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Howdy, Modi

Patwardhan's "Reason" at VIFF; Gods, guns and goondas in "World's largest democracy"

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Hindutva provocateurs seem to have worked up a specialty in false flag operations. They wreak nationwide waves of havoc that are seemingly attributable to their ideological foes so as to stir up caste and creed conflicts – shades of the race war hopes of some “very fine” MAGA adherents to our South. Or East.

A 2006-2008 series of bomb blasts left 147 dead and many more wounded. Relying on sketchy forensic evidence and forced confessions, Maharashtra State’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) originally fingered purported Pakistan-affiliated operatives and arrested several Muslims.

But those charges soon unravelled after the ATS directorship was taken over in 2008 by a famously incorruptible career cop, Hemant Karkere, who quickly assembled a pretty drum-tight case against a cabal of Hindutva front groups, arresting 11 high-profile right-wingers.

Karkere never lived to see them brought to trial, though. As detailed in Reason, he rallied to the defense of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Rail Terminus during a Pakistani sneak attack on Mumbai in November, 2008. Deployed away from the main force of defenders (curiously dispatched by the man who would succeed him as ATS Chief, the same cop who’d previously misidentified the Muslim suspects in the 2006 bomb-blasts), Karkere was shot dead in the line of duty amidst the “fog of war.” Unclear to this day just who shot him, as ballistic evidence fails to link the bullets that killed him to any of the known Muslim assailants.

The bomb-blast cases moved forward, nevertheless, resulting in a spate of 2013 convictions. But then, one by one, the sentences were commuted or the convictions overturned. By now, most of the defendants walk free. Two of the 11 hold parliamentary seats in the BJP government that took power in 2014 and was re-elected just this year with thumping majority.

Worth noting, though, that the bomb-blast cover-up went on well before the BJP ascendency, under aegis of the purportedly secular Congress, India’s then-ruling (and now enfeebled opposition) party – testimonial to Hindutva’s “deep state” penetration no matter who comes to power.   

Babes in Toyland. Image: Anand Patwardhan

Reticent as they may be about some of their means, the BJP and its front groups are by no means shy about their ends. Patwardhan gets his camera right up into the faces of some of the party’s youth activists. Their sloganeering, when challenged, quickly dissolves into babbling bafflement.

He splices in extensive film clips of party bosses, parliamentarians and even cabinet ministers openly espousing outright fascism and professing admiration for Hitler. We’re shown children spitting hate-filled tirades and trained in lethal weaponry. All kinds of hokey Modi iconography, too, in every guise from a musclebound caped crusader to a meditative sage levitating over the snow capped Himalayas. All to the tune of infantile jingles.

At least the progressive opposition has better tunes to accompany its massive strikes and demonstrations. The film includes heartening shows of Dalit/Muslim solidarity – factions which, together with secular intellectuals and progressive Hindus, would easily comprise over half the Indian electorate.

Not enough, though, to forestall Modi's 2019 sweep.

In the words of North America’s most noted Gandhian, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Could be long indeed a-bending, though.

 

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