Bulldozer Politics

The latest drive by the   ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments to demolish houses and destroy livelihoods of the poor is aimed at changing the secular fabric of society and disturbs communal harmony. In Delhi’s Jahangirpuri area the North Delhi Municipal Corporation authorities demolished shops and damaged carts after a clash over Hanuman Jayanti Procession on April 16. BJP’s Delhi president Adesh Gupta had reportedly written a letter to the Corporation to teach a lesson to the ‘rioters’. However, the Supreme Court put a stay on the demolition programme after it was found that the Corporation didn’t follow due procedures to evict people. In truth this is a planned conspiracy of the saffron establishment. It is no coincidence that Prime Minister Modi didn’t utter a single word on violence. After Jahangirpuri it is now the turn of Shaheenbag that witnessed massive mass mobilisation against autocratic citizenship law not very long ago, to face the musings of Bulldozer.

Residents in Jahangirpuri region are being terrorised by Delhi police under the control of the Centre. Policemen are entering their homes and randomly arresting young people belonging to the minority community.

People saw the politics of bulldozers in Uttar Pradesh first when chief Minister Yogi Adityanath motivated his stormtroppers to go on the rampage. Now this has spread across the country.

It was a travesty of justice that Delhi police could not arrest the accused leaders of Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) who actually indulged in rioting. Forget arresting, they could not even name them in FIRs. Their names were removed from the FIR when the VHP leadership threatened action against Delhi police.

Jahangirpuri was a settlement where people run their carts by selling fruits, vegetables and other daily necessities near their homes. They are self-employed. The carts were bought with their hard-earned savings. Already, there is no employment after factories were closed due to pandemic and recession. Yet, Delhi Police under the tacit approval of the saffron brigade chose to break them through bulldozers. The BJP is creating an environment of hate and animosity in the name of removing encroachments and illegal constructions.

They cannot give jobs to the unemployed while making the self-employed people doubly jobless.

Today, nine crore youth are on the streets without any employment. Many have left hopes for any job. Modi promised that his government will create two crore jobs per year. It means 16 crore jobs should have been created by now, whereas more and more youth are joining the huge army of the unemployed.

Meanwhile, the BJP government is all set to impose sectarian agenda on school educational syllabus. In the name of rationalisation of curriculum many a topic have been removed from the CBSE syllabus (April 2022). From the tenth standard syllabus the topics excluded are democracy and diversity, rise of Afro-Asiatic Islamic states, history of Mughal courts, non-aligned movement, impact of globalisation on agriculture, popular mass movements, poems of Faiz in the section of communalism and democracy. CBSE may be called Central Board of Suppressing Education. Now bulldozers seem to have reached schools. RSS is the force behind this syllabus reforming activity under the guise of Rashtriya Shiksha Shredder. Whenever BJP comes to power, one of its major goals is to change the education policy to tune it to its version of nationalism. Its focus is on faith based knowledge away from scientific temper and rational approach to social and historical issues. The disturbing changes brought in by BJP are an attempt to construct a history to suit its narrative of Hindu nationalism. They are all out to saffronise education. And they are bold enough to admit it openly as very recently Vice-president Venkaiah Naidu asserted that syllabus needs to be saffronised.

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Frontier
Vol 54, No. 47, May 22 - 28, 2022