Bangalore: A good lot of confusion is being created in this country by its ruling class on the issue of (ahimsa) non-violence. The ruling class wants everybody else in India to remain non-violent while reserving the right to use violence to itself. It sent army to crush Nagas, Kashmiris and Sikhs. In parts of UP, the Hindu police alone killed Muslims. Thousands of Muslims have been killed in anti-Muslim riots. Murders are a daily front-page stuff in our morning papers. All these wars and violence are launched only in the name of non-violence. And the very apostle of non-violence is the father of this upper caste nation. The persecuted peoples of India have come to know the secret of this ruling class mania for non-violence and here is what the Chandigarh correspondent of the Hindu, India’s chief Brahminical daily, S.S. Chawla, says:
“A significant thing about the Akali formula in the last Dec. (1990) conference was the belligerent tone of every speaker. There was open support for the militant struggle, not the least of it by Mr. Mann. There was also open admission by Mr. Badal of the futility of the Morcha’s and Dharam Yuh’s launched by the Akali’s in the past decade or so. He said that in 40 years – despite his two terms as Chief Minister and the rule of other Akali Chief Ministers – the Akali’s could not stop the construction of the SYL canal in Punjab, nor were they able to enforce the use of Punjabi in all govt. work. But the militants had secured both those objectives in a trice”.
What is the meaning of this? It means that the ruling class frankly admits that it will yield only to violence.
Fear of the gun: Gobind Tukral, Chandigarh correspondent of Birla’s Hindustan Times (Jan.5) says the same thing:
It ought to gladden those who for decades were making tireless efforts to see that Punjab’s official language Punjabi gets its due in the affairs of the State, universities, schools and colleges. Punjabi writers, and others who wished to see their mother tongue reach a pinnacle of glory, had failed. Government records have 300 memoranda since 1960. In any way, at the people’s level, at the writer’s level, the language flourished in all its vitality. It was the Panthic Committee which issued detailed instructions twice during the last two months that Punjabi is fast becoming the official language. Not only name plates, sign boards, official noting’s and instructions have changed, even the Governor O.P. Malhotra took his oath of office in Punjabi. Now, he heads a powerful Punjabi Language Development Committee. What made the “Operation mother tongue” click so fast was the fear of the gun behind it. The committee issued a directive and the copies reached every officer.
(Note: This subject of violence and non-violence is discussed in our just released book Ready Reference to Revolutionaries, Dalit Sahitya Academy 1991).
