Left’s Violent Suppression Of Dissenting Voices Is Not New, But Here’s Why It Is About To Get Much Worse

Recently, there has been a spate of attacks on the freedom of speech of those who don’t agree with the Left.

Since the voices being scuttled don’t belong to the Left camp, nor have defenders sitting in New York Times, Washington Post etc., the typical outrage on the misuse of state power against citizens’ freedom of expression is missing.

A list of such recent violations of freedom of expression:

• Arnab Goswami and the Chief Financial Officer of Republic being grilled by Maharashtra police for over 12 hours for questioning Congress president Sonia Gandhi
• Bihar police filing FIR against Opindia; Editor Nupur Sharma was allegedly interrogated by Kolkata police for 10 hours
• Chhattisgarh police has registered a case against BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra in Raipur for “hurting religious feelings” by his tweets against former Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Rajiv Gandhi
• Kerala police’s FIR against Sudhir Chaudhary of Zee News for discussing different types of Jihad in the aftermath of Tablighi Jamaat-Covid-19 episode
• A Pakistani activist's account was blocked for a tweet reporting the crimes against Hindus in Pakistan
• Systematic harassment of common Indian citizens working in Islamic countries for expressing personal opinions online
• FIR against a common man on social media for a satirical post against Telangana government
• Police action against a Dalit Hindu for having a saffron flag on his private shop
• Police action against a common man for a simple joke on Tablighi Jamaat, when far worse against “Sanghi” are commonplace
• Police action against a common man on social media for a joke against AAP leader

Contrast this with the outrage on FIR against the founder of far-Left portal The Wire, even when he was found spreading a fake news, and was warned beforehand to take the tweet spreading the fake news down.

The FIR against someone with connections and a whole legal team behind is outrage-worthy, but not the plan to scare the right-wing voices on social media into silence by police action in the opposition-ruled states.

In fact, the mainstream media and Left intellectuals have actively colluded with the state, when Left or non-BJP parties are in power, to hide latter’s crimes.

If not, then ask yourself why you didn’t hear any clamour on the following:

• Fear-mongering, hateful speeches by AAP leaders in the pre-math of Anti-CAA Delhi riots
• No action by Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan despite appeal after appeal for help by the nun fighting against rape-accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal, alleging harassment by the church establishment
• Over 100 FIRs in three years against persons for criticising Kerala CM Vijayan on social media
• The same Kerala government who didn’t mind going to great lengths in Sabarimala case, meekly backtracked on an extremely diluted bill on church finances
• Millions misappropriated, big land scams by churches across Andhra Pradesh
• Justice Shamsudeen report highlighting the reign of terror of the Left cadre in Kerala colleges
• Saad’s speeches full of kafir-hate asking followers to not follow the lockdown even if temporary
• Lack of trains for migrant workers, riots in West Bengal; xenophobic speeches targeting “outsiders” by Mamata Banerjee (link1, link2, link3, link4)
• Xenophobic statements by DMK leaders against north Indians and Hindi-speakers (link1, link2)
• Doctor who complained against the lack of PPE kits being beaten by police in Andhra Pradesh

Historically, newspapers like The Hindu have gone to great lengths to justify communist party violence. Deccan Chronicle, recently in the news for the headline ‘Alright bhakts, here is your chance to join the army’ had published an editorial in 2018 justifying a CPI leader being attracted to a 12-year-old child.

It is also important to note that while the narrative of ‘Islamophobia’ is being used to silence criticism, the institutionalised Hindu-hatred has only increased.

The same people who accuse a movie depicting terrorism of ‘Islamophobia’ cheer the stereotypical hateful representation of Hinduism; those who find fascism in Ramayana TV serial praise a Turkish TV drama ‘Ertugrul Ghazi’ which glamorises Jihad by sword and destruction of infidels.

Those who scream at the top of their lungs “strategic autonomy” on Howdy Modi-Namaste Trump, threaten Indians with “Gulf backlash” on Hindus simply exercising their rights under Article 25 or “casual Islamophobia”.

