Kashmir Is a Dress Rehearsal for Hindu Nationalist Fantasies
By Dibyesh Anand |
Activists chanted in the center of Ranchi, the capital of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand and my parental city: “Kashmir azaad ho gaya aaj” (“Kashmir has been freed today”). The activists were celebrating the deathblow to Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy struck by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Aug. 5. They were not the only ones; much of the Indian public shared their vulgar joy.
It’s not the assimilation of Kashmir—whose autonomy in practice has long disappeared, diluted over the decades by military and bureaucratic means from the center—that brings this excitement. It’s not even the thought of giving the finger to India’s old archenemy, Pakistan, for daring to court U.S. President Donald Trump over Kashmir. The joy stems from the humiliation of Kashmir’s Muslims for daring to be different and the thought that this is a warning signal to all of India’s Muslims that the Hindu body politic is resurgent and unstoppable.
Dibyesh Anand: Educated at the universities of Delhi, Hull and Bristol, Dibyesh Anand is a Professor in International Relations. Before joining Westminster in 2007, he was a Lecturer in Department of Economics and International Development at the University of Bath. He has held visiting fellowships in several institutions including the Australian National University, University of California Berkeley, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the Central University of Hyderabad. He is an expert on majority-minority relations in China and India, and the author of Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination, and 'Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
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His article on Uighur problem can be read in the pdf in this link:
Activists chanted in the center of Ranchi, the capital of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand and my parental city: “Kashmir azaad ho gaya aaj” (“Kashmir has been freed today”). The activists were celebrating the deathblow to Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy struck by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Aug. 5. They were not the only ones; much of the Indian public shared their vulgar joy.
It’s not the assimilation of Kashmir—whose autonomy in practice has long disappeared, diluted over the decades by military and bureaucratic means from the center—that brings this excitement. It’s not even the thought of giving the finger to India’s old archenemy, Pakistan, for daring to court U.S. President Donald Trump over Kashmir. The joy stems from the humiliation of Kashmir’s Muslims for daring to be different and the thought that this is a warning signal to all of India’s Muslims that the Hindu body politic is resurgent and unstoppable.
This is about empowering activists
who now exclaim proudly, “Aab Hindu Rashtra banega” (“We will now build
a Hindu nation”), or the ordinary vegetable vendor in Ranchi saying to me with
sadistic glee: “Now the Muslims will become Hindu out of fear or they will go
to Pakistan or they will face…” He let the sentence trail off, an unspoken
threat.
The BJP, under strongman leader
Narendra Modi, is driven by a far-right Hindu chauvinist ideology. Its solid
reelection victory this spring gave it the power to bring about controversial
and fundamental changes in Indian politics and justify them as a matter of
national security and as a rectification of the “past mistakes” of the
secularist Indian National Congress. The BJP has justified abrogation of
Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which guaranteed autonomy to Jammu and
Kashmir, and of Article 35A, which protected indigenous society
from possible demographic transformation in the name of development, equality,
and national unity.
While analysts may try to connect
Modi’s decision to geopolitical imbroglios, it is most appropriate to see it as
a dress rehearsal for the BJP’s main agenda—the conversion of India from a
secular pluralist democracy to a Hindu Rashtra. From political sloganeering “Hindustan
mein rehna hai to hindu ban kar rehna hoga” (If you want to live in India,
you have to be a Hindu) to the crackdown on religious conversions into Islam
and Christianity to inclusion of various anti-Muslim agendas in party manifesto
to celebrating anti-secular supremacists as national heroes, the BJP is
remaining true to the explicit agenda of Sangh Parivar, a family of
organizations linked to the far-right paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
The Hindu nationalism that fuels the
BJP portrays Hindus—who make up 80 percent of the population—as involved in a
long-term battle against numerous enemies: Muslims, Christians, communists, and
secularists. Modi is imagined as a conquering leader who will overcome these
foes, avenge humiliations suffered by the supposed Hindu nation over centuries,
and rebuild a strong Hindu India where the threat of communism is extinguished;
religious minorities are domesticated, expelled, or exterminated; and pluralist
secularism is rejected as “minority-appeasing pseudo-secularism” while the
acceptance of Hindu supremacy in India is seen as real secularism.
