In February 1933, around a month after Adolf Hitler secured the chancellorship of the Weimar Republic through democratic elections, an anarchist set fire to the Reichstag, the German parliament building.
The new regime that had already initiated the installation of a fascist state pounced on the Reichstag fire and attributed it to communists and other political opponents.
This event was used to justify the issual of the draconian ‘Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State’, which suspended civil liberties, followed by the Enabling Act, which concentrated power with Hitler and accelerated the transformation of Germany into a brutal ethno-nationalist dictatorship.
On October 29, 2023, the Sangh parivar became excited when a bomb exploded at a prayer convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a marginal Christian sect in Kerala, that tragically killed four and injured dozens.
The unique demography of the state and the frustrating commitment of large sections of Hindus to secularism meant that, to win elections, the Sangh had to attract Christian voters into their fold.
The same Sangh that demonises and assaults Christians in most other regions in the country has nurtured a category of “Chri-sanghis” as a shrill and viscerally anti-Muslim voice to break the longstanding alliances among minorities.
Conveniently, the event also happened in Kalamassery, a pocket numerically dominated by Muslims.
This bombing tragedy was shaping nicely for the Sangh parivar as their Reichstag Fire. It is in the nature of fascist movements to instil fear among common people, intimidate opponents and usurp the state machinery where electoral oppositions are formidable. They are confident of their proficiency to widen social cleavages, organise street violence and engineer communal riots.
Given the bleak electoral chances in Kerala, President’s Rule was not a far-fetched hope. This was an opportunity they had been waiting for.
Disappointment
The entire Sangh establishment immediately swung into action, salivating and laser-focused. The BJP’s vice-president K.S. Radhakrishnan rushed to note in alarmist tones that Kalamassery has a history of extremist activities and demanded investigation by Union government agencies as the state police had failed.
Sandeep Varier, another prominent BJP leader, posted ignorantly on Facebook that Jehovah’s Witnesses was the same as Judaism, and linked the blast to Hamas.
The most virulent and consequential post was by Union minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar, who posted this:
Dirty shameless appeasement politics by a discredited CM (and HM) @pinarayivijayan besieged by corruption charges
Sitting in Delhi and protesting against Israel , when in Kerala open calls by Terrorist Hamas for Jihad is causing attacks and bomb blasts on innocent christians https://t.co/MQH0ycZsqu
— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) October 29, 2023
He went much further in an interview with ANI to claim that the blasts were directly linked to anti-Israel events being held in the state. This view spread in the rest of India and reinforced the systematic efforts underway by the Sangh and its affiliates to malign Kerala.
Disappointingly for the Sangh, the perpetrator surrendered within hours and turned out to be nothing of the type they wanted – an unassuming English teacher, Dominic Martin, who was a disillusioned member of the sect. Not the ideal name or profile for a terrorist.
The Sangh campaign petered out, with many deleting their tweets and backtracking from their positions. As palpable as the dejection of the Sangh parivar was the huge wave of relief that swept over the citizens of Kerala and mainstream political establishments.
A few factors that contained the Sangh’s designs stand out.
What worked
The role of the opposition parties led by the Congress in thwarting the Sangh’s design turned out to be crucial. The maturity of its senior leaders to keep aside intense rivalries and provide mature and measured statements brought the majority of the public together against hate.
The leader of the opposition, V.D. Satheesan, when responding to the media in the immediate aftermath prioritised medical care for the victims instead of pointing fingers at the government. He underlined that this was an issue to be handled with utmost care and warned of the dangers of spreading misinformation.
The all-party meeting called by the government was another venue for the display of unity against polarising misinformation and curtailing the tensions being fuelled by the Sangh’s apparatuses.
The roasting that Chandrashekhar received at a press conference in Kochi for his communal statements was heartening. In these bleak times, when the media has become a lapdog of the regime, the moral outrage of mainstream journalists and their ability to speak truth to power was on full display.
Sharp questions forced Chandrashekhar to deny that his statements were communal. He tried in vain to convince others that his statement was about Islamic radicalisation in the state and its consequences, rather than related to this particular event.
In spite of Martin’s confession and arrest, Chandrashekar desperately clung to the hope that future investigations would reveal an Islamist conspiracy and debunk the “narrative being peddled” that the blast was the work of one person.
It is hard to remember a similar instance in the recent past where mainstream journalists held a minister in the present Union government to this level of scrutiny.
The seriousness with which the state government dealt with the blast also reveals an acuity about the political climate and the Sangh’s capabilities for organising violence.
Senior police officials and ministers were dispatched within hours. The health minister was at the forefront, organising emergency medical care. The chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, pulled no punches and accused Chandrashekhar of spitting the ‘poison’ of hate. The Kerala police followed up by registering cases against Chandrasekhar and others in the Sangh for the incitement of riots and disruption of order.
This absolute defence of secularism, intolerance of hate speech and the willingness to take on the Sangh using both political and legal strategies is something that other state governments could emulate.
Also Read: The ‘Real’ Kerala Story: Tales of Communal Harmony From Ground Zero
The response underlined the significance of vernacular languages in resistance. Some of the standard polarising idioms of Hindutva just don’t translate well. The equivalent translations of direct anti-Muslim rhetoric perfected in Hindi and other northern Indian languages (“Goli maro salon ko”, for example) sound laborious in the Malayalam that is written or spoken in the public sphere.
The presence of several deep-rooted and trusted vernacular news media organisations meant that there was no vacuum for social media, the Sangh’s favoured tool for its propaganda, to fill.
The power of the vernacular was on display when Chandrashekhar’s patchy grasp of Malayalam forced him to use broken phrases and wild gestures in the press conference; a stark disadvantage in comparison to the majority of home-grown politicians who comfortably provide sophisticated responses.
This suggests that the resistance to Hindu majoritarianism, which has failed to take off from predominantly English-speaking spaces until now, maybe more effective when launched from vernacular spaces.
A near miss
This event should be seen as a warning, a near miss. Any delay in the surrender and arrest of the accused would have allowed the Sangh to gleefully wreak havoc. The spontaneous solidarity and almost visceral rejection of fascist designs by its political class, its vernacular media and its people helped Kerala narrowly dodge a cataclysm.
This solidarity and alertness should be celebrated but also strengthened.
The outcome for the people of Kerala may not be the same in future. The next version of the Reichstag Fire can get fuelled into a conflagration that will burn down everything they value into ashes.
Prabhir Vishnu Poruthiyil is a faculty at the Centre for Policy Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.