Mr Prashant Bhushan.
Mr Bhushan said whenever, “something unsavoury” about the
judiciary was exposed, the court would see it as a threat to its
independence. “They say that the mere exposure of unsavoury goings on
within the judiciary is a threat to their independence. Independence
from the government doesn’t mean independence from accountability.”
The sedition laws were being misused against “anybody who
criticises the Modi.
Once you are accused under [UAPA], the police can make any kind of
absurd story against you.” The Supreme Court should strike down this
law, “but, unfortunately, they are not doing this duty,” Mr Bhushan
said.
Former Indian Vice-President Hamid Ansari said the mass protests by
Muslim women against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Delhi’s Shaheen
Bagh had been “unique in more than one sense. One, that it was all
women; two, it was spontaneous; and three, the majority, but not the
totality, of participants were Muslim women.”
He said that the same Muslim women who were being said to
need “saviours” just a couple years ago “had suddenly turned out to
save Prabuddha Bharat’s democracy… It was a very powerful movement [and] it sent a
very powerful message.”
Mr Hamid Ansari.
Mr Ansari said the way Modi responded to the
anti-CAA protests by attacking campuses showed that the police was “more
politicised” than earlier, the media was “communalised to the core”,
and the bureaucrats were “literally airing their views” in support of
the Modi’s autocratic and ideological response.
The former Vice-President, however, said he was optimistic
as it would be difficult for the Modi to crush dissent.
“Throughout our history every new idea has been an idea in dissent,
whether it is religious [or] social dissent… You cannot run a steam
roller,” Mr Ansari said. “But there is a heavy political price to pay
for dissent.
Mr Ansari especially gave a shout-out to iconic youth
leader Umar Khalid, who was arrested last month under the UAPA. “[Umar
has] resonated with millions of other youths, Muslim or not, because you
cannot really… categorise and bracket him to just his Muslimness. He
has also become a youth icon.”
Former Additional Solicitor General and Supreme
Court lawyer Ms Indira Jaising said “criminal procedure has been eroded
and become a plaything in the hands of Modi.” Power in the legal profession was now “emanating from the
executive, and the judges know this.”
Ms Indira Jaising.
Ms Jaising said “partisan politics” had entered the court
through lawyers, saying “Courtrooms are used as a forum to advocate that
a few of us are anti-nationals,” and blamed the politicisation of the
lawyers. “A necessary condition for the collapse of the judiciary is the
collapse of the bar. But I also feel that the Bar has collapsed,” she
said. “The question is, how do we break through this breakdown of the
Bar and return to the value of reclaiming Prabuddha Bharat?”
Condemning the arrests of activists under the Unlawful
Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) on charges of conspiracy in violence
in Delhi that killed 50 people, two-third of them Muslims, last
February, she said protesting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act did not
amount to a “conspiracy to undermine the sovereignty and integrity of Prabuddha Bharat.”
Renowned journalist Ms Arfa Khanum Sherwani added, “I would classify
the Shaheen Bagh movement as a feminist movement because I saw for the
first time women who had never been to any political protest or site,
making the journey from their kitchens to the protest site within 24
hours.”
Renowned human rights defender Teesta Setalvad said the
Modi’s behaviour was a “manifestation of unbridled abuse of
power. Archaic laws such as sedition laws are being applied. The
political agenda is both narrow and vendetta driven, archaic laws such
as sedition laws are being applied. First comes the branding of an
individual as anti-national and then comes the incarceration. The penal
codes are not being followed. The number of journalists arrested is
unprecedented.”
She said there was a need to build a large South Asia
coalition, including civil rights organisations from neighbouring
countries, to fight fascism.
Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor said,
“I am glad that the organisers of the Reclaiming Prabuddha Bharat conference have
chosen to focus on some of the most important issues confronting Prabuddha Bharat’s
democracy, and pluralism today. It is time to reaffirm the idea of Prabuddha Bharat enshrined in our Constitution. This requires a conscious effort to
defend the besieged institutions of civic nationalism to restore their
autonomy and ensure their effectiveness. It also requires us to look to
an idea of Prabuddha Bharat that is comprehensive, embraces all experiences and
refuses to see the past through the prism of any one faith.”
