minorities from these minority communities from these countries – you know pakistan, afghanistan, bangladesh could be legible for indian citizenship it also selects certain religion. For instance Sikhs religious communities has been selected as worthy of being granted citizenship but islam is an exception, islam is not included. So basically the caa is therefor exclusionary and it could create problems with those people who fall outside its ambit. For instance why are indian muslims are not included when they are a persecuted minority. Why are Ahmadiyya Ahmadi from pakistan not included even though they are persecuted. Why are srilankan tamils not included, you know? Why are you leaving some communities out while including a few others. Why is there a discrimiation between people between communities, between particular countries. Now a cynical reading of the caa act is that the bjp government saw it as a consolidation of the hindu ward /wart? bank (??)17min or the hindu ward base. It was taught, that the people who would apply for citizenship would primarily be from the hindu community minority in different countries and they would naturally behold them to the bjp. It was also a corrective response to the first national register citizenship which had taken place in assam where the expectation was that mostly the people who will be declared illegal most of them are from bangladesh. What was happening that a greater number of those declared illegal were hindus. Bengali hindus. It was almost a corrective action that the bjp decides to suggest an alternative way of citizenship for these people by getting bringing about the caa. Look there are other ways by which you can get citizenship even if you have been declared illegal on a temporary basis. And this really is considered to some observers the background to why the caa actually comes about.
The indian muslim community however quite rightfully saw this caa as being exclusionary. And as a confirmation that the indian state could deprive them of citizenship rights. hence this protest. And the protest happens peacefully right from the moment the protest begins in begins in minority institutions like jamia milia islamia university the police are absolutely brutal in terms of attacking these students and then of course the protest means snowball and becomes like a nationwide movement. In protest against the caa completely against the hindumajoriatarian agenda has to be stopped. I think the violence in terms of the delhi rioting in february 2020 has to be seen in that kontext.

Meike. You described the peaceful protests what i found an interesting aspect was that there obviously had been xenophobic motivation for the protests against the act as well? against migrants and refugees?

19:53 Lalit: i didnt see kind of xenophobic nature to the protest while i was filming certainly not. The idea was that if you are going to give citizenship to people from other nations then give citizenship to everyone. Or make everyone illigible for citizenship regardless of religion. A counterargument of course was that why bother about citizenship for all these other groups right now when there is rampant unemployment in the country already. Unfortunately the anti migrant and antirefugee fallout unfortunately happended post covid19. And im not saying this for they hying it done intetionally but a brief background here: india declares its first lockdown the 4th of march this year. At that time only there were 600 cases of covid19 and only 10 deaths according to my recollection. Unfortunately the indian government just gives people a 4hour window to begin the lockdown. Now for major threat of the population the poor, rural migrants, they move away from their villages and they seek seasonal work in cities outside. It is absolutely impossible to get home – you know some people traverse from one part of the country to another part of the country. Four hours doesnt give them enough of a window to go back home. There were just massive unemployment, massive food insecurity, people just had no money, they could not return to their homes and i dont know if you saw this but there were just absolutely heartrending images of migrants and refugees walking back sometimes hundreds of miles home. Without food or water. Many people lost their lifes over the process - i mean im not saying that this was done intetionally by the hindunationalist government but i think it tells you something about where their priorities lie. Because they quite simply did not think about urban and the real poor when making these decisions to impose lockdowns. They definitely thought of the middle class the upper middle class, they thought about large sections of the population but the urban poor and the rural poor were not part of their imagination.
So to this extent a particular kind of xenophobia, kind of racism comes into play. When for instance you have an outbreak of corona one of the first groups that were supposed to be affected was a muslim sect called the Tablighi Jamaat. They had a congregagtion equally hindu groups having congregations but in terms of the press reading what had happened, this particular muslim group were being held responsible as in spreading the corona virus. Another kind of xenophobic fallout unfortunately that happened that many groups of people from the northeast of india who look southeastasian in terms of their features these people were then attacked because if the argument in fact was: you have gotten the chinese virus. this is a particular kind of xenophobia or communal outpouring that unfortunately happened. And i have to say that the mass media did not play a very good role it could have just collected these sort of perception but instead they just went and played along in the case of holding the muslim community responsible for the corona virus. You see later on when studies are carried out that this is the only community that test, therefor naturally there are more cases within this particular sect or group you know. So this idea of this particular group spreading corona virus was later put aside but damage had already been done and led to some incidents of violence against the muslim community. I think the press could have certainly played a better part in terms of educating the people about this.