It’s interesting that those inviting the Arabs with open arms in India’s internal matters don’t see the irony in the fact that these are Islamic countries with no democracy, no freedom of speech, no minority rights, and great ties with countries China that have gone far beyond ‘casual Islamophobia’.

Of course, the Left elites aren’t fooling anyone. Their hypocrisy and deceit is out in the open for everyone to see, and they don’t seem to mind.

We have already discussed the ideological basis of Hindu-hate and fascism in the Left, along with its alliance with the global Left and the imperialists.

Also read: Indian Left’s Fall From Grace: Those Who Criticised Global Capitalism Are Now Taking Orders From Foreign Masters

While even the benign leftists exhibited Hindu-hatred in private, the public expression was limited by the democratic politics.

This limitation on the popular Left (in the political domain) didn’t apply on the hard-Left occupying the academia (the intellectual domain).

However, while the professors with Communist Party identity cards organised beef parties and abused Hindu deities within the four walls of academia, the open expression of Hindu-hate was limited because it could hurt their ideological brethren in the Parliament — the Congress party — which had to be in power to use the public money to feed the comrades in the universities.

Remember, Jawaharlal Nehru University was the brainchild of Indira Gandhi who fed and fattened it with vulgar amounts of public money.

Now that the Congress is witnessing a decline, the populist Left-hard Left marriage is in trouble.

An out-of-power Congress cannot keep its side of the contract, and therefore, the previous arrangement of keeping the Hindu-hate agenda on the down low is out of the window.

Despite the thousandth ‘coming of age’ event being orchestrated for Rahul Gandhi, the prospects of Congress don’t seem promising, and while the regional parties are vehemently anti-BJP, they’re centred around a person/family/clan, have a caste base, and don’t care much about the luxuries like fattening arm-chair experts.

Also, since the BJP has brought the “social” back into the electoral politics, most parties, even those having scored recent wins, are more keen to work on the ground than sponsor armchair experts to give an ‘intellectual’ sheen to their enterprise.

That the Indian intellectuals never invested in building an autonomous intellectual ecosystem where diverse views could be represented, and not scuttled based on the ideology of the political class, has cost them dearly.

In the totalitarian world-view of a communist, the difference between intellectual and political space is a bourgeoisie illusion, and intellectuals, just like politicians, are obligated to chase ideological agenda even at the cost of truth and fairness.

As a result, not only the Left parties were routed thoroughly and repeatedly in elections, but the Left intellectuals were also discredited in the eyes of people.

Yes, a common Indian can’t criticise them in fancy English prose, but she surely can see through the hypocrisy of those who —

• Minimise and justify Hindu persecution and ideas fuelling it; glorify terrorists
• Don’t have the courage to publish the full text of Saad’s speeches and lecture Indians on Islamophobia
• Proclaim themselves to be the champions of minority rights but fall silent on the rights of minorities like Jains because the latter don’t share in their Hindu-hate agenda
• Suppress the news of certain kinds of crimes (link1, link2, link3) so that only the kafir versus believer cleavage remains significant

In the academia ruled by communist ideologues, any criticism of a terrorism-promoting televangelist and the global leader of a supremacist movement is unwarranted because they’re ideological allies but scuttling of a common man’s voice is a justified collateral damage.

The breakdown of Congress-Marxist politico-academic complex has made the intellectuals completely dependent on the imperialist forces for survival.

This means the last drop of the pretence of ‘nationalism’ and non-partisanship will also be gone soon.

The Left has always blamed others, found some bourgeoisie conspiracy theory to explain its failures, and justified dubious means including violence to pursue the ‘communist utopia’.

Remember, the Left depends on the Christian-Islamic imperial structures for survival, not the other way around.

The basis of this alliance is the Left’s hegemony in the intellectual domain and the resulting narrative-setting power.

Once this power is gone, the ‘dollar for narrative’ arrangement will be over.

This is why the Left intellectuals are so riled up by the common man questioning them on the social media.