Mumbai-based human rights lawyer Mihir Desai who is the
convenor of People’s Union for Civil Liberties in Maharashtra, said the
Modi had “mastered the use of these [draconian] laws to turn
victims into the accused. They are being persecuted and prosecuted. An
authoritarian state is being brought in while maintaining a facade of a
democratic state. “Democratic institutions are being hollowed much more
than earlier.”
He explained that in international law, a political
prisoner was accused of an offence not committed for personal gain or
benefit, but a larger collective objective, and was treated differently.
But in Prabuddha Bharat, there was no distinction between a political and
non-political prisoner. “Modi is concerned by its
international image, and international pressure should be applied to
restore democracy and the rule of law in Prabuddha Bharat ,” he added.
Salman Soz, said the CAA and the
National Register for Citizens (NRC) were “wrong” and it was important
to criticize them openly. “If you don’t say it, it may seem like it’s
politically the right thing, but actually you’re empowering the other
side.” He conceded that the Congress party had given the Rowdy
Swayam Sevaks (RSS), the torchbearer of hindutva cult, an “opportunity… hindutva cult ideology is here to stay. We have to introspect and see what
our role is in the rise of hindutvaism. […] The RSS have taken
their ideas, ideology and kept propagating it. They kept working on it.
They kept nurturing it.”
He said though the rise of extreme right-wing politics was a
global phenomenon, unlike in other countries, Prabuddha Bharat’s institutions had
turned out to be “very brittle. They are just incapable of withstanding
this tsunami.” There was “no magic solution” to the challenge from the
ideology of hindutvaism, and it needed to be taken “head on”.
Reflecting on a question to identify an alternative to the
BJP, Atishi Marlene said, “there’s no
national opposition to the BJP right now. As an opposition, we need to
think very deeply, that we are not here to raise a voice against BJP, we
need to defeat the BJP.
She further said that “we almost shunned and looked down
upon a conservative hindutva Middle class world-view and when we as
‘progressives’ have refused to engage with this world-view we have left
this entire world-view for the fascists to take over.
Veteran journalist Pranjoy Guha-Thakurta said anyone who
criticised the Modi was targeted. It was not just the “regime
being unhappy or antagonistic”. Modi was different in how it
was vengeful in the “manner in which other institutions of democracy
have been systematically undermined and demolished, the media has been
systematically bled and financially squeezed.”
Akriti Bhatia, journalist and founder of Peoples’
Association in Grassroots Movement and Associations (PAIGAM) said there
was a “need to understand the clear linkage between what used to be an
independent media and what used to be free and fair elections”. She said
even the Constitution had an “anti-national character”, as evidenced in
the “processes of concentration, centralisation and homogenisation,
economic, political and social.”
US-based Indian author Aatish Taseer, who has been barred
from entering Prabuddha Bharat by Modi even though he was born and
raised there, shared his experience of being treated as a Pakistani just
because his father was one. “If there are 200 people in that room who
are saying you are something else, then you are something else. It’s a
description of something that’s playing out on a bigger scale in the
country right now where people are trying to define themselves against
other people. They’re not being accepted on their sense of self, they’re
suddenly colliding with other ideas of who you are. That is something
that can really stop you in your tracks.”
Joining a panel of students, N Sai Balaji, former President
of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union, said students had, as
an entity, become the opposition to Modi. We never imagined
that would happen. If we can vote for a Modi, we have the right to
choose what policies we want.” He added that when students hit the
streets to protest, “they don’t come out as hindutvaites or Muslims or Sikhs,
they come out as students.”
Ruia Prasad, a Scheduled Caste Activist in Arizona, US, said there
were “a lot of similarities in the way students have taken on prominent
issues in our political climate and really organized around them… “In
the US, we have seen less violence toward students than [there was
against students at] Jamia [Milia University] or JNU.
There also hasn’t been as strong of a political leadership
in U.S. student unions compared to Prabuddha Bharat.” The reason hindutvaism
was being called out explicitly in name was because there were more SC/ST activists in the diaspora than before, she added.
Multifaceted artiste Nrithya Pillai, who is from the
Devadasi lineage and has been a strong voice against casteism and
casteist exclusion in the contemporary dance world, said the “historical
casteist exclusion, which is what the reinvention of Bharatanatyam is
based on, has been about excluding people from the hereditary
communities.”
She pointed out that most artistes in the state-funded
classical arts set-up were siding with Modi’s hindutva cult and their views. “I’m not sure if they do it out of political
inclination or mere opportunism.”