Meike: es sieht so aus, als wäre covid 19 instrumentalisiert worden in diesem Fall – schon wieder. danke daß du das thema covid19 aufbringst. Because i dont think we can disregard the pandemic in this equation of violence. In all parts of the world we have seen the health crisis aggravate already existent conflicts. nevertheless the situation seems to have quietened down since febrary - is that impression deceptive?

25:24 Lalit: thats a very good point you bring up id like to say that we have to look at world terms in terms of covid19 and the fallout. And its important to see you know which autoritarian regime is actually coming to power and benefitting from this. Youre also right in terms of suggesting that theres a relative calm since february of this year because there certainly has been no communal rights of the kind of scale that happened in delhi. There is this sort of ongoing violence thats happenig quite in the background. Just to state a few points here. One is that you have the dismantling of the opposition, happening quite systematically in india. Whereever there is a congress ruled state government, those states are sort of being, the attempt is to bring down those states by any means that are both constitutional and somewhat extraconstitutional. Let me explain: in some of the states like Madhya pradesh and Rajasthan the congress was democratly elected but it did not have a huge majority. So right when covid19 actually begins the state of Madhya Pradesh certain congress members just leaned over to the bjp, according to the press there were cashouts that were given. These legislators moved away from the congress and were able to join the bjp and the democratically elected congress government was being brought down. The same thing now is happening In the state of Rajasthan where theres a breakaway group. There s a breakaway group and the court in fact have ruled in favor of not disqualifying – the congress wanted to disqualify this breakaway group of congress legislators but the courts have ruled in favor of the hindunationalist bjp government. But there seems to be another case now where rajasthan will also be taken away from the opposition. The other point that i mention here is that behind the scenes is what were seeing is an entire ? of the anti-caa movement. The muslim leaders, but not only muslim leaders, there are leaders from other left student groups or civil society groups these student leaders have been arrested. this has happened again very quitly because there is not a possibility under a system where there is a lockdown going on, you cannot go to the streets and protest! This has been happening very quietly, almost stealthily. An aspect that i like to bring up here is the dilution of labor law in bjp-ruled states. Certain kinds of legislation have been introduced More working hours for the labor force with in some cases with less overtime. Again this is done very stealthily. You have laws that are coming about that are very less worker friendly. What were already seeing is that were seeing what is likely to be a much stronger hindumajoritarian, authoritarian state, that is going to be coming up post covid. A state that absolutely will not tolerate any kind of dissent or any kind of even peaceful protest. Its your right as a citizen, as a resident, even that right of dissent is not going to be tolerated.

Meike: as the idea of something pan-indian is quite new – from the 1980s/90s how about nationalism? with all the ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity in this "subcontinent" that some may call india, whats holding this huge country together?

30:13 Lalit: mit dieser frage könntest du viele bücher füllen. Im gonna Shorten this. What used to hold the indian union together used to be the belief in a secular, pluralist india this idea of constitutional democracy. And this idea of a very diverse india. Where You have people from different states, different cultures, that are able to coexist. With what is increasingly going to appear is the already process of dismantling of the secular constition, the dismantling of the secular pluralism in india. What youre going to have is hindunationalist binding together of the indian union. Now at this point the agenda is not complete. Much as the rss would want hindunation, that is there today is not there yet. It is very much on the card. This is of great symbolic value the building of the ram temple on the ground of the broken Babri mosque, the building begins on the 5th of august 2020, also morgen. This is one of the geniuses of the Rss. The other point that i brought up is the taking away of special rights from the state of kashmir, which is one of the muslim majority states in india. Sort of The bringing down of the kashmir muslim people. This is pretty much part of the rss agenda. So we have many parts of the country where people dont subscribe the rss or bjp hindunationalist ideal. Eventually what is going to be is a hindunation the rss family or organisation hopes to control. And then that would of course be one religion and that would be the guiding force. Any religion and the hindu has dictated by the rss bjp which is also very important, because it would not be a pluralistic hinduism as it has been back historically and over the years it would take almost the form of a church. A particular dogmatic orthodoxie. That would then bind the nation together.