Imagine the panic — they know that their work is shoddy and can’t stand much scrutiny, their whole career has gone in the service of the narrative, they’ve lost all respect for selling their souls, and now, there’s a threat that the foreign funding will dry up too.

At this point, they are desperate to prove their utility to their masters. So we can expect a lot more Hindu-hate and naked fascism coming our way.

We already see them —

• Openly calling for systematic fake-news propaganda purportedly to counter the right-wing
• Openly courting Islamic autocracies, projecting self as their agents deployed to protect Indian Muslims
• Hounding Muslim personalities who don’t support their agenda, questioning their faith (link1, link2), and by the same token, promoting Muslim personalities who can act as Ummah thekedars, basically, open communalism even in intellectual domain
• Similarly, hounding Dalits who don’t agree with their ideology, violence against them for professing Hinduism
• Supporting the likes of Jamia sheroes and Sharjeel Imam who openly crap on secularism, constitution etc. and support Jinnah’s methods and convicted terrorists
• Applauding colonial stereotypes of “hideous, grotesque, ignoble, disgusting” Hinduism and Hindus and mainstreaming of Hinduphobic fake-news

With its attacks on Dalits and Muslims who disagree, attempts to intimidate them by violence, the Indian Left is now openly copying the communal politics of Jinnah who wanted the Muslim League to be the sole voice of Indian Muslims.

The lesson for us in all of this is —

One, we cannot rely on anyone to protect us or speak for us, neither the party in power nor the intellectuals. We will have to come together to protect ourselves.

In this, we will have to make sure we protect the weakest of us, because they will be the first target of intimidation and violence (like the Dalits beaten up for doing Pooja, their temple desecrated in Bihar by Bhim Army cadre).

Two, we cannot rely solely on social media to get across our voices. A social media account can be arbitrarily suspended at any time, instantly deleting all the work.

Social media is also not a good tool for building a movement due to fast-moving content and non-accretion.

As Shekhar Gupta told Tasleema Nasreen when she objected to The Print’s use of a misleading headline for her article — “In today’s environment, these storms come and go in 48 hours.. this is just a day’s social media storm.. by tomorrow morning, there will be another outrage”.

So, exposing the fake narrative one time on social media doesn’t really affect the agenda-setters.

Instead, if we challenge their hegemony in the intellectual domain — consistently hold them accountable for what they say, aggregate their lies and hypocrisies — soon their utility for the imperialists will drop down too.

Remember how a sustained campaign by a Swarajya journalist against biased hate-crime tracker led to its shut-down?

Right wing will have to organise itself better, open independent portals, do quality work, and channelise people’s energies that remain scattered on social media.

The Left makes sure to lift-up even the shoddiest, colonial copy-paste that supports its agenda. Even a mediocre person, if willing to peddle Hindu-hate, will quickly get recognition, big platforms, awards etc.

On the other hand, most of the right-wing voices with amazing work that they can only share through social media keep fighting a lonely battle.

Here’s where right-wing platforms like Swarajya need to make sure that they don’t just ride the wave of people’s anger, but morph it into something constructive.

This essentially involves an educative role — making people understand the underlying structures that control the happenings on the surface, so that they aren’t blindsided, hurt afresh by five-second-apart punches, but learn how to guard and jab.

It is important to understand that unlike developed western countries, there is no ‘right-wing’ establishment in India.

A party coming to power with full majority for the first time around 70 years after independence doesn’t constitute establishment.

All that India has for ‘right-wing’ is a people’s movement against imperial forces and their agents.

And those who consider themselves right-wing, especially the intellectuals, don’t have the luxury to think that their job is done by writing a few articles here and there. They will have to live up to their role as the leaders of this movement — just like our freedom fighters did.

The opposition will count on discrete events of impulsive, angry, crass reactions to its upping the ante on Hindu-hate to discredit the Indic movement.

On the other hand, if we remain calm, knowing as we do about the impending assault, give a measured, sharp and sustained pushback, the propaganda will be easily exposed for what it is.

It is wind versus house of cards. But we need momentum.