Chorus of protest: In whose name is ‘Not In My Name’?

On Tuesday, July 11, another protest was summoned under the aegis of ‘Not In My Name’ in the Capital. The difference was that it was not against the killing of Muslims or Dalits, but of seven Hindu travellers on the Amarnath Yatra. On July 10, terrorists shot at a bus carrying 50 pilgrims, mostly from Gujarat. Though they were under fire, the driver kept going till he was out of the zone of assault. His presence of mind saved many lives. Of the seven dead, six were women. In addition to the dead, many were injured. As shocking as the shooting was, the reported callousness of some of the shopkeepers who laughed at the bullet-ridden bus and its victims instead of stepping forward to help is simply bizarre.

By protesting against the killing of innocent Hindu pilgrims in Kashmir, ‘Not In My Name’ organisers effectively countered the charge that they were agents of the opposition parties, who had mounted the campaign to tarnish the Modi Sarkar and the BJP. When filmmaker and activist Saba Dewan had started the campaign, right-leaning SM enthusiasts and intellectuals, not to speak of many ordinary citizens, wondered if this was another conspiracy. We remembered earlier ‘awards wapasi’ and ‘intolerance’ movements meant to malign, demonise, and target the ruling party and government. The aim then seemed not only to polarise the society, but gain political mileage from what were essentially instances of criminal, if not instigated and sponsored, violence. Some Dalit critics were quick even to decry ‘Not in My Name’ as a savarna conspiracy. One commentator demanded that cow-crusaders and Muslim-haters be branded ‘Brahminnical’, arguing Hinduism, not just Hindutva, the source of such violence, had to be denounced and opposed. Predictably, he failed to say anything about the source of jihadi terrorism and violence.

By protesting against the Amarnath slaying of Hindu pilgrims, Dewan and her team have effectively countered the criticism that they themselves are ‘communal’ in the sense of displaying selective outrage. But, as Radha Khan, one of the members of the committee confessed, the decision to hold the vigil wasn’t easy. Some members were actually against it. However,  “The fact that the initial disagreements were later overcome in the name of doing what is right speaks well for the democratic structure of the group,” she explains. It was, indeed, quite a brave thing to break out of the customary Left-Liberal selective condemnation mode. 

So far so good, but why was there hardly any coverage in the media of this event? While the announcement of the protest was widely reported, the occasion actually passed almost unnoticed. The fact that the vigil for the Amarnath pilgrims was a damp squib was not acknowledged or reported widely. According to eyewitnesses, very few, probably less than 100, showed up. This doesn’t mean that earlier protests had attracted masses of participants. But the difference between a couple of thousands and 100 is very significant. Nor did celebrities show up in droves in solidarity with the Amarnath victims. Doesn’t this suggest that only anti-government, anti-BJP, and anti-RSS events will attract larger support from Left-Liberal lobbies and their camp followers?

The call for the protest, widely publicised, even reproduced in full in MSM, also dissatisfied some. According to its opening paragraph, “The Amarnath Yatris have never feared an attack even when the situation in the Valley was worse  than what it is at present. Kashmiri people have always taken pride in the fact that the Yatra was always safe and never came under any threat.” Surely, this is naïve platitude if not misleading bromide. The Yatra, is periodically threatened by jihadi violence; it can only be undertaken under the heavily-armed escort and protection of the armed forces. 

Perhaps, the organising committee of the ‘Not in My Name’ campaign also forgot the August 2, 2000 slaying of 32 Indian citizens in what has come to be known as the ‘Amarnath yatra massacre’. The attack occurred in Pahalgam at the Nunwan base camp. Apart from 21 Hindu pilgrims, seven local shopkeepers, three security officers also lost their lives. Several others were injured. Moreover, posters of ‘Not in My Name’ activists, preaching “Peace is the only way”, or “Hatred will not win,” neither condemn Islamist Jihadism in Kashmir, nor its source, Pakistan. It would therefore appear that ‘Not in My Name’ members are still in the denial mode, equating all kinds of violence, whether by foreign-funded and sponsored secessionist-terrorists, or perpetrated by local lumpens, or gangs enforcing their writ reprehensibly murderous intent, as was likely in the case of the unfortunate 16-year-old, Junaid Khan.

This begs the fundamental question: in whose name is the ‘Not in My Name Campaign’ being carried out? In whose name are our anti-national and anti-social elements, including cow vigilantes, acting? Surely not in the name of the millions of ordinary citizens of India, let alone the Hindu majority. Similarly, when it comes to the Amarnath killings, which group of Indian citizens, including Muslim Indians, will claim that the terrorists acted on their behalf? The logic behind the campaign thus seems questionable, differing from event to event, as is the uncritical importation of the very slogan from overseas sources as diverse as Saul William’s slam poetry in the US and anti-ISIS Muslims in the UK. Sadly, for Indian civil society, truly non-partisan interventions are quickly dissipated or coopted suggesting that only well-identified and polarised positions have traction in the Indian public sphere. 

The author is a poet and professor at JNU