Kashmir has long played a critical
part in this mythology. More than a decade ago, while doing research for my
book Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear, I met several
leaders and activists from the Sangh Parivar, the umbrella of paramilitary groups around the BJP, who argued
that Kashmir had to be the next battleground against Muslims. Just as the BJP’s
cause had received a boost from the destruction of the historic Babri Mosque in
1992 in Ayodhya, they saw Kashmir as the next holy cause that would empower the
nation. Today, they have Modi as prime minister and a strong majority for the
BJP in India’s central government as well as several states. Experiments during
the previous administration—including demonetization, lynching in the name of cow protection, and new exclusionary
citizenships—showed the Indian public’s sadomasochistic fascination for drastic
action and even violence so long as the primary victims were minorities; the
time was ripe for the implementation of a Hinduization plan for Jammu and
Kashmir.
Of course, this isn’t the reason the
BJP gives. Home Minister Amit Shah insists that the corruption and economic
backwardness of Jammu and Kashmir were a result of autonomous statehood rather
than due to heavy militarization, state violence, and insurgency. That’s a
specious argument, given the long-term economic damage done to the region by
the cutoff of historical ties to its neighbors, including Pakistan and Tibet.
India has deliberately kept Kashmir dependent on New Delhi. The easy way to
help the region develop would be to ease restrictions on cross-border trade and
loosen security—but New Delhi does the exact opposite, imposing a colonial
model of development in which outside capital will join the military and
bureaucracy in imposing control. And as much as Shah and Modi speak the
language of development, the reality is nationalist oppression.
The brutal swiftness of the move has
shown that through the use of a narrative of national security, the BJP can
break opposition parties and secure overwhelming parliamentary support, spur
its grassroots workers, and keep the jingoist media on board.
The brutal swiftness of the move has shown that through the
use of a narrative of national security, the BJP can break opposition parties and
secure overwhelming parliamentary support, spur its grassroots workers, and
keep the jingoist media on board.
The widespread support for this act
of constitutional vandalism shows that there is little hope of checking the BJP
on other divisive domestic issues, such as the building of a grand temple to
the Hindu god Ram on the site of the former Babri Mosque and taking away the
existing rights of religious minorities to be governed by distinct personal
laws on family matters including marriage and inheritance.
The brutal swiftness of the move has shown that through the
use of a narrative of national security, the BJP can break opposition parties
and secure overwhelming parliamentary support, spur its grassroots workers, and
keep the jingoist media on board.
The biggest losers in this move are
the pro-India Kashmiris who were denounced as collaborators for trusting India
by their fellow Kashmiris, most of whom seek independence or to join with
Pakistan. Their trust in India’s secular democracy that provided special status
and autonomy has been betrayed not only by the nationalist ruling party but by
several opposition parties that are supposedly more progressive. The move has
converted Kashmir into a battlefield with no middle ground of autonomy. Freedom
within India is no longer an option, thanks to the Modi government. The Kashmir
Valley will now face demographic transformation and settler colonialism. If
Kashmiri Muslims resist, they will be the targets of yet more brutal state
violence and be represented as Islamist terrorists; if they do not resist,
their silence will be interpreted as support for India.
=======Dibyesh Anand: Educated at the universities of Delhi, Hull and Bristol, Dibyesh Anand is a Professor in International Relations. Before joining Westminster in 2007, he was a Lecturer in Department of Economics and International Development at the University of Bath. He has held visiting fellowships in several institutions including the Australian National University, University of California Berkeley, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the Central University of Hyderabad. He is an expert on majority-minority relations in China and India, and the author of Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination, and 'Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
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His article on Uighur problem can be read in the pdf in this link:
China as a victim rather than a proponent of modern colonialism is an essential myth that animates Chinese nationalism. The Chinese statist project of occupying, minoritizing and securitizing different ethno-national peoples of Central Asia, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, with their own claims to homelands, is a colonial project. Focusing on China's securitized and militarized rule in Xinjiang and Tibet, the article will argue that the most appropriate lens through which this can be understood is neither nation-building nor internal colonialism but modern colonialism. It argues that the representation of Uyghurs and Tibetans as sources of insecurity not only legitimizes state violence as a securitizing practice but also serves contemporary Chinese colonial goals.
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