Meike: caa as a diversionary tactic for other problems, inflation, umemployment, economic unequality? Which way is the bjp-government headed?
33:26 Lalit: das ist ein sehr guter punkt. The argument was that the caa was a diversionary tactic. And it was done to distract the country to take it away from bread and butter issues. Theres unemployment in india, economy has been failing particularly since the era modi and the bjp government imposed this desastrous demonetization policy from 2016. the economy has been in free fall. However i rally tend to see this much more in terms of bothering a hindumajoritarian agenda. So i really feel the caa was really done to actually it was an attempt to consolidate a hindu wart bank and this is entirely in time with some of the other moves that i mentioned – reading down the article 370 of kashmir, the building of the ram temple, pushing that agenda. Having the court rule in your favor. This caa again becomes an attempt to read out illegal read muslim migration to india. But to bring back sort of consolidate the ranks of hindumigrants coming into the country and then naturally beholding a partion (?) to the bjp administration. The distraction argument is an important one because it is used as a very masterfully by the bjp hindunationalist government. Often times You find that when the government is facing a crisis or the other you know an issue is to put on the agenda and needs to impress which is completely under the sway of the hindunationalist government to put across a point of view youre going to be called antinational. Your job as a responsible press person is just to support hindunationalism agenda come what may. Its a kind of publicity that favors the government. Another point id like to talk about which is about the rss, the force behind the hindunationalist organisations. The organistation that had set up the bjp. Please be veryvery clear that these people want power in the long term literally from 1925 when this organisation was formed, they have been walking towards a hindu rashtra or a hindu nation. It is 2014 that they got the great opportunity, because narendra modi is one of their own people, he is very much from this organisation he becomes the beloved prime minister. Bjp for the first time comes in with a huge majority, huge number, that is they dont have to rely on coalition partners from secular parties. That is how they came to power in around 1998/99. this time they have a brute majority and over the period of time the rss bjp are very restrained. But that is a process of working with the institutions. This is aprocess of what you might call saffronising the bureaucracy. You get your own people in to various kinds of organisations. Could be the judicary, it could be the enforcement (vollzugsbehörde) watchdog organisations it could be organisations in the educational sector, in the cultural sector – you basically have your rss people getting into these organisations. A lot of this hapens naturally some of this happens democratically a lot of this - people are just moved by a process of transferring and gradually you actually have a system saffronisation because saffron is the color of the ruling of the bjp you have what is known as a saffronisation of the administration. that is what really allows over a period of time a particular kind of juditional understanding that agrees with hindumajoritarism. I mean a classic is your role in terms of demolition of the babri mosque. It maybe a criminal act but it must respect hindumajoritarism or hindu sentiment and therefor you may built the ram temple, right. This very ? kind of reasoning. That occurs because there is a certain kind of linkages that are now being formed, the hindunationalists have a very very long reach now. In terms of this government agencies. If not controlled it may be able to influence.
Meike: das scheint wir nicht wie eine positive zukunft. Wagst du es eine prognose in der sache zu geben?

Lalit: its very difficult right now because of the lockdown and because of covid19 its practically impossible i think to organise any public protest. There was an incredible high that was happening in the months of december and january going on until febrary, in terms of the caa protest very peaceful protest. the government was actually really getting troubled by what was happening because this is gathering momentum. That kind of peaceful protest is just not possible anymore. But i also dont see it as – there are civil society groups that are Secular, are just going to give away completely. I think this fight is going to continue. Its going to take perhaps new forms. what these forms are is not very clear. this is a hindunationalist goliard. Even if you see the way .. have been functioning, i mentioned the jucicary, the fact that there is so much of finance capital or money power that is kept by bjp and the fact that people who are protesting are just being arrested put behind bars. It seems like a very very difficult task, But you know this country has faced crises before, that has happened pretty much in 1975. i dont expect the secular groups and student groups to give way. This whole idea of Disciplining the public to a hindumajoritarian agenda. This struggle is going to Continue unless the rsss is going to have a change of heart. This is a struggle that will continue to a long period of time.
Struggle between competing nationalisms here. Tendency of one group to label the other group of being antinational and i dont think this is particularly useful. It is a struggle between hindunationalist ideology being represented by the forces that are in power the rss, bjp. The secular nationalism that is represented by the congress or by the left parties. By several regional other groups. This is where the struggle is i eventually can imagine its a fight for the secular nature of india. And its secular constitution i think its actually gonna come down to that.