Actor Naseeruddin Shah has said the reticence of the BJP government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on hate speech amounts to “silent assent” and “encouragement” and that the party has “cunningly” used the resultant situation to its advantage.
In an interview with journalist Karan Thapar for The Wire news portal that focused on the Supreme Court’s recent withering commentary on the State’s failure to curb hate, Shah said: “The government’s silence on this issue is puzzling and it obviously signifies silent assent…. It’s (spewing of hatred) always been there, it’s always been embryonic, it’s always been waiting to burst into bloom, and it finally has.”
Narrating incidents from his childhood, the actor added: “All this has gathered and has burst forth and the political dispensation has very wisely and very cunningly used it to their advantage.”
Thapar, the interviewer, asked Shah whether he directly held Modi and his government responsible for the widespread bigotry in general and the hate speeches in particular.
The actor said, without referring to home minister Amit Shah who had recently spoken of stringent action against rioters: “When we have Union ministers talking like street thugs — ‘We will hang them upside down’ — this kind of language is absolutely shocking. I don’t think the political discourse in this country has been lower than it is now. I don’t take these hysterical rantings of genocide and ‘kill Muslims on sight’ seriously at all.”
The actor added: “The sad part is, this kind of thing is not checked. If you try to talk about peace and harmony like Harsh Mander or Teesta Setalvad or look for justice, you get prosecuted. Talk of hatred, talk of violence, andvyou are felicitated and garlanded.”
In response to queries on the culpability of the Prime Minister when it came to hate speech, actor Shahsaid: “Though he himself has used these epithets, including ‘You can recognise rioters by their clothes’ and so on, but he has never issued a direct threat, and that’s really clever of him because he wants to be seen as a moderate but yet it’s a wink-wink, nudge-nudge kind of a stand that he has.
“By keeping silent I think he has... encouraged those who have never been castigated for making absurd, ridiculous speeches…. It is his job to protect all of us, no matter what religion we belong to.”
“You have to admire the way he has created this infallible image of himself.... And he is not alone. He brought an army with him, all of whom speak the same language, all of whom speak a more vicious language than he does. He can safely pose as the good guy, the man who meditates in a cave, a man who doesn’t mean harm to anybody, the man who talks of sabka vikas and sabka prayas, but doesn’t mean a word of it,” Shah said.
The actor, who has routinely been trolled for his religious identity, said: “The fact is that the combination of religion and politics has worked extremely well for the BJP…. Only power is not a high enough objective. The attitude of ‘I am the saviour’ has to be brought in so that people submit to this.”
He questioned the current dispensation’s apparent insecurity about the subject of history, referring to the deletion of certain content on the Mughals from school textbooks.
“Why this obsession with the Mughals? Why not with the British? Shashi Tharoor saheb has been extremely eloquent about the British, and that too in London, and he was never accused in that country of insulting the country and that sort of thing,” Shah said.
Mentioning other Islamic rulers and invaders, Shah said they were not spoken about in the fake history universe because “the trouble is they don’t know these names. The Mughals are known the world over and that is why this supposed animosity.”
He disagreed with the suggestion that new laws against hate speech would help.
“What is required is action. What is required is proactive participation by the leader, to say that this will not do. But he has never said it. He probably never will say it. So, I don’t see what passing laws will do…. I totally agree with what Justice Joseph has said, that goes without saying. But what difference does it make?” Shah asked.
Refusing to discharge the Maharashtra government in a contempt case, the Supreme Court bench of JusticesK.M. Joseph and B.V. Nagarathna had last week termed the State “impotent” for failing to rein in hate speeches across the country and made it clear that the toxicity would end only when politics and religion were segregated from the national discourse.
Shah slammed obscurantism within the Muslim community as well, saying: “India has everything, including the largest number of uneducated Muslims, and that is something strangely which doesn’t seem to bother the Muslim intelligentsia. We don’t have a Muslim leader, but to lead Muslims we don’t need a Muslim. We need somebody to get our minds away from the petty questions of the length of so-and-so’s skirt and why are girls wearing shorts, ripped jeans… and concentrate on things that really matter.”