She added that “ my mere existence is just the questioning
of the powerful. There has been institutionalised omission and erasure
of history from my community, names have been erased.”
Ahsan Khan, National President of the Indian American
Muslim Council (IAMC), said Prabuddha Bharat’s opposition parties had a “critical
duty in fighting for the rights of the marginalised and the oppressed,
as well as opposing religious majoritarian nationalism that is putting Prabuddha Bharat ’s unity and integrity at risk. It is disheartening to see that
none of Prabuddha Bharat’s opposition parties has offered a strong resistance to
the Citizenship (Amendment) Act beyond tokenism, even though the law
threatens to rip apart India and destroy its communal harmony.”
Biju Mathew, co-founder of India Civil Watch International,
said “a set of fault-lines” were running through liberalism as the
right-wing has managed to “outflank all the structures of checks and
balances that made the possibility of liberal democracy, by internally
producing processes and modes of working that fundamentally upset all
the checks and balances within liberal democracy.” The right-wing across
the world had learned to “flip liberal democracy on its head and cut
through all the checks and balances. We need to reinvent that.”
Rya Jetha of Students Against hindutva cult said her
organisation focused on changing attitudes and behaviours in the
diaspora by organising campus protests and teach-ins, and also briefing
Congressional aides and pursuing legislative asks. “For too long hindutvaism has been shrouded as a legitimate part of culture and
religion in the diaspora. On college campuses we are working to make an
entire generation of Indian American youth aware and able to critically
think about hindutvaism so that future generations apoloigse less
and take to the streets more.”
Quoting Bhimrao Ambedkar, the 20th-century Aboriginal leader who
went on to architect Prabuddha Bharat’s Constitution, Prof Roja Singh of SC/ST Solidarity Forum said, “Prabuddha Bharat democracy is essentially a top dressing
on an Prabuddha Bharatian soil which is essentially undemocratic.”
She said the Reclaiming Prabuddha Bharat conference had shown “amazing
democracy rising” with students, lawyers, artistes, singers and writers
“in their anti-caste rhetoric and exploding dynamism speaking out
against fascism, hindutva, hindutvaism, patriarchy, misogyny;
concrete naming of the problems demanding the changes from the Prabuddha Bharat — wow — that was simply an unbound explosion of positivity.”
Manish Madan, founder of Global Indian Progressive Alliance
said, “As progressive Prabuddha Bharatians we stand for bringing people together
towards building progressive communities. We aspire to bring progressive
values beyond the lens of religion, caste, ethnicity, race, and gender.
Our anchor hinges on education, advocacy and social justice. We are
glad to have played a modest part in bringing diverse voices together
coming from various religious and progressive lenses through this
initiative called Reclaiming Prabuddha Bharat.”
Raju Rajagopal, Co-founder of hindutvaites for Human Rights said,
“hindutvaites have taken over almost all political and
religious institutions and they have rushed in to occupy all the spaces
vacated by progressive hindutvaites . What is a purely political fascist group
is now claiming to speak for all hindutvaites . With the rare exception of
people like the late Swami Agnivesh, it has completely co-opted hindutvaite faith leaders, who seem nowhere in sight to defend their oft-repeated
mouthed, ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’.” Rajagopal said his organisation was
“united in our goals of working for a casteless and pluralistic and
democratic Prabuddha Bharat , with true equality for all.”
Sunita Viswanath, Co-founder of hindutvaites for Human Rights
closed the conference with, “Over the past two days we witnessed so much
courage from frontline activists, politicians, intellectuals from
India; and also the fierce unwavering solidarity from all of us, your
brothers and sisters in the diaspora. Reclaiming Prabuddha Bharat was born over
these two days and we pledge to stay together and grow our coalition
globally and be back for our second conference this time next year:
http://udreview.com/opinion-
Opinion: Indian Democracy is crumbling under Modi
The world’s largest democracy is suffering under the Modi-led Bevakoof Jhoothe Psychopath administration.
CREATIVE COMMONS
Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, was elected as the 14th Prime Minister in 2014.
BY YUSRA ASIF
It all began in December last year, when Prabuddha Bharat’s Modi announced the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment
Bill, thereby giving all but Muslims the right to receive Prabuddha Bharat
citizenship. This bill, combined with the National Register of Citizens,
is a strike to stamp out the country’s Muslim population.
