False Alarm to Reality, Kolkata to Nawada

Since April 4, the district town of Nawada in south Bihar, about 100 km from the state capital Patna, has been under the grip of violent clashes and communal tension following the tearing up of posters of Lord Ram and dismantling of celebratory flags allegedly by miscreants belonging to Muslim community on the eve of Ramnavami festival. While appealing for peace amid violent clashes and stone pelting in different localities in the town, Nawada MP and Union Minister Giriraj Singh slammed the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar for minority appeasement and ruefully asked, “If Hindus can’t hold Ramnavami festivities and take out processions in their own country, should they go to Pakistan?” The English press thought the violent spurt in the south Bihar town was a sidetrack for a different chorus it had planned for Ramnavami reporting.

The Nawada violence didn’t find much space in the Ramnavami reporting in English dailies of the national media. It was restricted to agency feeds on their websites while the print pages were preoccupied with alarmist script. Such script had a narrative that English press had woven in wake of unprecedented Ramnavami celebrations seen in the neighbouring state of West Bengal this year.

Leading English dailies and news portals had a subtext of apprehension with which they reported the scale of celebrations and the festive fervour that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) brought in organising 150-200 Ramnavami rallies across the state. The festivities in West Bengal stumped English press and headlines screamed. For the Indian Express it was “Swords, saffron flags, chants of Jai Shri Ram in Bengal” while West Bengal’s  leading English daily The Telegraph grumbled “Roar in the name of Ram”. The Hindustan Times kept people out of the equation and saw it as an organisational spectacle as its headline ran “Sangh Parivar organises unprecedented Ramnavami celebration across Bengal”.

In the run-up to the festival, The Times of India thought that the ‘armed’ nature of Ramnavami procession was a terrifying prospect, as the daily carried a report with state Bharatiya Janta Party president Dilip Ghosh’s statement that he would be leading the rally with swords. Though not an apparent strand in the festivities, the paper also drove an irrelevant wedge between Ram versus Hanuman Jayanti celebrations with an account of how Trinamool Congress (TMC) organised Hanuman Jayanti celebrations to preempt BJP’s cultural appropriation of Ramnavami.

The news portals were spooked enough with the ritual of carrying swords during  Ramnavami processions. While Scoopwhoop was analysing why “BJP’s Ramnavami procession with swords in Kolkata has divided the city”, Huffington Post was concerned for the innocuous fun children might be having with a ritual as the portal fumed “School kids carrying swords during Ramnavami processions in Bengal rattle many”. Scroll had a video story feature captioned quite suggestively “Watch Ramanavami processions turn into armed marches in West Bengal”.

Such prisms of looking at Ramnavami festivities exposes naiveté of a major section of English media on three counts. They constitute the visible disconnect in reporting the ritualistic idioms of festivities and wilful indifference, if not ignorance, to the needs of identity politics assertion and consolidation in the region.

First, the question of sword-terror. English language media reporting on it has unwittingly echoed the alarmist response of the West Bengal government which went on settling political scores by booking BJP state chief for carrying a sword while leading the procession.

If the reporters had examined how Ramnavami processions are carried out in neighbouring states like Jharkhand and Bihar, they won’t be so scared. With the mythological image of Lord Ram etched in the religious psyche as a warrior of righteousness and standing for martial sublimity, carrying light weapons in processions to mark his birth has been a common practice. Sample a news report filed from Ranchi on the eve of Ramnavami and you may realise how swords are part of the festive spirit in Jharkhand’s capital city, located about 400 km from Kolkata. A Hindi News 18 report says, “With the Ramnavami procession round the corner, shoppers are heading towards Ranchi’s markets in huge number to buy swords, daggers, javelin and flags”. Any Ramnavami procession in neighbouring  Bihar similarly feature swords and light weight weapons as a symbolic ritual to mark the fight against evil.

Interestingly, media develops tolerance, even appreciation, for rituals when swords and arms are brandished during Muharram processions.

Secondly, the point of Ramnavami celebrations of this scale being unprecedented in West Bengal is no case for alarm. India has a history of festivals spreading to different parts of the country either spawning originally as a product of greater cultural interaction or for raising political consciousness. In pre-independence phase, one may remember how Lokmanya Tilak used  Ganesh Utsav as an annual public event for harnessing the collective spirit pursuing nationalist objectives. It was a form of cultural appropriation of identity for political objectives of the national movement. While a different set of factors can also shape spread of festivals. In post -independence phase, for instance, the growth in popularity of rakshabandhan is attributed by many to Hindi movies like Chhoti Behen (1959). In their approach to assimilating festivities, societies aren’t static entities, they are open to influences.

The political imperative of using festivals for identity consolidation and assertion can’t be ruled out in West Bengal where the perception of minority-appeasement has gained significant ground.

This brings us to the third point of wilful indifference. Though there are numerous examples that could be cited for reinforcing such perceptions, a few would do. Last September marked the fourth consecutive year when 300 families in Kanglapahari village in West Bengal’s Birbhum district were denied permission to organise a Durga puja in their village following objections raised by 25 Muslim families of the village. In an unrelated development, West Bengal government had set limits for Durga idol immersion on account of Muharram. The Calcutta High Court castigated the state government for it and termed the move ‘arbitrary’. The court observed that “ it was clear endeavour “ by the state “to appease the minority section of the public”.

One may also cite the example of how national media was too late, with some media houses even ignoring, in reporting Naihati riots during Durga puja celebrations last year when puja pandals were vandalised. Till date, no comprehensive account of those riots in North 24 Parganas district is available in national media.

Apart from such evident manifestations of minority appeasement, what has also been making the ground fertile for Hindu identity consolidation is the growing perception that the TMC ruled West Bengal has been soft on the infiltration of jihadi forces sneaking into the state from Bangladesh border. In recent months, even the Bangladesh government has been claiming that Islamist terrorists belonging to Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) and Jamaat-ul- Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) are finding safe havens in West Bengal and Tripura. In fact, this is most likely to figure in talks the visiting Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina would be having with her Indian counterpart during her four-day stay in India.

Somehow narratives in English media find more news value in scare mongering around innocuous rituals of festive processions and not in actual acts that take away a community’s right to observe festivals with traditional symbolism. With such warped priorities, Nawada and Naihati will remain distant lands.