Politics, as we know, is the manifestation of contradiction which emerges as a reflection of the relationship between two opposing sides of social fact.
Referring to Karl Marx’s idea of politics, Horst Mewes (1976) describes it as “an act of self-abolishing in the revolutionary process towards communism.” The idea of politics, therefore, can be defined as an act that rationally explores anything or creates rational concern or rational attitudes among the masses.
Denial of rationality in both action and thinking is the denial of the basic temperament of humanity. Thus, this is a genuine concern for revolutionary social and political change. Those involved in this activity, would get in touch with the entire society and make themselves crusaders of existing social change.
Fear, on the other side, generates certain psychological changes in the human mind. It is also a manifestation of conflict and contradiction. It emerges through societal conditions and causes that to reflect an irrational attitude. The emergence of such societal conditions, expose both the anatomical causes as well as the objective conditions, that arouse conditions of fear.
Sigmund Freud further elaborated that, the objects and situations which arouse fear, largely depend on our knowledge of and our feeling of power over the outer world. Politics and fear are corresponding entities to each other, and each provides a legitimate condition to maintain the power structure of the dominating class.
At this moment, politics, therefore, leads to fear on the basis of their privilege, to associate with those who dominate entire social and economic structures. It means that fear is a manifestation of hegemonic social relation that often produces a sense of insecurity in the human mind. Different social and historical condition show that the fear has always been maintained politically as well as ideologically through representing certain social condition.
The situation after Modi’s victory and the emergence of the communal politics of the Bhartiya Janta Party that to led mass killing in Gujarat is an example of politics that produces fear.
The contemporary situation that emerged after the last Lok Sabha election is not just a condition for the emergence of right-wing forces, it is also a social condition that generates fear to cultivate a sense of insecurity and criminal apathy among the masses. With this on one side and rising Hindu nationalism on the other, both associated with colonial and Brahmanical ethics, mythical narratives were cultivated to maintain a hierarchical social order as well as a sense of criminality in society.
Looking at the entire situation, in many ways it is a fact that the emergence of rightist forces that use fear as a tool is a predeterminant of the historical and social condition. The basis of existing colonial and Brahmanical sensibility in the society, along with historical and social conditions, always nurtures a utopian idea and tendencies of communal conflict among the upper caste Hindu elite dominated society.
When BJP came to power, such sensibilities engaged with different forms and modes of political protest against secular and rational thinking, and became the leading force supporting the BJP unconditionally. The feeling of fear based on the changing political narrative is not only colonial and feudal but also the carrier of the Modi image as a crusader of the Hindu and ethnic identity.
The Godhra incident leads us to the source that defines contemporary political narrative as well as the image of Modi that is constructed. Images of Modi and the culture of fear, therefore, is not only a consequence of the rising new communal equation but it also symbolises the history of communal violence and cruelty against Muslim and other marginalised communities.
The Godhra incident symbolised that the mass killing and atrocities against a community was the sign of a new kind of communal equation, and that defined the RSS-BJP as the vanguard of the Hindu identity. The political sense behind the Godhra incident was to define power relation and its social condition on the basis of religion and the so-called feudal morality among Hindus and Muslims.
It, therefore, led down a sentimental question among the Hindu’s that ethically claimed rigour religious sentiment among both the Hindu and Muslim. The culture of fear through mob lynching and the killing of rationalist forces created a sense of insecurity among Muslim and those who opposed communalism.
The sense of communalism is not only a religious conflict, but it has been a very politicised mode of thinking and feeling. It always creates myths and cultural symbolism to maintain the structure of fear and its social condition in the society. Communal thinking and its social condition before and after the Modi victory have been politically motivated and projected a sense of destruction and rigorous religious sentiment among both Hindus and Muslim.