Sadanand Menon: Tehelka and after

CRITICALLY INCLINED

Every bully is also a braggart. It was a matter of time before architects of the 2002 Gujarat pogroms would sing like parrots and boast of their brutalities. That a Tehelka kind of expose would happen was inevitable. Enough criminal acts had been perpetrated by enough number of people for it to continue to remain under the wraps for any extended length of time.

The Tehelka team did manage a convincing orchestration of their material and its dissemination. Their special issue, last week, is a compelling document of infamy, packing in the on-camera testimonies of some 20 lead players in the Gujarat riots as well as an inspired editorial by Tarun Tejpal. Obviously, he and his colleagues are shaken by the evidentiary material on tape. The editorial warning, "Read. And be afraid," rings true. It is the voice of someone who has seen the 'face of fascism' and got politicised.

A few questions follow. One is, what made such a large number of Narendra Modi acolytes come clean, even if on spy-cam? What made them describe so graphically the unspeakable acts they committed? You don't find rapists or murderers easily confessing their crimes. So, why did this set of mob leaders feel compelled to talk?

The other question is, despite a 48-hour media buzz, why has the expose been unable to provoke any mass reaction either in Gujarat or in the rest of the country? Will anyone be punished?

Some explanations can be attempted. One is based on Jean-Paul Sartre's celebrated cautionary, in his introduction to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. Confronting his countrymen with the excesses of French soldiers in Algeria, Sartre writes, "It is not right (for a soldier) to be obliged to torture for ten hours a day; at that rate, his nerves will fall to bits, unless the torturers are forbidden in their own interest to work overtime." The Hindutva 'laboratory' in Gujarat allowed their cadre to carry out unrepentant rampage on minorities for too long. What we are witnessing on the Tehelka tapes now is a process of the fraying of nerves. It's the guts spilling out. The only way the arsonist can handle his conscience is by exaggerating it as an achievement. It is an exhibition of unbridled libido. You have to flaunt it. Babu Bajrangi, Haresh Bhatt, Arvind Pandya, everyone has been bursting to announce it. All they needed was the promise of a secure listener. That was what the undercover Tehelka reporter represented.

Of course, it is not as if anyone was trying to hide this planned savagery. I have travelled to Gujarat many times since March 2002. Each time I have been told how recordings of rape and killings are now part of video lending libraries in the state, regularly taken on loan to be 'enjoyed' in the comfort of average middle class homes. The story circulates of how private video studios in towns and villages (usually making a living out of recording local marriages) were willingly or otherwise drafted and how several acts of violence were done 'for camera'.

So, the Gujarat events are not about the barbarity of one political figurehead or his trusted cronies. While they were certainly instrumental, as the tapes show, one cannot anymore disregard the role of the 'masses'. "Fascism," German psychologist Wilhelm Reich had explained, "differs from other reactionary parties, inasmuch as it is borne and championed by masses of people." In Gujarat, it is clear that, as Shubh Mathur's brilliant The Everyday Life of Hindu Nationalism (Three Essays Collective, forthcoming) has it, "the cultural logic and institutional power of Hindutva have become deeply entrenched in everyday life itself."

She quotes Columbia University anthropologist, Michael Taussig: "Torture and institutionalised terror is like a ritual art form; far from being spontaneous and an abandonment of what are often called 'the values of civilization', such rites have a deep history deriving power and meaning from those values."

I have often argued that, in the daily sphere, this is made possible by the galloping growth of popular mysticism. In Gujarat, it manifests in the horizontal spread of the satsang. Subsequent to the demagogic successes of sadhvis like Rithambara and Uma Bharati, an epidemic of satsangis has captured Gujarat. Morari Bapu, Asaramji Bapu, Rameshbhai Oza, Atmagyani Niruma, Pramukh Swami "" a long list of interpreters of Hindu tenets who pepper their discourses with provocative contemporary political issues. Seldom do they have audiences of less than a hundred thousand. They are conduits through which borderline Hindutva circulates.

It is an error to read fascism as an abnormality; one should, in fact, seek the links between fascism and 'normality'. Shubh Mathur's insight is important, "A 'culture of terror' is the cultural logic of Hindutva, and is central to its imagining, enactment, and retelling." It is crucial that individuals, collectives and institutions act to dismantle that logic. Otherwise, a sullen backlash is certain.