516 people from all over the Indian Union deposited money in the last one week amounting to more than three lakh Indian Rupees (what we Bengalis call Taka) in the account operated in the name of Shambhulal Regar before the account was frozen. Shambhulal Regar is a Rajasthani man whose politics is based on Hindu nationalism. His politics is about Hindi nationalism for he chose to communicate with his Hindu brothers and sisters in Hindi. He knows what kind of people he wants to communicate with, hence he used Hindi over Marwari or Mewati. He communicated the reasons for his actions which included hate speech. What was his action? This Hindi-Hindu man had taken Afrazul Khan, a Muslim Bengali seasonal migrant and labourer to Rajasthan and hacked him to death. The slain labourer had begged for his life in his mother tongue Bengali and the Hindi he could muster as he laid bleeding. During his last moments, he called his mother, laying on the brutal soil of a land far away from Bengal, a land where no one heeded or understood his calls for help. Then Shambhulal Regar burnt Afrazul’s body. This Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan ideology inspired hate machine called Shambhulal Regar got a 10 year old child, Shambhulal’s nephew, to film the whole thing. After doing what he did, he recorded another video message. Then he made the videos (the killing and the ‘message’) public. It went viral and that was the whole point.
Imagine the impunity and the general ecology of Bengali-hate and Muslim-hate in which such a crime and its video making occurs. Afrazul was a married family man. Shambhulal claimed he was out to entrap a Hindu woman in Rajasthan. This has been shown to be false as the Hindu woman in question said that she didn’t even know Afrazul. So a man can be killed, with a completely random made-up charge and the killing can be filmed. While this practice has been pretty shockingly routine for all kinds of government-salaried security forces in the Indian Union, Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan ideology vigilante groups in Hindi belt states have now joined this bloodsport. Afrazul’s family tearfully demanded Shambhulal Regar be hanged. Let me state on record that he won’t be hung. Let me also predict on record that if he is convicted (I use the ‘if’ very consciously), he will not serve a complete term. He will have opportunities to come out of the jail under various ruses. He might even be released early as part of some pardon or ‘good behaviour’. Let me put all of this on record. We must confront the followers of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan ideology for the crimes they are committing against those who don’t believe in this ideology
Certain sections of Bengal and some other non-Hindi states in India are now realising that the present regime has unleashed a socio-political culture that is completely alien to the values of these non-Hindi linguistic national homelands
Shambhulal Regar himself provides some clues as to why he killed Afrazul. He was unhappy that a temple dedicated to the main character of the epic Ramayan called Ram was not built even so many years after Hindi-Hindi-Hindustan ideology radical mobs destroyed an old mosque called Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. This toxic ideology is also present in West Bengal. In the run-up to the 1992 Babri masjid demolition, funds were raised from Kolkata too, from areas with the biggest amount of money-makers and the greatest alienation, even hatred, for the syncretic and non-communal culture of Bengal.
This Bengali man, Afrazul Khan, was burnt to death in Rajasthan and those who contributed to the hate filled ideology that killed him are present in Bengal as we speak. They are the ones who are most conspicuous with their silence (they falsely imagine that tactical silence makes them inconspicuous) while everyone else is enraged over the killing. But they are simply not silent. They are active. Funds in Shambhulal Regar’s name also came from some people in West Bengal.
Some of these people who are silent now were not silent during the so-called Padmavati controversy — a queen from Rajasthan. Padmavati like other Bollywood controversies have that same element on and on, Northern Hindu-Muslim divisions and this makes such ‘controversies’ an attention and resource sink for the rest of us, the non-Hindi people. It is not accidental. It is by design. It is a warped ideology, a factory of producing hate, that scratches that Hindi belt itch of Muslim hate through the proxy word Pakistan, something that Narendra Modi did so regularly earlier and given the tightness of the Gujarat election, resorted to even now.
During the Padmavati controversy, an outfit called Karni Sena and some Rajasthani migrants to Bengal protested some portrayal of ‘their’ queen who they believe committed suicide by self immolation through a norm that is characteristic of intense anti-women and patriarchal societies. None of these people protested the real killing and real burning of a real human being, a migrant like them, from the land they earn their bread and butter from. That is how toxic this ideology is.
The Bengalis have noted that a huge procession came out in Rajasthan on December 14th, 2017, in support of the sociopath who killed a Bengali migrant worker. The procession was so huge that the number of people arrested from the procession stands at 175. The violent protesters had injured 12 policemen. There has been no condemnation of the fund-raising or the procession in support of the killer from any significant Rajasthani group in West Bengal nor the West Bengal branch of BJP.
The Delhi media and the Delhi liberal circles pointed out that Afrazul was Muslim and that he was ‘Bengali speaking’. They cautiously avoided the word Bengali. The populist chief minister of West Bengal immediately condemned the killing and characterised Afrazul as a Bengali. She knows where the pulse of public rage is. She knows its cuts across religious lines. She has used the term Bengali and this is a break from nearly 70 years of tradition when Delhi headquartered parties who squirmed at saying the word ‘Bengali’ ruled Bengal. Not any more, and that matters. It is not accidental that Bengal is the front line target state of communal forces — the amount of pressure being built through fake news, communal provocations, outside Bengal funds and Union government policy is staggering. The struggle for keeping peace in fortress Bengal shows the developing unity against Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan that is being forged.
Certain sections of Bengal and some other non-Hindi states are now realising that the present regime has unleashed a socio-political culture that is completely alien to the values of these non-Hindi linguistic national homelands. It is this uncoupling of values as well as politics where the Hindi-Hindu belt has sought to dissociate itself from the rest of the Indian Union which poses the greatest threat to the unity and integrity of the diverse federal democratic Union of India. And in its divergence, the Hindi-Hindu lands find themselves more similar to their historical long lost brother whose ideas of vain honour, religious fanaticism, self-identity built upon hating others and hate of minorities it closely resembles. That is the communal belt of Pakistan. It is here that Mumtaz Qadri is considered a martyr, for killing a fine man called Salman Taseer because Taseer believed that compassion and justice are pre-conditions of being human — Hindu, Muslim, Christian comes later. Lawyers feted Qadri, funds were raised to get him released and after his hanging, his grave has become a mausoleum and his Barelvi followers now consider him their hero. Shambhulal Regar has already matched Qadri in being a fanatic killer, having supporters who otherwise camouflage as ‘decent’ people and in being the recipient of funds raised in the defence of a cold blooded murderer. But divinity will elude him, because he will not be hung. He will not become a demi-god. He might become a living saint though.
The writer is a brain scientist and commentator based in Bengal
Published in Daily Times, December 17th 2017.