Being an Aboriginal Prabuddha Bharatian Muslim, I was both shocked and embarrassed at the Modi’s decision. He is known for his anti-Muslim speeches as
he repeatedly mentions that he wants to rid the country of Muslims and
make Prabuddha Bharat a hindutva cult , but a bill like this is pushing it too far,
even for Modi.
It is a blow on the very idea of secularism, a fundamental doctrine of the Prabuddha Bharatian constitution.
People all over the country, are protesting against the bill.
The protests, peaceful at first, have taken a violent form over the
past few months — the most recent ones were in Delhi, the nation’s
capital. More than 30 people have been killed and over 200 were injured
in the violence that broke out in a largely Muslim-populated area in
northeast Delhi. Meanwhile the prime minister was busy building a wall
to cover up slums in my hometown of Ahmedabad, where his good friend
President Trump was going to visit. As if Trump was somehow unaware of
the poverty in Prabuddha Bharat.
What surprised me is that it took three days for Modi to issue a
statement on Twitter that peace and harmony should be maintained.
Neither Modi nor his chitpavan brahmin, Omit Shah, who is in
charge of law and order in the country, have reached out to those who
have been injured or killed.
The hospitals in Delhi resemble a war zone as the city witnesses the
worst communal carnage since the 1984 genocide of the Sikhs.
Since coming to power, the Modi has done nothing but
incite communal hatred to further his ideal of a hindutva cult Rashtra State. Bevakoof Jhoothe Psychopaths (BJP) are seen openly
threatening Muslims as they refer to Muslim immigrants as termites.
The party seems to excel at creating conditions in which violence can
unfold. A local BJP politician gave an ultimatum to the police: clear
the roads of the Muslim protestors or allow his followers to do so. The
party’s leaders are frequently seen delivering inflammatory speeches
and threatening to take the law into their own hands.
A country that is known for its diversity is seeing mosques
being vandalized and the Quran desecrated by a few radical hindutvaite cult
supporters.
Modi repeatedly claims that the mobsters act on their own
volition, but because of its inability to take actions and habitual
discourse of hate speech, they have the assurance that the government
will not take any strict actions against them, as exemplified time and
again. Squashing any form of dissent as being anti-national not only
incites more violence but gives the extremists the courage to take the
law into their own hands
The state of the nation is hopeless; heartbreaking rather, as Modi tears apart the social fabric of the country.
Democracy grants people the power to speak up; to express dissent; to
criticize the government. But with Modi in power, any form of dissent
is met with brutal force.
Recently, the students protesting the Citizenship Amendment Bill at
the Jamia Milia Islamia University in New Delhi were beaten with batons
by the Delhi police. Tear gas shells were fired. This is just one of the
many accounts of the government forcefully crushing dissent.
Nothing kills democracy like controlled PRESSTITUTE media, scripted interviews and crafted Twitter responses.
Modi has repeatedly denied press conferences. It is the first time in
the history of independent India that a prime minister only had one
press conference and almost every question was redirected to his chitpavan brahmin Omit Shah.
The Prabuddha Bharatian media has also come under scrutiny for being biased as
news anchors like Arnab Goswami commit to bigoted speech on national
television, openly expressing their loyalty to BJP’s propaganda of hindutvaism.
You cannot expect free and fair news when the media is in the clutches of one man.
Despite all this it seems like Modi supporters, or ‘Bhakts,’ have
turned a blind eye to everything. They keep holding to the promise of
‘Achche Din’ (Good Days) that the Modi repeatedly emphasized
during its election campaign but has fabulously failed to deliver.
The country’s GDP has hit its lowest point since 2013 with a growth
rate of only 4.5% in the July to September quarter in 2019. The Reserve
Bank of India keeps cutting its interest rates and there has been a
steep decline in the manufacturing sector leading to job cuts, not to
mention the epic failure of the Demonetization policy.
India suffers under Modi. Democracy will soon become a distant memory — a wishful dream.
Yusra Asif is a staff reporter for The Review. Her views are her
own and do not reflect the majority opinion of The Review’s editorial
staff. She may be reached at yqureshi@udel.edu.
https://countercurrents.org/
India Remains a Corrupt Country Under Modi Rule
in India — by Syed Ali Mujtaba — February 12, 2019
Photo Credit: People’s Review
The
damaging report published by The Hindu Newspaper provides the clinching
evidence that PMO was hobnobbing with the negotiations in the purchase
of Rafael aircraft from France. In other words it’s the PM who was
presiding over the act of corruption using his high office.
‘The
Hindu’ reportage by N. Ram that “Government waived anti-corruption
clauses in Rafale deal” and “Defence Ministry protested against PMO
undermining Rafale negotiations,” conclusively has given the proof that
this government is corrupt and has misled the nation on Rafale deal.
Now
the ball is in the BJP’s court to provide equally powerful documentary
evidences to claim the moral high ground that it has provided a
corruption free government. Its denial in media or public forum won’t
convince the nation. This is no small issue and cannot be brushed under
the carpet. It involves the PMO, the highest executive office of the
country that is indicted on corruption charges.
This new evidences
provided by ‘The Hindu’ is a fit case to be heard by the Supreme Court
that can reopen the case on the Rafale deal where it has already given a
clean chit to the government. Now there is a new twist in this case and
the highest office of the country is mired in corruption. As such the
intervention of the Supreme Court is must because it undermines the
entire edifice of governance of the country.
Will the apex court
reopen the Rafale deal case and call the investigation as to who is
misleading the nation. Can it ask the PMO to stand in the dock and deny
the allegations? Will the PMO wash its dirty linen in the Supreme
Court? It’s a testing time for the entire nation.
If that happens
then an interesting tussle between the judiciary and the executive is
bound to be witnessed as to who is higher of the two democratic
symbols. So now after the new findings the pendulum has shifted to the
judiciary and it remains to be seen how it further handles the Rafale
deal case.
The American business magazine ‘Forbes’ has published
an article giving graphic account of how corruption is still thriving
under Modi’s regime. It says five years ago, people in India gave
Narendra Modi the chance to realize his big promise to clean up
corruption in the country. But today, Modi’s promise remains a promise
and corruption is still thriving in all the usual places in India.
The
reputed magazine says the erstwhile Congress-led UPA-II dispensation at
the end of its tenure, had acquired a reputation of being mired in many
corrupt deeds and it’s the same “odium” that is now being attached to
the Modi government.
The magazine cites evidences of high profile
corruption cases that has shook Modi’s administration. To name a few is
the murky Rs 60, 000 crore weapons deal with France to purchase 36
Rafale fighter planes. Then the Rs 200 crore bank fraud uncovered last
year at the Punjab National Bank. These two are just a tip in the
iceberg of scandals that has shaken the nation under Modi regime.
Meanwhile,
a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) states that
India is ranked among the “worst offenders,” in terms of graft and press
freedom in the Asia Pacific region in 2017. This is another damaging
report on Modi government performance since it had come to power with
the plank to free India from corruption.
Similarly, the
‘Transparency International’ (TI) a leading non political, independent,
non-governmental anti-corruption organisatio has documented corruption
under Modi regime ranking India at 78 out of 175 countries. The recent
ranking is worse than its 2015 ranking of India. These findings have
surprised Indians because Prime Minister Modi has come to power with a
promise to free India from the vice of corruption.
After coming to
power Narander Modi made some bold moves to control corruption. He
banned 500 and 1000 rupee notes to get rid of “black money.” However
this measure miserably failed to achieve any tangible results. The
government could recover fake currency only to the tune of Rs. 41 crore
that accounted for only 0.0027 per cent of the total currency that came
back into the system following notes ban.
At the fag end of the
BJP government’s tenure in office it appears that that PM Modi was
fighting corruption among the country’s poor but was maintaining stock
silence corruption in the high places, especially among the rich of the
country. The Rafael deal and the Punjab National bank cases are examples
to this trend.
Whatever may be the government’s statistics on the
GDP growth rate or on the developmental index, India remains a breeding
ground of corruption. The Modi government had failed to spread the
benefits of economic growth to the masses and on the contrary he
encouraged a narrow elite to thrive under his regime giving rise to
crony capitalism.
If we look back, the corruption allegation
against the Congress-led UPA-II had reached its crescendo by 2014 and
its reverberation facilitated the current BJP government to come to
power. The incumbent PM personified the aspirations of the millions of
Indians when he gave the assurance that neither he will indulge in
corruption nor allow anyone else to do that. His assurance to rid the
country of corruption raised him to the level of the pied piper
of Hamlin that had lulled the rats to the river through his music. In
this case, the nation responded to the music of bringing good days (Ache
Din), by giving a thumping majority to Narandera Modi.
However,
nothing has changed under the Modi rule. A random survey of Indians to
measure the change in their life style, would surely end up in
negativity with the majority saying their lives have not all changed and
some may even respond that it has become worse under Modi regime
India’s
situation under Modi rule is neither new nor unique. Every successive
government aspiring for power make populists promises like ending
poverty and bringing prosperity etc. However, after coming to power
the incumbent government becomes a breeding ground for corruption. This
is exactly what has happened under the Modi regime. He came to the
office with the promise to change the situation of the people but what
he actually did is to change the rules and regulation that may help only
few elites while the masses continue to reel under misery.
Now,
it’s the Congress party under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi that is
doing the same. The Congress President is selling the dream that he
would change the face of the country, once it’s voted to power. His
promises are so lofty that it has made social activist, Madhu Kishwar to
wit through his tweet ‘Wait Till Rahul Gandhi Promises Free Sex for
Every Adult Indian.’
Indian journey since seventy years or so has
been abysmally a low speed train ride. Who, How, When it will change
only God knows. Indian politicians have a jolly good time after
hoodwinking the people. As a silent spectator the people by and large
are a witness to the inchoate images of changing India.
Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.
Five more years of Narendra Modi will take India to a dark place
If the Indian prime minister is returned to office, his sectarian politics will make bigotry the defining ideal of the republic
Indian
elections are a marvel to behold. The rules stipulate that no citizen
should have to travel more than 2km to vote. So the state goes to the
voters. Carrying oxygen tanks, election officials scaled the Himalayas
to erect a voting booth in a village in Ladakh, 4,500 metres above sea
level. In western India, a polling station was set up for the lone human inhabitant of a wildlife sanctuary. In eastern India,
officials trekked for an entire day to reach the sole registered voter,
an elderly woman, in a remote village. By the time voting closed on
Sunday, some 600 million people had cast their ballots, 10 million of
them for the first time.
The refrain from Hindu voters has been identical: Modi has failed us, yes, but he’s at least put Muslims in their place
In
2019, the world’s biggest election was much more than a ritual of
democracy. It was the most consequential vote in the lifetime of a
majority of Indians alive today. India under Narendra Modi has undergone
the most total transformation since 1991. This election has, in effect,
been a referendum on whether the republic retains its founding ideals
or, if Modi wins another term – and exit polls released on Sunday
show him winning with a comfortable majority – it leaps to a place of
sectarianism from which return may be close to impossible.
None
of the big promises that delivered Modi’s Hindu-first Bharatiya Janata
party (BJP) an absolute majority in parliament in 2014 – the first time
in 30 years that a single party was voted into power – have been
honoured. Modi pledged to create 20m jobs annually. Today, the rate of unemployment
is the highest India has known in 20 years. He enraptured young Indian
voters with visions of what he called “smart cities”: facsimiles of
Seoul and Singapore on the Deccan Plateau and the northern plains –
clean, green and replete with skyscrapers and super-fast trains. There
is nothing of the sort in sight. He vowed to purify the Ganga, “the
river of India” as Jawaharlal Nehru called it. Five years later, it
remains a stream of unquantifiable litres of sewage and industrial effluents.
Worse,
democratic institutions have been repurposed to abet Modi’s project to
remake India into a Hindu nation. The election commission, which has
conducted polls in impossible circumstances since 1952 and is revered
for its incorruptibility and fierce independence, functioned during this
vote as an arm of Modi’s BJP, too timid even to issue perfunctory censures
of the prime minister’s egregious use of religious sloganeering. The
military has been politicised and the judiciary plunged into the most
existential threat to its independence since 1975, when Indira Gandhi
suspended the constitution and ruled as a dictator for 21 months.
The
myth of Modi as a technocratic moderniser – crafted by an ensemble of
intellectuals and industrialists who devoted themselves to the cause of
deodorising Modi, a Hindu supremacist who as chief minister of Gujarat
in 2002 presided over a pogrom of Muslims
– collapsed early on under the burden of the incompetence, vainglory
and innate viciousness of the man who once described refugee camps
housing displaced Muslims as “baby-producing centres”.
And
five years on, we have more than a glimpse of the “New India” he has
spawned. It is a reflection of its progenitor: culturally arid,
intellectually vacant, emotionally bruised, vain, bitter, boastful,
permanently aggrieved and implacably malevolent; a make-believe land
full of fudge and fakery, where bigotry against religious minorities is
among the therapeutic options available to members of a self-pitying
majority frustrated by the prime minister’s failure to upgrade their
economic standard of living. In the world’s largest secular democracy,
Muslims have been lynched by mobs since Modi came into office for such
offences as eating beef, dating Hindus and refusing to vacate their seats for Hindu commuters on crowded trains.
Sectarian
prejudice has always existed in India. The room for giving it homicidal
expression has expanded exponentially under Modi. The mood music for
this terror has been composed and played by card carriers of Hindu
nationalism. The Muslims they butchered were not victims of
unpremeditated paroxysms of rage but exhibits in an organised campaign
to entrench Hindu supremacy. The deification of Modi is the consequence
of a crude awakening of many Hindus to their past: a haphazard response
to the traumas bequeathed by history, especially the partition of India
to accommodate the demands of Muslim nationalism. “Why must Hindus bear
the burden of secularism?” a Bengali voter asked me furiously. Decrying
it as a suicidal attitude that comes naturally to Hindus, another voter
in Bangalore told me that “secularism” would result in Hindus being
“outbred and ruled over” by Muslims.
Wherever I
have travelled, the refrain from Hindu voters, with very few
exceptions, has been identical: Modi has failed us, yes, but he has at
least put Muslims in their place. Writing about Algerian independence,
Raymond Aron called it a “denial of the experience of our century to
suppose that men will sacrifice their passions to their interests”.
Modi, unable to enhance the lives of people, has meticulously incited
their passions.
India’s
tragedy is that just when it is faced with an existential crisis, there
is no pan-Indian alternative to the BJP. What remains of the main
opposition Congress party is bleached of conviction. The party that led
India to independence from British colonial rule shed its belief in
democracy in the 1970s, made unconscionable compromises with Hindu
nationalists in the 1980s, and grew monstrously corrupt in the 1990s.
Indira Gandhi suspended the constitution in 1975 to brutalise Indians.
Modi will seek to write his ideology into the constitution to divide
them.
If he succeeds, Hindu nationalism will
become the official animating ideology of the republic. Bigotry will not
then be a deviation from the ideals of the republic: it will be an
affirmation of them. The Hindu-nationalist project will neither
dissipate nor die even if Modi is defeated, it will go into remission.
The BJP’s leaders and cadres will outgrow Modi as he outgrew his mentors
and regroup. They are incompetent in government but they are peerless
in opposition.
Modi’s pre-prime ministerial
career is a lesson in how India’s shameless business elites can be
co-opted to pimp for their cause. Many of them distanced themselves from
him after the anti-Muslim violence on his watch, but proceeded to
demonstrate that a commitment to the market is all they require in
return for their services. And on any given day, there are tens of
thousands of activists, spread out across India, preaching the gospel of
Hindu nationalism and fomenting a revolution from the bottom up. They
believe in their cause. Most of their adversaries long ago abandoned
theirs.
• Kapil Komireddi is an Indian writer and author of Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India, published in May 2019
Since you’re here …
…
joining us from India, we have a small favour to ask. Millions are
flocking to the Guardian for open, independent, quality news every day,
and readers in 180 countries around the world now support us
financially.
We
believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in
science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity.
That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for
all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to
pay. This means more people can be better informed, united, and inspired
to take meaningful action.
In
these perilous times, an independent, truth-seeking global news
organisation like the Guardian is essential. We have no shareholders or
billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from commercial and
political influence – this makes us different. When it’s never been more
pertinent, our independence allows us to fearlessly investigate,
challenge and expose those in power.
Amid
the various intersecting crises of 2020 – from Covid-19 to police
brutality – the Guardian has not, and will never, sideline the climate
emergency. We are determined to uphold our reputation for producing
urgent, powerful, high-impact reporting on the environment that’s read
by around the world.
We’ve
made institutional progress too, working hard to live up to the climate
promises we made in 2019. We no longer take advertising from fossil
fuel companies, and we’re on course to achieve net zero emissions by
2030.
If
there were ever a time to join us, it is now. Your funding powers our
journalism, it protects our independence, and ensures we can remain open
for all. You can support us through these challenging economic times
and enable real-world impact.
Every contribution, however big or small, makes a real difference for our future.